Some five years after his headlining show was canceled due to the pandemic, country star Jason Aldean will return to St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center on Sept. 6.
Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday through Ticketmaster. Nate Smith, RaeLynn and Dee Jay Silver are also on the bill.
In the years since his 2005 debut single “Hicktown,” Aldean has maintained a steady presence on country radio with a series of chart-toppers that include “She’s Country,” “Big Green Tractor,” “Dirt Road Anthem,” “Burnin’ it Down,” “You Make it Easy,” “Got What I Got” and “If I Didn’t Love You.”
“Try That in a Small Town,” the first single from his 11th album “Highway Desperado,” was released in May 2023 and didn’t get much traction until the video came out that July. The song’s lyrics contrast rural and urban lifestyles and suggest that crime is rampant in cities and that anyone who would “try that in a small town” will “see how far you make it down the road” with a later line referencing a “gun that my granddad gave me.”
For the video, Aldean’s team filmed his band performing outside a Tennessee courthouse where a lynching took place in 1927 interspersed with news footage of rallies, looting and riots. CMT pulled it from rotation after four days, a move that thrust the song into the national conversation about crime, gun violence and gun ownership.
Aldean — who grew up in Macon, the fourth-largest city in Georgia — has made the song the centerpiece of his concerts. The controversy helped “Try That in a Small Town” hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, a first for Aldean, and earn the biggest sales week for a country song in more than a decade.
He was scheduled to play the X on March 14, 2020, but the show was ultimately canceled during the COVID shutdown. He has since played We Fest in 2022, Treasure Island Casino in 2023 and the Winstock Country Music Festival last summer.
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