Homebody's Lament
These are the things that Aaron Lewis would like you to know
he loves most, in order:
His children
His wife
His home
His hometown
Massachusetts
His Granddaddy’s gun
Hunting
America
Hanging out with his wife and kids, at home,
in Massachusetts,
hunting, preferably with a gun of some kind.
It’s a pretty nice, old-fashioned list. It is not the list,
one might think, of a rocker who spends a great deal of time playing music out
on the road.
This is the crux of Aaron Lewis’s creative output as a bona
fide country singer: he’s a conservative homebody who resents anything that
takes him away from the things he loves — including music, which is what he
does for a living. It seems that he might therefore be a bit morose, but his
music doesn’t come across that way; though filled with songs about regret, they
are nonetheless upbeat and celebratory, even as they bemoan large chunks of life that
are missed.
His latest album, The
Road, is a collection of songs that sound like country songs, not least
because they feature steel guitar and instrumentation that one hears in more
traditional Nashville offerings. It’s a challenge to anyone who might still
hold the idea that rock singers can’t be country acts — something that the new
crop of young Turks makes clear is woefully out of date. You’re more likely to
hear heavy guitar riffs on the country charts than anywhere else these days.
And yet Lewis doesn’t shred up the studio on his records; it’s his songwriting
and most of all his voice that carries the day.
The album consists of ten tracks, none of which are fillers.
If you want twang, you have “75” and “Party In Hell,” which give the album a
solid country base. And if you want radio-ready hits, there’s the single
“Forever,” and “Granddaddy’s Gun.”
The deluxe version (which The Inky Jukebox highly recommends) offers five additional bonus tracks, all live versions of his best songs, and a surprising but profoundly competent cover of Rascal Flatts’ “What Hurts the Most,” proving that a song’s a song’s a song.
The deluxe version (which The Inky Jukebox highly recommends) offers five additional bonus tracks, all live versions of his best songs, and a surprising but profoundly competent cover of Rascal Flatts’ “What Hurts the Most,” proving that a song’s a song’s a song.
Go to 3:40
Lewis’s previous EP, Town
Line, was fleshed out with multiple versions of the hit “Country Boy,” the
best of which was always and clearly the one with George Jones playing the part
of the Devil, accompanied by Charlie Daniels on fiddle. How can you go wrong?
But the real gems on that short record were the four songs which never made it
onto the radio, ballads with real heart and soul and melody.
The Inky Jukebox would love for him to come to town and play, but would feel awfully guilty for dragging him away from the things he loves to do so. If you like country music, you’ll like this new record. You should buy it now.
” I had to stop what I was doing and listen, all the way through. What I heard was a voice like syrup singing slow and deep so that it seeped into every pore. It is a voice made to deliver that kind of hard-as-nails country usually reserved for sexy patriotic songs—you know the kind, the ones that want to seduce you to go party in the woods with a truck, a fifth and a gun. 
and 
in that way. It’s the delivery of a point of view made softer with a guitar that flirts with you rather than knocks you out. It also reminds me of the best of 
, who can be inconsistent when it comes to marrying melody with lyrics. I might cause all kinds of trouble by saying his voice reminds me of 
too, but hey, Hootie still sounds great. Tell me I’m wrong, I dare you. Come to think of it, I hear echoes of Bon Jovi too, "
." 
song they ever did, by the way.