Episode 50. Tackling Racism and Controversy in Jason Aldean's Small Town Song

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What's in a song? Can something that you are trying to say, or in some case you don't mean to say, be hidden behind a lyric? What happens if the controversy begins only after you put images to what those words mean? Does it truly have a racist meaning? Or you just trying to write a song

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for all the wrong that you are tired of in the world. Join me while I examine the song, Try That in a Small Town by Jason Aldean on this episode of True Crime in Authors. Welcome to True Crime in Authors podcast, where we bring two passions together. The show that gives new meaning to the old adage, truth.

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is stranger than fiction. Here's your host, David McClam. What's going on everybody? And welcome to another episode of True Crime and Authors. Of course, I'm your man, David McClam. Hey, if you guys haven't already, make sure you're following us on all of our social medias. One link to a link tree will get you every link you need to have pertaining to the show.

01:25
All right. So this is the last episode of season one. I was just going to consider ending season one and just coming back to tell you guys what was going to happen in season two, but that'd be your next drop that you will get sometime after this one. I was actually asked my opinion on what we're going to talk about today. So I decided to come here and give it to you.

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just in case you guys want to hear my take on what's going on and all the controversy and what my overall feelings of it is. With that said, let me remind you that when it deals with things of this nature, I always remove everything from it, especially if it deals with race and I rebuild the case or the story until if it is racism or something else going on, until I cannot ignore that fact and I have to put it in.

02:21
And then I will tell you why that is. So today we are going to talk about the new now controversial song that was written by Jason Aldean entitled, try that in a small town. So the way I want to do this is I'm going to tell you how I got involved in this. I'm going to read you a couple of articles.

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I'm going to read you what Jason Aldean actually posted about the song on his Twitter. And then I'm going to give you some background and reasons why there are issues with this song.

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The one thing if you guys don't know anything else about me is I do research into everything before I come and bring it to you. I want to make sure that you have all the facts and that I'm correct. And the one thing that has been ticking me off the most about all of these reactions to this song, especially among the black people that's reacting to this song,

03:29
is that you can tell that nobody did any kind of research into this song, the video, nothing. They just decided to grab a microphone, sit down and talk to you guys about why they feel like the song is not or this or that. That's not what we're going to do. Everything I'm going to tell you today is backed up in facts. I will leave the proof for you in the show notes so you can read these things for yourself. So how did I get involved with this song? Well,

03:56
It was sent to me and I was asked that I feel that the song was racist. Now, if you're like me, you're sitting back going, what happened now? Because the fact that this song has been out since May, we're now in the middle part of July, almost the end. And now this song has sparked controversy. The reason being for that is that Jason Aldean about a week ago now.

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release the video for this song. And then that's when all, for lack of a better term, hell broke loose. I'm gonna read you the lyrics to the song here coming up. And I'm also gonna read you the lyrics to another song that was in contrast to this, because I want you guys to see just how people think and how they think it, and just how, because of maybe differences in words, they'll decide what is racist and what is not.

04:54
Let's begin with a little bit about Jason Aldean. If you guys don't know who he is or you don't listen to country music, I want to tell you just a little bit about him just so that you guys know that he is a veteran in this industry and the things we're going to talk about, he should have known better with the way they were done. So Jason Aldean has been around for a better part of 20 years. He's been considered one of the top country singers. He signed a deal with Broken Bowl Records back in 2005.

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And then from then on he went to release 10 albums which he had 40 singles on Those 10 albums you may know him for songs like my kind of party you know that song got certified quadruple platinum and Night train and old boots new dirt. I mean you name it it goes on 27 of his 38 singles has reached number one on either the hot country songs or the country airplay charts, so you can't

05:54
be new to this and do these kinds of things. Jason Aldean has been looked upon as one of the top and pioneer singers going forward in this business. Now, a lot of people because of this now is coming out saying Jason Aldean is all wholesome and he's never done anything wrong. Well, that's not true. Jason Aldean has been a part of a few scandals that is now starting to come back up because of this song. The scandals that he is most notably known for

06:23
was his cheating scandal. He cheated on his current wife at the time with his now wife, Brittany Aldean. Her name was Usery, and Jason Aldean pretty much fessed up to it. He pretty much said that the truth was he screwed up, he had too much to drink, he let the party get out of control, and next thing he knows, he's got photos being snapped with him and Brittany. Well, must've been something more than that because he turns around, he splits up with her, and then he filed for divorce.

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for must be in 2013. Of course, after that, there was the famous COVID vaccination drama he was a part of. For one, let me point this out, because when I mentioned this down the road later on, I don't want nobody coming back at me. Jason Aldean has not been shy about where he stands politically. For lack of a better term, what we call him, he is a Trump-lican. He believes in everything that the radical Republicans believe in. He believes in Trump.

07:19
He believes that the whole election thing was stolen. You go down the line. He's told you that he believes in these things, but he started to cause a stir when here was, I believe he still lives here in California. The mandate at the time was that children was required to have vaccines for COVID to attend school. And he went off about how he wanted to get it straight. That is no longer decisions of the parents or free Americans.

07:47
uh, to make decisions about their kids that Gavin Newsom, who is our governor, is making those decisions now. And he absolutely refused. I also believe that he refused to take the vaccine or mask up for himself and on his behalf as well. The thing that irritates me about that is you're following a man that says that you shouldn't be taking the vaccine, but we all know that Donald Trump and his whole family did take the vaccine. No blowback really came from that. But.

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You know, you got people like Aldine out here fighting for the causes that he's bringing up when he's doing the exact thing that the people that's following him is fighting against. Uh, even though he lies that he didn't, we know that he did. There was also the Marin Morris feud. Uh, that feud involved his wife, Brittany. It was back in August of 2022. Jason supported Brittany all through that, even though it caused him to be into hot water.

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Brittany made a comment during a beauty vlog that was considered to be a transphobic message. The message that she put was, I'd really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase. And then it was on a video. And then she also said, I love this girly life. Now, because of that, Aldine came up under scrutiny because of what his wife said. But like with this song,

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he went and backed her up 100%. So when this song came out and everybody wanted to bring racism into it, I hope you can understand from the things that they show with you why they were honing on that. Now, before I read you the article and we go and read what Jason had to say, again, if you're questioning why all of a sudden does this song even matter?

