Jason Aldean Fired Employees Who Were 'Badmouthing' Him

Jason Aldean says that some of the people working in his touring crew were pretty vocal about their negative feelings over his song "Try That in a Small Town."

Those people aren't on his payroll anymore.

"They no longer work for us," the singer said drily during a guest appearance on the Try That in a Small Town podcast episode on Monday (July 27.)

Hosts Kurt Allison, Kelley Lovelace, Neil Thrasher and Tully Kennedy — all of whom co-wrote "Try That in a Small Town," and some of whom are also in the singer's touring band — also shared their memories of what it was like touring with co-workers of differing opinions during a politically divisive moment. And guest Jake LaGrone, who's Aldean's longtime tour manager, weighed in, too.

Did Jason Aldean Fire Employees For "Badmouthing" His Song + Political Views?

Nobody in the podcast explicitly said that those employees were fired, but it's pretty heavily implied.

The singer didn't name names about who left the crew, nor did he say exactly what happened that caused a problem. All the men weighing in on the topic said the employees' behavior went beyond simply disagreeing with the song's message.

Aldean laid it out like this:

"Here's my issue. When you're riding around on a tour bus that I'm paying for for you, and I'm feeding you three meals a day every day, and a paycheck to pay your rent or whatever it is," he explains, "and you're out there on those buses, in our catering, and you're badmouthing me and our crew? You gotta go. You gotta go."

Bassist Tully Kennedy added that working in such a divided crew could make for "a really bad disconnect between artist and band and working crew, and then within the crew."

"Now I can't wait to get in the venue because everything's firing, everyone's one unit," he adds. "But a couple bad seeds..."

Why Was Jason Aldean's "Try That in a Small Town" So Divisive?

Jason Aldean released "Try That in a Small Town" in 2023, and it wasn't just divisive internally: The song was polarizing to a larger country audience, too.

The song drew massive blowback once Aldean released the music video, large parts of which were shot against Tennessee's Maury County Courthouse — the site of a fatal 1927 lynching.
Listeners railed against what they heard as racist dogwhistling, praise for sundown towns and glorification of gun-based vigilante justice.
CMT pulled the "Try That in a Small Town" video from its rotation in response to the outcry.
Aldean shared a statement calling those accusations "meritless" and "dangerous."

Fueled partially by the conversation around the song's message, "Try That in a Small Town" became not only a No. 1 country hit but also Aldean's first chart-topper on the Billboard Hot 100.