Review: Jason Aldean's 'Small Town' controversy fuels an overheated Treasure Island concert

He held off on playing it for over 30 minutes. However, Jason Aldean could not wait to talk about the most talked-about song of summer on Saturday night.

"It's been a long month with a lot going on," the brawny Georgia country singer rather cryptically noted near the start of his sold-out concert at Treasure Island Casino Amphitheater near Red Wing. He did not yet mention the song that's sparked so much controversy, though.

"I feel like there are a lot of people here that feel the way I do," he added, but again did not name those feelings.

The song in question is "Try That in a Small Town," and the feelings it invokes are outrage and fear over carjackings, robberies and anti-police protests across America. After listing off those big-city woes — and dropping in a line about "a gun [his] granddaddy gave [him]" — Aldean sings in the refrain, "Try that in a small town / See how far you make it down the road."

Saturday's concert was proof of how far Aldean, 46, is taking the controversy over the tune, which grew even more contentious in July after the release of a music video filmed at a Tennessee courthouse where a Black teenager was lynched in 1927.

T-shirts with the song's title emblazoned on them were everywhere you looked in the crowd of 16,000 sweaty fans, mingling with lots of other large-lettered shirt slogans such as, "Redneck lives matter," and, "[Bleep] your feelings."

When he did get around to singing "Try That in a Small Town" later in the 95-minute performance — too early, actually, since people conspicuously started filing out well before show's end — Aldean offered up a 2½-minute speech to set it up.

"It's crazy: You put a song that just talks about how tired you are of all the [expletive], and everybody freakin' freaks out," he said to cheers. "You guys should know here better than anybody."

"To me, the song really showed what's going on in our country right now, which is just a bunch of —" he continued, using an expletive. "I love small town values. I love when people take care of each other, have each other's back"

The song itself didn't last much longer than the speech, and it had a drab lack of melody and a sluggish tempo compared with a lot of other tunes in the set. The 16,000 fans sang along loudly to the chorus, though. When it ended, they broke into a "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" chant.

Clearly, Aldean was right about there being a lot of people there who feel the way he feels — although, like most of the songs he performed Saturday, he did not actually have a hand in the writing of "Try That in a Small Town." So it's hard to say exactly what he feels.

He likes songs about towns, that's for certain. In addition to "Try That in Small Town," other titles in Saturday's 22-song set list included "Hicktown," "Rearview Town" and "Tattoos on This Town." Also, both "Dirt Road Anthem" and "Fly Over States" overtly paid homage to small-town life.

He likes tequila, too. He made that clear as he took a shot near the end of the show before "My Kinda Party." He also asked who in the crowd likes to drink the agave liquor as a setup to "That's What Tequila Does." No kidding: Right when he asked that, a venue staffer was finishing a 10-minute cleanup job on a large puddle of alcohol-pungent vomit in the row behind us.

Aldean likes to rock, too — although, he noted, "I think new rock sucks. I'm more [about] old stuff like AC/DC."

A lot of his set sounded more like Staind or Whitesnake than Garth or Waylon (or Angus), with lead guitarist Kurt Allison dropping in enough scorching solos to earn a Gibson endorsement. Aldean made a point of saving the hardest-rocking numbers for the end, including (rather ironically) the finale titled "She's Country."

By then, the audience members who hadn't already left seemed worn out, no doubt from Saturday's sweltering, humid conditions — so bad that even Aldean commented, "I feel like I'm in Georgia."

Thus, things never really got more heated in the concert than during the hotheaded anthem Aldean played earlier. It didn't help that the venue lacked water sources besides plastic bottles at long-lined concession booths. Try that in a small town, Treasure Island!