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See everybody's running around to myself, oh my gosh, the song can't be racist, it can't be this, because it's in the top 100. Okay, well, let me remind you that we have an artist out here by the name of Eminem. Eminem was nowhere near the charts until they say his music was controversial, and all of the parents wanted to boycott him, and everybody else wanted to because of the subject matter he talked about. There was some homophobic stuff in there and the whole nine. What happened to Eminem overnight?

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straight up to number one. Well, let me tell you, that is the same thing that happened with Jason Aldean. Nobody cared about this song until now to prove that I looked up where he was in the top 40 country music charts back in May and June and now in July.

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In May, he didn't even chart. Now I won't hold that against him because he had just dropped the song in May. In June, he was number 39, we tried this in a small town. And in July, he started out number 37 in the top 40. So again, nobody really even cared about this song. So I wonder if Jason Aldean is sitting back kicking his own butt.

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because of the fact that if he would have never released this video, this song would have flown up under the radar, people would have kept humming it, nobody would have brought this up, nobody would have said boo. But when you give people a reason to dig deeper into what you're saying and to scrutinize that, well, you do what he did and then you keep talking. We'll talk more about the video here in a little bit if you have not seen it.

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Now I want you guys to know that I've listened to this song more than five times. I've seen the video more than six times because other things that we would discuss has also come out about the video. I'm probably one of the reasons why he's trending in topic number one, because I wanted to make sure I knew what I was talking about when I came here. I also wanted to make sure that the feelings that I have about this song was absolutely a hundred percent correct. So let's get into the first article that was written about this song. Actually,

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I want to do it this way. Let me read you Jason Aldean's tweet first. Then by doing that, when I read you the articles, it'll make more sense to you. Now of course, again, I have been very, very, very busy. I've been trying to close into the season, working the whole nine. I do follow Jason Aldean on Twitter, along with a lot of other celebrities to see what's going on.

12:35
And he did release a tweet, I saw it flash across my phone back in July 18th, but the only part I could see was this, in the past 24 hours I've been accused of releasing a pro lynching song. And I said, oh, you know, I'll get back to it later. You know, what are they talking about? What's Jason Aldean up to now? Obviously as a black American, I wasn't having any concern about it because Jason Aldean has never done anything or said anything that I have seen.

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That would deem him a racist. That would deem him a threat to people of my color or any other color. That would deem that he didn't like people that wasn't white. So it wasn't that big on my radar at the time until I got the song. And when I got the song, I wrote back to the person, oh yeah, I said, yeah, I've heard there's some controversy, haven't had time to get into it, let me read it. So here is the tweet that he put out July 18th at around 12, 17 p.m.

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He said, in the past 24 hours, I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song, a song that has been out since May and was subject to the comparison that I direct quote was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless but dangerous. There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it and there isn't a single video clip that isn't real news footage.

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And while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music, this one goes too far. As so many pointed out, I was present at Route 91 where so many lost their lives and our community recently suffered another heartbreaking tragedy. No one, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart.

14:23
Try that in a small town for me refers to the feeling of community that I had growing up, but we took care of our neighbors regardless of differences of background or belief, because they were our neighbors and that was above any differences. My political views have never been something I've hidden from, and I know that a lot of us in this country don't agree on how we get back to a sense of normalcy where we go at least a day without a headline that keeps us up at night.

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but the desire for it too. That's what this song is about. What I need you guys to do is you heard what I just read. If you need to stop and go back and hear it again, because I want you not to only hear what he said, but I want you to also hear what he didn't say. Because what he didn't say in this tweet, in my opinion, is far more damning than what he did say.

15:23
I'll go back and clarify that statement as we get a little bit more into these articles and songs because then it would make more sense. So then right after that, an article came out. Now I know that because I'm African American and there's a lot of people, whether they listen to my show or not, or you know somebody said, oh, the first thing that black people wanna do is they wanna look at race. The first thing that I do when I get these things, as you know, I remove race from the equation,

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but I look around at what everybody else is singing. Now, if I'm the only black person that's up on this tangent, I may be wrong. But when people that are my counterparts that are white are writing this same stuff, I may be onto something. So let's look at this article in this opinion piece. It's written by Nicole Hemmer, and it's called Jason Aldean Can't Rewrite the History.

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his song depends on. And the article starts out, it was mid-November 1927, when at a Tennessee courthouse wrapped in patriotic decor to celebrate Amity's Day, a white mob seized a black teenager named Henry Choate and hanged him from the building's balcony. The accusations against him that he had attacked a white girl were unsupported but horribly routine.

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Many lynchings of black boys and men followed accusations that white womanhood had been violated. That same courthouse, again festooned in red, white, and blue, serves as the backdrop for Jason Aldean's new music video for the song, Try That in a Small Town, a ballad that critics say promotes vigilantism and gun violence. In the video, an oversized American flag hangs down the middle of the courthouse so large

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that it covers the balcony where Choate was murdered. There is no evidence that Aldean and the team behind the video knew what happened on that site in 1927. But the powerful symbolism underscores the song's toxic message that those who step out of line in Aldean's small town, whether they cuss out a cop or stomp on a flag, will find themselves facing down the gun that my granddad gave me.

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Never mind that desecrating a flag and swearing at a police officer are for the time being constitutionally protected actions. The song is a celebration of vigilantism, though Aldean denies it. He defends it as an ode to small-town America, but it is really a statement of entitlement, an assertion of who is allowed to make and enforce the rules, both as a matter of law and as a matter of extralegal violence.

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These ideas have been intimately linked to country music, courthouses, and conservatism for well over a century. And whether he admits it or not, both Aldean's song and the courthouse where a teen boy was murdered serve as a reminder that historically appeals to so-called law and order often rely just as much on white vigilantism as they do on formal legal procedures.

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Now I'll leave it at that. I will post this whole article in the show. Notice if you want to go read it because this person dives more into the history of this courthouse and things that's happened there. And she talks about the Ku Klux Klan and militias and white power. I mean, it goes on and on. So I'll leave that down there for you. With that, let me read you the lyrics. Why this is fresh in your mind. It is true in 1927, Henry Cho was hung from the very balcony that this video was shot on.

