Jason Aldean pulled off a difficult trick with his new single, “Don’t Tell on Me.”
On one hand, it’s a return to his past, arguably grabbing a harder rock stance than he’s taken on a single in more than a decade. On the other hand, it’s a new version of rock influence. Where he applied AC/DC-inspired chords in 2008’s “She’s Country,” the guitars in “Don’t Tell on Me” owe more to Foo Fighters.
“Country music is almost kind of the new rock ‘n’ roll,” Aldean says. “We’ve, I feel like, always been a little bit on the on the forefront of that — sort of pushing the genre a little bit.”
The latest iteration of that sound is driven in part by his band. Bassist Tully Kennedy and guitarist Kurt Allison have been with Aldean since before he reached the national spotlight, and they’ve become key sources for new material, too, co-writing a large percentage of his albums since the onset of COVID. They penned “Don’t Tell on Me” with Aldean in mind, crafting it to his voice, but gearing it to themselves at the same time; they were writing something they would want to perform on stage.
“We’ve been playing music together for almost 30 years at this point,” Aldean says. “They’ve done everything I’ve ever done. They’ve played on every record, they’ve played every show I’ve ever played. And so, nobody knows me better than those guys.”
Kennedy brought the title and basic premise for “Don’t Tell on Me” to BMG Music in Nashville for a writing session with Allison, John Morgan and Lydia Vaughan (“Bar None,” “If I Didn’t Love You”). The song would, in essence, personify the heart — giving it the ability to participate in the singer’s attempt at deception.
“When you’re going through something, the only thing that really knows the truth is your heart,” Kennedy says. “So you try to put up a front to people – you know, your friends – and really, it can be kind of a charade when it’s all said and done. So [it’s] writing something about that, where it’s just the heart not tipping your hand.”
Kennedy didn’t exactly tip his own hand to start the day. Instead, he put the onus on Allison to set a direction.
“He’ll usually come in with a title,” Allison notes. “He won’t tell me the title. He says, like, ‘Hey, what kind of tracks do you have for the day?’ And me never really knowing what he’s got in the back of his head, I’m kind of wondering what I should play him. When I played a version of the song as a track idea, he was like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s it. We’ve got to write to this.’ And then he told me the title.”
While it was a rocker, geared for a guy to sing, Vaughan wasn’t in the least bit out of place in the room.
“She was kind of an emo chick back in the day,” Morgan says. “She’s got that kind of rock edge that she can pull out and put that hat on.”
Allison’s track started with the Foo-like guitar stabs at the beginning, and they took it from there, knowing the payoff line that would arrive at the end of the chorus. The verses were pensive, restrained, using a dark, 3 Doors Down-like melody to introduce the singer’s efforts at keeping his pain a secret.
The chorus broke into a higher melody and an anthemic vibe, ideal for playing with driving abandon. With each passing stanza, the level of despair increased, reaching its peak at the bridge, where the phrasing changed to elongated lines that acknowledged the stress the man is putting on his heart.
“The bridge, to me, is just that part of desperation where it’s just like the final straw,” Morgan says. “You’re like, ‘Please, I gotta count on you.’ It’s a stick-to-your-guns kind of thing, and so it just kind of doubled down on what the hook idea is.”
Before the write was over, they repurposed that bridge, making it a counter-melody for the closing vocal vamp as they assembled the demo with Morgan on vocals, Kennedy on bass and Allison playing the rest of the instruments as he produced it. They had, they believed, all the songs lined up for Aldean’s next album – Songs About Us, due April 24 – but the writers reached out, just to let him know they had something that he might want to record early to get a head start on the next album. Aldean was impressed when he heard it.
“The guitar stabs and stuff off the top, it’s just like, ‘Okay, this is a little more rock ‘n’ roll,’” he says. “Kind of gets your attention off the top.”
Aldean determined “Don’t Tell on Me” needed to go on Songs About Us and to join “How Far Does a Goodbye Go” as one of the first two singles. They recorded it with producer Michael Knox (Montgomery Gentry, Trace Adkins) at Treasure Isle, a studio in Nashville’s Berry Hill section that counts Peter Coleman (The Knack, Pat Benatar) among its primary engineers.
“We wanted to make it sound very authentic and very rock,” Knox says. “We hadn’t did that in a while. We were in drum-loop world for a while on some of our singles, and Jason’s like, ‘I need a single just to kick their teeth in.’ And this was the song.”
They cut the bulk of the instrumental track on the third take, with only a few overdubs – particularly Allison’s short, buzzy guitar solo – after the fact. He also embedded a backing guitar part in the opening verse that approximated Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” an other-worldly, off-kilter sound that was achieved in that era by using a rotary Leslie amp.
“I’m a huge fan of those ‘90s rock bands,” Allison says. “Fuel used to use that kind of sound a lot, too. And I’ve always kind of been a Leslie-sound fan. It’s hard to use it [in country] and, I think, have it be appropriate and work.”
The track felt haunting and raw, conveying the muscular grit that’s typically part of Aldean’s sound. “I don’t get caught up in perfection,” Knox says. “That’s just not what we do. We’re trailer-park dirt, rock ‘n’ roll country, baby. That’s what we do.”
Aldean sang the final vocals for “Don’t Tell on Me” six times, giving Knox plenty of takes to use in compiling the final performance. And he threw in a series of shadowy counter-melodies and other extra lines – including a distant-sounding vocal part in the intro – that represented another change in the current iteration of Aldean from his original sound.
“We did a lot more ad-libbing-type stuff than I ever did on some of the early records,” Aldean says. “It’s a little bit of a different strategy than we’ve had before. I’ll go in and sing some stuff that doesn’t work. And we’re like, ‘Let’s go again.’ And we’ll keep messing around until we figure out things that work for the song.”
“How Far Does a Goodbye Go” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated Feb. 21, and Broken Bow released “Don’t Tell on Me” to country radio via PlayMPE on Feb. 26. It debuted at No. 21 on Country Airplay and rests at No. 32 in its second week on the list dated March 21.
Outside of an acoustic performance, the band hasn’t played it live yet, but they plan to debut it in its full rockin’ glory when they return to the road April 10 in New Orleans. “It’s gonna be really, really fun to play,” Kennedy predicts. “That was the whole point: Give us something aggressive that we’re gonna feel cool playing.”
It fits the veneer that Aldean projects: hardened on the surface, though there’s a vulnerability underneath that allows him to inhabit the emotion in a song, even when that means there’s desperation in the lyrics.
“We want to be tough guys,” he says. “We don’t want to let anybody know that they got the best of us, or that we’re sad, or that we’re heartbroken or anything. But in reality, it’s the case. I think that that’s something people can relate to.”
