Jason Aldean Shares the “Career Ending” Mistake Some New Artists Make

Jason Aldean doesn’t believe in skipping steps when it comes to a career in country music. On a recent episode of the Try That in a Small Town Podcast, the country singer discussed why he believes many artists struggle to sell tickets to their shows.

The topic came up when Aldean was reflecting on his own rise in the industry.

“I think it was 2009, and we were really starting to make some noise. All of sudden we had ‘She’s Country,’ ‘[Big Green] Tractor,’ and some of those songs,” he recalled. “Everybody was like… ‘It’s about time for you to start really headlining, like, really being a legit headliner.’ I remember going, ‘Man, I don’t know. Damn, I don’t know if I want that pressure.’”

Instead of setting off on his own headlining tour, Aldean “put it off a little longer.”

“It gave us time to get another song out and kind of let that heat that was starting to happen, just let it bubble a little bit more,” he said. “And man, when we finally did go out to do it, it was like, it didn’t take long to realize that’s what happens. You go from clubs, to being an opening act for somebody, to all of the sudden you’re the guy.”

Jason Aldean Offers Advise to Emerging Artists

The whole thing, Aldean said, was “an eye-opening” experience. Now that he’s established in his career, Aldean wants to pass that lesson onto the next generation.

“It’s OK to say no sometimes and go like, ‘Man, I don’t know,’ or ‘I don’t think that’s right for me,’” he said. “Everybody wants to be a headliner, but the problem is a lot of them only have one or two songs. [They] think they can go out and carry an hour and a half or two hours of a show. It’s like ‘Dude, you got two songs people really care about that they want to hear. What are you going to do for the other 80 minutes?’”

Presently, Aldean noted, some artists are finding “that out the hard way.”

“They go on the road and they’re hoping that they sell 15,000 tickets and there’s 6,000 people there, 7,000 people there,” he said. “They’re having to give tickets away to make it look full.”

That mistake, Aldean said, can be a costly one for an artist.

“If you make that jump too early, it can be career ending. It’s happened for big artists,” he said. “… They just made the jump too early instead of taking their time, opening for somebody, building their catalog a little bit, letting some songs come out so they had enough songs to fill up a set list.”

It’s not a problem Aldean is facing anymore. The singer is currently on his Songs About Us Tour. The trek kicked off in July, and is set to take Aldean across the country for the next few months. He’ll wrap up the run on Sept. 26 in Gilford, New Hampshire.

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