19:14
The flag, if you watch the video, is covering the balcony, but they did a side view. I had a picture where I saw a side view of it, and you can see where that balcony is. That is one thing that caused controversy. But let's get into the lyrics of the song. Now, I'm gonna tell you this. I really wanted to like this song, people. I'm a musician. I can appreciate good musicianship. I'm a sucker for a good beat. I'm a sucker for a good guitar solo.

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If the drummer is doing his thing, me, I'm a drummer, I'm all for it. I really wanted to like this song. This song, dude, has musicality like you would not believe. The guitars at the beginning is bomb. But then I had to read it, and now because of the video, I have to look at it between the lines. And this is what a lot of us don't do. Let me read to you.

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the lyrics and then I'll come back and tell you what's wrong with them. The lyrics go like this. Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk. Car jack an old lady at a red light. Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store you think is cool. Well act a fool if you like. Cuss out a cop, spit in his face, stomp on the flag and light it up. Yeah you think you're tough. But try that in a small town. See how far you make it down the road.

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Around here we take care of our own. You cross that line, it won't take long. For you to find out, I recommend you don't. Try that in a small town. Got a gun that my granddad gave me. They say one day they're gonna round up. Well that shit might fly in the city. Good luck. Try that in a small town. See how far you make it down the road. Around here we take care of our own.

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You cross that line, it won't take long. For you to find out, I recommend you don't. Try that in a small town. Full of good old boys raised up right. If you're looking for a fight, try that in a small town. Try that in a small town. See how far you make it down the road. Around here, we take care of our own. You cross that line.

21:39
It won't take long for you to find out. I recommend you don't try that in a small town. Now, if you like everybody else in the world, you like, yeah, this song is groovin'. Try that in a small town. We getting tired of punks coming up in here, killing people off. All Jason Aldean is saying is we taking care of our own. That's what everybody wants you to think. That ain't exactly what he's saying. And I'll say it again.

22:07
Maybe Jason Aldean is kicking his own butt because he released this video. If the video would have never been released, this song, nobody still would have cared about. It wouldn't be number one in the country charts right now. It would still be hanging around at 37, 38, 39, in the top 40. Nobody would have cared. But when you do, and you say certain things that makes people analyze the things in which you were saying to see what the true intention is. This is what you get.

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Now, before I continue, I will point out that Jason Aldean did not even write this song himself. Even though he's running around promoting it and he's all proud of it, like he wrote it, he didn't write this song. Four people wrote this song. Kelly Loveless, Neil Thrasher, Tully Kennedy, Kurt Michael Allison. Now, if there's one thing you've listened to me say on this show before, and I think I've said it before many times, and I know I said this when it came to Nick Cannon, we are the stars of our show.

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My name is on this show. Jason Aldean's name is on his album and is on this song. At the very bottom of the credits, you have to look to see who the songwriters are. But when you go and say, try that in the small town, ain't nobody coming back to you going, oh yeah, that song, that was Kelly Loveless, Neil Thrasher, Tolley Kennedy, and Kurt Michael Allison. Who the heck are they? Don't nobody care. No, you can say that's Jason Aldean.

23:36
So you get to choose what it is that you put on your show or your album. You get to choose what it is people hear and you get to choose how you handle that. Now, I promised you that I would tell you what is wrong with this song. You have to go and couple it with the video. And then you have to go back and reread Jason Aldean's tweet and see all the things that he did not say.

24:07
So to ease your curiosity, do I think that this song is racist? And in you window? Yeah, I do. The in you windows in between the lines is there. It's also there in what he didn't say in his tweet. Let me clarify if I'll move on to the next article. He was very clear to point out that there is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it.

24:37
And there isn't a single video clip that isn't real news. What's wrong with that line? For one, he's trying to cover his butt by saying, my song can't be racist because I never said anything that was racist. But he also didn't come back and say it wasn't racist either. If I was accused of racism, if somebody actually went on a Twitter raid against me or they did a, they had a podcast or they had a show.

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and they were like, we were listening to True Crime and Authors and David McClamers are racist because he said this, you better believe that I'm gonna answer that. And I'm not gonna say something like, well, there wasn't anything I said that could be pertained as racist. No, I'm gonna come back and be like, first of all, that was not a racist comment. And if you took it as that, I apologize. That is not what I meant to do. Let me clarify what it means. He's not saying that. He's not saying it wasn't a racist song.

25:34
He's saying there wasn't a lyric in the song that references that, so it can't be racist. That's wrong. He also brought up that he was quoted saying that he was not too pleased with nationwide BLM protests. Why are we bringing up BLM? If this song has nothing to do with race, if it was BL, I came up with something like this. Hey man, in the past 24 hours I've been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song. I don't know why that is, but the song...

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try that in a small town has nothing to do with race. It's not attacking any race of people. It's saying that I want Normancy to come back. Whether you white, black, brown, blue, I don't care who you are, if you can help me get to that, that's what we gonna get to. No, he ain't saying that. He pointed out specifically that I was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protest. When I was raised, I was always taught that sometimes the true meaning is in what you don't say, other than what you do say.

26:33
So now we're bringing B.O. Limb into that. If this is not a song about race, other than they saying that it's lynching, why are you bringing this? And the only reason why lynching came up is because of the Tennessee courthouse he's standing in front of. Now I will say this, I do not believe that it was a pro-lynching song. I don't think that he went there specifically because of the fact that Mr. Cho was lynched there. So I'm not gonna say it's a song that he's writing promoting lynching. I don't think that that is the case.

27:02
But I think everything else that everybody's saying is 100% true. Before I finish my opinion, let's go to another one. If you was looking at the video, there is a bunch of clips in that video which also points to racism. What I'll give you is, they show you different protests. When he says, pull a gun on a liquor store, you see a guy jump across a counter that is very much black.

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Now, before you say, well, David, how can you tell he was black because he was covering him head to toe? Look at him. I don't know many white people that's going to jump a counter sagging. The innuendo was there. Well, because this has not been going on for a couple of days, did you think people's going to stop digging into it, trying to look for comparisons to the racial situation so that they can try to clear him? No, it's going to keep bringing it up until they can clear him.

27:59
Well, this is what we found out today. Hannah Gidehune wrote an article on July 22nd. It's called TikTok Sleuths Discover Jason Aldean's music video or protest footage features multiple clips from demonstrations outside the US. So now Jason Aldean is being called out saying, hey, you're not even using clips bro. From the US, but you're preaching about a small town.

28:24
Let me read you a little bit of that article. Says Jason Aldean's news music video, praising American small towns, features multiple clips of protests outside of the US, including Canada and Ukraine, TikTok sleuths discovered. Aldean's try that in a small town, applauded by conservatives, like former president Donald Trump, depicts images of people burning American flags and police confrontations with protesters during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

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Aldean sings about protesters spitting out police and rails against perceived criminals that carjacked an old lady at a red light. He also references a gun his grandfather gave him and invites people to try the types of activities that he imagines would fly in the city, in his small town, to see how far they can make it down the road. However, destiny starts.

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A content creator and activist based in Ohio pointed out that much of the footage in the video is from nowhere near the small town in America that Aldean fantasizes about defending. In a series of TikToks posted Thursday, Stark uncovered multiple instances where stock footage is employed in the video. In one example, a woman flipping off protesters is a clip from Germany being sold as stock footage. In another video,

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Stark identifies what she believed to be footage from a 2013 protest in Ukraine. So the consensus of Aldean's video is that he's protecting his small community from rioters and protesters protesting the police you would think he would actually use footage actually from America. Stark said in a TikTok. You know it would be difficult to protect your small town of America from a festival taking place in Berlin, Germany.

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Aldean claimed there isn't a single video clip that isn't real news footage when responding to the backlash to his song and a statement on Twitter posted Tuesday. Multiple outlets also uncovered that multiple clips featured in the video originated in Canada. The one clip appears to be from the 2010 G20 protest in Toronto, Rolling Stone reported. Stark told Insider she began looking into the protest footage on a hunch.

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After discovering the stocked videos and international protest footage, she felt it was imperative to educate others on what she found, even while dealing with what she called vile comments from Aldine's supporters, including death threats. And she says in her quote, When dealing with controversial political issues like what protesting looks like in America, I think it's really important to make sure that we are consuming truthful, accurate information.

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It's consuming misinformation which has the ability to instill fear and paranoia that leads to situations where young people are going to protests in towns they don't live in armed with rifles they're too young to own to protect property they have no relation to and that fear can push people to do impulsive, irrational, and dangerous things.

31:30
Pro-gun ultra-nationalist anthem and accompanying video garnered criticism online after people pointed out that it was filmed at a courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee where a black man named Henry Choate was lynched in 1927. Gun control advocates and scholars of racial violence say the video contains promotions of violence, racist undertones, and references to sundown towns. I will link this whole article in the show notes, you guys can read the rest. But there you have it.

32:00
Everything they say is what I was gonna tell you. That's exactly what this video and that's exactly what this song actually is promoting. He's got all kinds of stuff in there. If you really wanna look at it, if you really wanna believe it, the first thing you gotta look at is the people that he's surrounding himself with. She just told you that she got vile comments and death threats. Why are we threatening death? Now you saying that your song is anti-violence, we just talking about protecting small towns, but you ain't doing anything to tell your crowd to knock that off.

32:29
I'll give you proof of that here in a minute. Now when it comes to his lyrics, I think I mentioned at the beginning that the one thing I'm getting irritated about is that people get behind a microphone and they do absolutely no research, especially black people. Now there's a lot of black people that come on and say, oh, there ain't nothing racist about this song. There ain't nothing racist about it. I don't know what's going on. But then these same YouTubers and black people sit here going, I don't see what the problem is. I don't see what's wrong with this video.

32:58
And you're staring at the courthouse. If you take five minutes and do some research, you can answer your own question. As a matter of fact, as a YouTuber, as a podcast host, that's what I'm supposed to do. That's what they're supposed to do. I'm supposed to research these things. So I'm not looking at you. The order is going, uh, I don't see it, bros. Can y'all point it out to me? What's going on?

33:25
Why listen to my show if I'm not gonna come prepared to give you informed information so that you can make the most accurate decision for yourself? But go look at some of these YouTube reactions. You have mix, you have the white people that are Republicans is like, oh, this is exactly what we need to hear. Preach it, preach it, preach it. And you have black people that say, I don't see where race is at. And you have the other side that's like, that's white and black going, there's all kinds of problems with this song.

33:54
we need to remove it. This is why CMT removed this video from their platform was because of what that courthouse represents. If you do further research into the Maury County courthouse in Tennessee, you would also find that there was a race right there in 1946. So when they come back and say, well, we don't know, we can't say that Mr. Aldean didn't know, man, look, anybody can know.

34:22
Sure, maybe you didn't know about Henry Choate. Maybe you didn't know about 1927, but guess what? Just to prove my point, this is what I did. I went and typed in 1927 lynching and guess what the first thing came up? Henry Choate and Maury County Courthouse in Tennessee. First thing. I went and typed in what else happened at the Maury County Courthouse in Tennessee in the 1946 race riot came up. So you don't have to do much.

34:51
to find this stuff out. Now let me clarify this, cause a lot, some of these people on here are saying, well, you know, I'm from the South and good old boys is not a bad term. We're gonna discuss that in a minute, but I bring it up because I am from the South. My birth certificate proved you that I'm from the South. I was born in Ware County, which is Waycross, Georgia, which is why I'm gonna call BS because he's saying that he grew up in a small town.

35:21
Jason Aldean is from Macon. Macon, Georgia is about two hours and 40 minutes, give or take, from where I was born and where I'm from, Waycross. It came south to about 155 miles or so. I can even tell you how to get there. If you wanna go down US 23 North, head over to the Georgia 19 North and you take the I-16 West, that's gonna take you out of Macon right into Waycross, which they do call the Deep South. There is at least a population in Macon of 150,000 people.

35:50
Sorry, maybe to you it is, to me, that is not what I consider to be a small town. Which again, points back to his tweet, that that is BS. He's like, he just wanted to convey what it was a small town he grew up in. All right, I didn't look up the census from when he was born, you know, so maybe it was a small town back in the 70s. But it is not a small town. Now, when it comes to his lyrics,

36:20
Regardless of what some of these people telling you, oh, good old boys is not a bad term. Yeah, it is. Just look at what he says. It's a threat. Got a gun that my granddad gave me. They say one day they gonna round up. What is the meaning behind one day they're gonna round up? Now we can take that one or two ways. I've heard two different explanations. We can take it that he's saying, hey, with all these gun laws that's coming down, one day,

36:48
they're gonna come around and they're gonna try to round up all our guns and take them away. That could be one explanation. The second explanation I heard was what I'm thinking, that they're saying that black people, BLM, black protesters, black advocates, is gonna round up one day. Cause he comes back and says, well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck. So you're trying to say wait.

37:15
The black people is going to round up. They're going to revolt. We're going to have all these people. I got my granddaddy's gun. I'm just going to start shooting people because why would he be saying they're going to round up and take his guns? What you going to do, fight the whole entire government at that point? No, that ain't what he's saying. He's saying, hey man, look, I got a gun. You come down here, it's going to be it. Then he says, full of good old boys raised up right. You got to look in between that line. Good old boys raised up right.

37:45
Now I heard a YouTube who's black go, I'm from the South. He says, good old boys is just a greeting. They just walk around and they just say, what's up good old boys? Okay, you can believe that if you want to. There is full racism behind that term. It always has been in the South. Good old boys separates the racist. It separates the white guys from the black guys.

38:11
It's saying we good old boys, we was raised up right. It's always been misconstrued that black people was raised to be thuggers and robbers and drug addicts and going to jail for things. I take great offense to that. My mind raised it by herself. I think I turned out pretty good. He's telling you right there what he thinks about people that's not raised up right. Now you can have an argument that he's saying people in the city. That ain't what he's talking about. If you're looking for a fight.

38:40
Now you're inviting people to come to your small town. And I can tell you and tell Mr. Aldean, that's very dangerous. You're right, black people is getting tired of things. Black people is getting tired of being treated like second class citizens. We're getting tired of every time we turn on the news, somebody else has been killed that is our skin tone for no reason. We're getting tired of witnessing things.

39:07
year after year like the George Floyd murder. And I will go to my grave saying the same thing over and over again of the only reason why George Floyd's murder mattered to people that is not black is because you were forced to sit down in front of your TV during a pandemic where you were locked in the house and you was forced to watch that in syndication over and over and over again till you could not deny what you saw happening on that ground.

39:36
I've been asked all the time what I think the differences is between a George Floyd murder or Tamir Rice or Cameron Tillman or Von Derrick Myers. And I've said the same thing is because those were done in the dark. Those were done when nobody else saw them. This was done in broad daylight in the middle of the day. So no matter what color you are, if you are human, you have to care. You have to say no more. You have to say that's the end. But now you're inviting people to come to your small town.

40:06
That doesn't always end well. Do you think that black people don't got guns too? If the people that you're calling out is supposed to be thugs and you know, thuggish protesters, and we gonna rob people and we gonna beat up old ladies and rob liquor stores, do you think it's a good idea to make those people mad and say, won't you just come on down here and try that in a small town and see how far you get down the road? That's happened up here in California a few years ago. Big mess happened, believe at the Capitol.

40:37
So I can't remember what was going on, but something was happening and it turned into a racial thing. And the Ku Klux Klan was stupid enough to actually pose, we gonna be down here at this time. If you guys wanna come on down here, head on down. What do you think happened? Black Panthers showed up, other black people showed up, things got hairy, all the S hit the fan and we had a war going on.

41:06
And out of that, there was a Ku Klux Klan member that had gotten, I think he got stabbed real bad and a guy pulled him and saved his life. And the guy looked at him and said, how does it feel that your life was saved by a Jewish man? I'll always remember that story. So it's dangerous to be sitting here on a microphone singing a song, Tom Balsam, come on down, give us a shot. You're antagonizing people now. That's the problem with his lyrics.

41:36
because of that. Because you can see if you really want to what he's saying between the lines. Now, if you won't further proof of that, Jason Aldean isn't doing himself no favors either. Okay, if you ever watch Dr. Phil, you will always recall him saying that his daddy used to always tell him, there's never a bad time to shut the hell up. Well,

42:06
that what Jason Aldean needs to do. But he's not, so he's stoking the fire. Recently, at a concert that he threw in Cincinnati, it was time for Try That in a Small Town. And he started making statements about how country music fans saw through the BS, and that they weren't gonna stand for it, and that he's an American patriot, and that he cares about America.

42:35
and that he's gonna defend America and his family at all costs. Read between those lines. This is now the perfect time for Jay Zardino to say, hey guys, look, thank you for supporting my song. I know you read the tweets. I know you've seen the news articles. I know you've seen CMT pull up my video. Let me be the first one to tell you that I really did not know the history of that courthouse. That's my fault.

43:05
As the artist of the song, maybe I should have did a little research and found out what happened down there. I did not do that. But I want y'all to know that this song has nothing to do with race. Black people, white people, Mexican people, Asian people, all people is free to join in on what I'm saying. I'm just talking about protecting what we love, which is life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. You can't do that though.

43:34
He's got to keep up this facade because now if he goes back tomorrow and says, this song was never meant to be racist. I'm sorry if you took it that way. Well, now he loses his fan base because now he's weak. How do I know that? Go read the comments under his tweet. Go look at the crowds he's singing to look at the message that he's spilling. And they're keep saying, yeah, that's right. Jason, don't say I'm sorry. Don't apologize. Don't do this. I don't have to apologize.

44:05
If what he says is really true about what try this in a small town means, he has nothing to apologize for. The only thing he needs to clear up is that he was not targeting anyone who was not white. But I've read you two articles written by white people that's telling you, this is exactly what he was doing. And if you look further into his lyrics, you know, he's talking about burning the flag, that because of a DC riot that took place on July 4th, way back in 2020.

44:34
Black Lives Matter activists burning flags. Don't agree with that. And let me be the first one to tell you, I don't agree with Black Lives Matter either. Then they're one of the biggest criminal organizations that walk the earth. I think that they're doing more to divide the races than they're supposed to be to put them together. You even got people like Trayvon Martin's parents that's like saying, hey, BLM didn't even do what they was supposed to do with the money they was given to help us when Trayvon was killed. So I don't support Black Lives Matter.

45:00
I'm gonna tell you guys again, because you hear a black person say Black Lives Matter doesn't mean the group. They stole that acronym and that name from a little girl that created it. I think back when Trayvon Martin was killed, she tweeted that out. Hashtag Black Lives Matter. They took it and ran with it. There you go. But his lyrics says it all. He's not apologizing for it. He won't apologize for it. Again, like I said, he don't have to apologize. Let me rephrase that. He's not clearing it up.

45:31
He's not saying this is not what it's supposed to be. And the sad thing about this whole thing is too, on top of that is he mentioned Route 91 in his tweet. I would have left Route 91 out because that's another controversy that Jason Aldean found himself in. Route 91 was the Vegas shooting that took place back in 2017. Jason Aldean, I believe it was the beginning of the show. And if it was, then that means that Jason Aldean was the first artist to perform that night.

46:00
He came out to the stage, tipped his hat, began to sing. Shots rung out. Now, if you look at the video of Rock 91, it took him a few seconds because, you know, he has earpieces in his ears, you know, trying to hear the music and all that good stuff from the crowd, so it probably took him a few minutes to register, hey, this ain't what's supposed to be coming through my earpieces, but when he did, he didn't say nothing, he just see ya. He didn't say boo, he didn't say duck, he didn't say get down.

46:29
He didn't say, hey man, somebody sounds like somebody shooting duck, he just ran. Now if you look at the people, the crowd sitting there looking out going, why did Jason Aldean went off stage and then they start hearing people get shot and they fall to the ground. I'm not saying he shouldn't have ran to protect himself, but you got a microphone that's very loud. If it was me, I'd have been like, they shooting, peace. Or I'd have said something like, get down, I'm out. So if you just say something, they shooting, get down.

46:59
duck and then you see me run, you're gonna start ducking. Because like, oh, he on the stage, must've seen something we don't see coming. He didn't do any of that. I don't see how anybody can't see what he's trying to say in this song. And it saddens me because the fact that we still living in these times. There is country artists that are black that's backing him up. You've got the white artists that's country that's backing him up. That's to be understood with that because a lot of them share the same political opinions.

47:29
This has me worried because of the fact that now we can't even walk the earth anymore without having these kinds of songs being written. That's threatening our livelihood. He's from one of the most racist States in the union. As far as I'm concerned, I can say that because I'm from there. That's that's Georgia. Forget what you see when you go to Atlanta. When, when you pull those curtains back and you take yourself into the deep South, which is where Macon and where Waycross is, you start to see a difference.

47:58
I haven't even taken my wife back to my hometown at this point because people was afraid of what might happen in Waycross. If they see this white girl with this black guy, it is 20, 23. So putting out songs like this don't help. Funny thing is this though, the same people.

48:23
The same black folks that's sitting here saying that Jason Aldean's song is not racist. When I've given you, I believe, a couple of articles of my personal opinion of telling you why I believe that it is at least an innuendo. He is right. He did not mention race, but he did it an innuendo. It's the same thing if I went and wrote a song and I say, hey.

48:49
Anybody comes to my town that's lighter than me, I'ma slam you in a tree. Now, I didn't say white people, did I? I didn't say no race. I said, if you lighter than me, people is gonna say, oh, he's threatening white people. There is such thing as light skinned blacks. There's Asian people that's lighter than me. There's Mexican people that I know that I'm friends with that look white. But that's not what you gonna think.

49:17
because the color of my skin, you're automatically gonna say, he threatened the white people. So in Innuendo, the song is racist. And even if you're not trying for that to happen, that's exactly what happened. You're not clearing it up. But as I was saying, the same black people that's on Jason Aldean's bandwagon saying it's not a racist song when the Innuendo is all running through it. They don't have time to do the research to find out why CMT pulled the video because of the

49:47
racial stuff that happened at that courthouse is the same black people that wanted to hang Brad Paisley and LL Cool J outside on a train. Let me explain. I told you that at the end of this, I will tell you another song that's about race, but it's a whole lot different than this song.

50:17
and the message that they're trying to convey was clear. This is that song. In 2013, Brad Paisley wrote a song with LL Cool J called Accidental Races. And there's a long story behind that, so if I can find it back on YouTube again, I'll post it because he actually tells you that LL Cool J, I believe, was visiting somewhere and they went somewhere on the town, and Brad Paisley had already started writing the song.

50:46
He told LL Cool J the idea behind the song what he wanted to convey and LL said, man, we need this kind of song. So he decided to write it with Brad. They sat down and they coined these lyrics. I'm gonna read you the lyrics and then I'm gonna tell you the one lyric. There's only one lyric in this song that made people lose their mind. Oh, and LL Cool J was everything but a child of God when it was over. So let me read you the song.

51:15
called Accidental Racist. Says, to the man that waited on me at the Starbucks down on Main, I hope you understand when I put on that t-shirt, the only thing I meant to say is I'm a Skittered fan. The red flag on my chest somehow was like the elephant in the corner of the South, and I just walked him right in the room. Just a proud rebel son with an old can of worms looking like I got a lot to learn, but from my point of view.

51:45
I'm just a white man coming to you from the Southland trying to understand what it's like not to be. I'm proud of where I'm from but not everything we've done and it ain't like you and me can rewrite history. Our generation didn't start this nation. We're still picking up the pieces, walking on eggshells, fighting over yesterday, and caught between Southern pride and Southern blame.

52:14
They called it reconstruction. Fix the buildings, dry some tears. We're still sitting through the rubble after 150 years. I try to put myself in your shoes and that's a good place to begin, but it ain't like I can walk a mile in someone else's skin because I'm a white man living in the Southland. Just like you, I'm more than what you see. I'm proud of where I'm from, but not everything we've done. And it ain't like you and me can rewrite history.

52:44
Our generation didn't start this nation and we're still paying for the mistakes that a bunch of folks made long before we came and caught somewhere between Southern pride and Southern blame. Dear Mr. White Man, I wish you understand what the world is really like when you're living in the hood. Just because my pants are sagging doesn't mean I'm up to no good. You should try to get to know me.

53:13
I really wish you would. Now my chains are gold but I'm still misunderstood. I wasn't there when Sherman's march turned the south into firewood. I want you to get paid but be a slave I never could. Feel like a new fangled django dodging invisible white hoods to when I see that white cowboy hat, I'm thinking it's not all good. I guess we're both guilty of judging the cover not the book.

53:41
I love to buy you a beer, conversate, and clear the air, but I see that red flag and I think you wish I wasn't here. I'm just a white man, if you don't judge my do-rag. Coming to you from the Southland, I won't judge your red flag. Trying to understand what it's like not to be. I'm proud of where I'm from, if you don't judge my gold chains, but not everything we've done.

54:10
I'll forget the iron chains. It ain't like you and me can rewrite history. Can't rewrite history baby. Oh Dixieland, the relationship between the Mason Dixon needs some fixing. I hope you understand what this is all about. Quite frankly I'm a black Yankee but I've been thinking about this lately. I'm a son of the New South. The past is the past. You feel me? And I just want to make things right.

54:40
Let bygones be bygones, where all that's left is southern pride. R.I.P. Robert E. Lee, but I've gotta thank Abraham Lincoln for freeing me. Know what I mean? It's real. It's truth." That song was very intentional. Exactly where L.O. Cool J and Brad Pace wanted to say it, they said it. It was a white man that was having a conversation with a black barista who he felt like he was offended by his shirt. That had-

55:09
a Confederate flag on it, it was a Leonard Skinner shirt. But he won't have a conversation with the black guy to try to put some of the past behind so that we as people can get together and try to live this up. Black people lost their mind for one line. And after doing research into this again, I think there's maybe two other lines that they probably have problems with and I can explain those. So the line that

55:38
Black people have problems with from the interim was when LL said, if you don't judge my gold chains, I'll forget the iron chains. Man, they went on local news, they went in Twitter, they went everywhere they could, wherever they could be heard and said that LL Cool J was undermining slavery. That he was saying that if him and this one white dude

56:06
can have common ground that pretty much LL Cool J would run around and denounce slavery ever happened and he was an Uncle Tom. LL Cool J and Brad Paisley did multiple interviews after this song. They both are very proud of the song, which they should be. And LL Cool J is like, if anything, I'm pro black. I'm never ever gonna undermine what slavery we did. But what we're trying to say is, that's me and a dude from now.

56:38
Brad didn't grow up back then. I wasn't around back then, but we here now. We have to make a way that we can live in harmony as just people in the here and now. What good is it that we keep bringing up because he's white that my ancestors wore chains? Yes, they wore chains. Yes, it was horrible. Yes, they took the beatings for us to be able to come here now and try to reconcile that.

57:08
Nobody wanted to buy that. I think the other line that they probably had problem with when he said RIP Robert E. Lee, but I gotta thank Abraham Lincoln for freeing me. Well, Robert E. Lee, as you guys know, is the Confederate general. Probably one of the most racist dudes of all the earth. But just take a look at the difference and contrast in between those two songs. Brad Paisley and LL Cool J went on tour and they, and it's on both of their albums. I can't remember the album LL Cool J came out with at that time that it's on there.

57:36
But if you go look at it's on Brad Paisley 2013 album, Will House, they both put it on each of their albums. They was performing this at concerts. And they was preaching the message of, we don't all have to keep hating each other. Let's find a way to love each other instead. And I guess Brad Paisley made the joke that yeah, we've or in LL Cool J did too at one point that we've solved racism. That's your differences between those two songs.

58:06
Jason Aldean's trying to hide behind his lyrics. He's trying to bake into this, into this innuendo of what he's saying. Brad Paisley and, oh, who is this telling you to fuck out? Hey man, look, he's black, I'm white. We just want to sit down and have this conversation that we all should. Maybe if we talk about it, we can get over the things that's bugging us. It's just like Daryl Davis. And I'll say this in closing. This is why BLM, for me, I started looking into them and I'm like, man, you guys are not trying to solve any problems.

58:35
You guys just want to keep the problems. I mean, look at what they said when the reelection was coming up. I mean, literally the New York chapter came out and said, if Donald Trump wins, we're going to burn down the city. Literally and figuratively. Now I'm no Donald Trump fan. I'm glad he was out of office. I ain't going to lie about that. I think that race relations got set back a whole few hundred years, as far as I'm concerned, when he took office.

59:03
But I'm not gonna come in like, yeah man, they reelected me. He wins. I'm burning down the city. I mean, they were literally telling you, we gonna riot if this dude wins. Be prepared, lock your children up. You better hide your cars, cause we be blowing stuff up. Well, Darryl Davis came up with a documentary called Accidental Courtesy. And how he came up with it was because he was sitting around one day and he was like, man, you know what?

59:29
Maybe if I tried to get to the heart of white racism and just see if we can have a conversation, maybe we can figure out that no matter what color of skin is, we can talk. His whole quest was to confront racism, one races at a time, but he started with the biggest, most deadliest organization, the Ku Klux Klan and what Darryl come to find out.

59:57
is that maybe they are willing to talk. Now he did something that no other black person, I don't think would have the gall to do. And just to let you know who Dale Davis is real quick, if you don't know who he is, he is a very well accomplished jazz musician. He's a piano player and he's played with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, just to name a few. So he actually called up, if you watch the documentary, you see this, he wanted to get in with the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and have a meeting.

01:00:26
He had his secretary to call the grand wizard and to schedule a meeting. And he said, but don't tell him that I'm black. I just want you to go ahead and set this meeting up. You can go ahead and use my real name. You can use Darrell Davis. Okay. You know, I've met a few white Darrell's in my life, but whatever you do, don't tell them that I'm black. So they said this meeting up. He doesn't tell the grand wizard that he's black. And then all of a sudden the day comes.

01:00:56
Daryl Davis shows up and he says they're sitting in the house and he's sitting at the table waiting for the Grand Wizard to come and the Grand Wizard walks in and he looks at him and he looks, you know, at Daryl and he pretty much is like, I'd expect you to be a black fella. Now let me show you how tension and fear arises. Sure is the Grand Wizard. Yeah, you a black man sitting in the chair. There is armed guards around you with guns.

01:01:26
Nobody's saying anything at this point, but what had happened was in preparation for the meeting, the grand wizard of the KKK had his secretary to go and to prepare some drinks. So she took an ice bucket and she filled it with ice and she put some soda cans in the ice bucket. Well, because they had been sitting on this ice for a long period of time, as you know, the ice starts to melt and the things on top starts to sink.

01:01:56
Well, all of a sudden they're all sitting there. These cans have been sitting here for at least a good 30, 40 minutes, you know, while they're getting cool. And one of the cans drops to the bottom of the bucket and everybody in the room ducks. And Darrell's feeling his chest thinking that maybe he just got shot. And they all get up and start laughing because they realize that it was the soda can and the ice bucket.

01:02:24
that had dropped and he said that broke the ice at that point. He had made a journey of this for, I think a year. He went around talking to everybody that was KKK. He made friends with grand wizards and those is up underneath. He's the only black American to this day that actually owns authentic KKK robes and hoods because during this documentary, he was able to show

01:02:51
some of the Klansmen and some who are higher up and some who are grand wizards, the wrong that racism is and why can't they just get along together without having to be race involved in that? And they denounce being KKK and they turned over their robes to him. On top of that, Daryl Davis is a big old black dude like me and he's married to a little small white woman. So imagine that you got a black dude

01:03:21
at a Ku Klux Klan Grandmaster's house. He actually showed up to a couple of rallies where the Grandmaster's like, you know, you may not like black people, but I love this one. He is the godfather to some of their sons. You guys should go check this out. I think it might be still on Hulu or Netflix. It's called accidental courtesy. It'll blow your mind. But B.O.L.M. ate him up.

01:03:43
In New York, I believe it was, he sat down with the BLM and they just went in on him. They didn't even give him a chance to talk. They were, how are you going to sit there with the enemy? We're trying to eradicate this. How are you going to sit around here with crackers? That's like what they said. And he was like, are you going to let me say anything? He's like, this is the problem. Nope, no, you just an Uncle Tom. He said, you know what? I'm done with this. And he got up and left. And I'm sitting here going, you didn't hear anything he had to say. You swear that he, that you're fighting for the same thing?

01:04:13
He is, but you just sat here and called the white people a racist name. You're not even asking Darryl what his agenda was. You're not asking him what he accomplished. No, because in my opinion, they don't want to eradicate racial issues. They want to say they're protesting for black people. But if you're not doing what you're supposed to do in the midst of some of these black people getting killed and you're sitting here doing things that is

01:04:41
putting us in further danger. Think about that, I can't go down the street and wear a BLM shirt, people is just automatically gonna assume it's gonna start blowing up cars. You're not talking for all of us. So go check that out. Accidental courtesy, Daryl Davis, I support that video, watch it, you'll be blown away, and you too will see that if we just sit down and have a conversation, we too could probably eradicate race. In closing with Jason Aldean.

01:05:10
For one thing I'm going to tell you, I am not asking him to be canceled. You may find that shocking. I've never asked for anybody to be canceled. I think being canceled takes away our constitutional right. If you canceling somebody, it means that you don't value their opinion no matter how good or how bad that it is, and you want that person to go away. Being canceled is stupid. It's dumb. It just means you're trying to shut somebody up because they're not saying something that you like. I'm not asking for Jason to be canceled. I don't think it would do much good anyways.

01:05:40
But I don't want to be canceled. What I wanted to do was to fess up to what he wrote and what is between the lines and what the building was. He stood in front of yes, I will say it till I'm dead. It is a racist song and in you window. If nothing else, he get a good job of covering his butt. I said, say the songwriters did because they didn't make Pacific references. But if you look at that video, the video.

01:06:10
says it all. And again, the two articles I read to you was by white people. And I was not the one that brought up sundown towns. It was in that second article. So what you guys' thoughts and opinions on that? Do you think that this song was racist? Do you think that Jason Aldean meant that? Or do you think like my oldest daughter, who I talked to about this, if I did this show, she says, I think what he was trying to convey was good.

01:06:38
but he did a poor job of doing that. Yes, if you're trying to say things about small towns, I come from one myself, I do know that small towns have to take care of people, but you use words like take care of our own. What does that mean? When you say own, you mean a certain group of people that you protect. I would have said I take care of my whole town or everybody in it. So tell me what you think. If you got an opinion on it, feel free to send me an email at truecriminals office at gmail.com.

01:07:08
If you don't want to type it out, you can always go to my website, truecrimeandauthors.com. On the right hand side, you will see a little box that says, leave a voice message. You can leave me a message in voice, and I will get it if you want to do that.

01:07:26
All right, so coming out soon after you get this one, you will have the end of season one episode. You want to tune into that. I'm going to tell you what's going to happen with the show coming on season two. I'm also going to tell you the date that we'll be back. And I'm going to also reveal the new name of the show as thanking some people and telling you some things are going to come down the pipeline. So you don't want to miss that episode.

01:07:56
Alright guys, I thank you for listening to my opinion on this. Whether you agree with me or whether you don't, I still love all of you guys. That's what this is about. It's about our opinions. And when we sit down and we learn to listen to one another and we agree to disagree and at the end of it, we can still shake hands and hug as brothers and sisters, no matter what race or gender. That's what it's all about. I hope you guys are being good to yourself and being good to each other.

01:08:27
And always remember, always stay humble. An act of kindness can make someone's day. A little love and compassion can go a long way. And this is the podcast where two passions becomes one. I'll catch you guys on the next one. Thank you for listening to True Crime and Authors. Don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe. Join us on social media, on Facebook at True Crime and Authors.

01:08:56
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