This is big machine radio, I am Becca and I am talking to Aaron Lewis today. His new album state
I'm in is finally available. You can stream it download it. You can purchase it at the store
So this next song it is the title track of the album and it is so raw
I mean I listened to it and I felt like you were laying your soul bare in front of
Everybody and I wondered when you write a song like this by yourself
Is it one of the hardest songs to write because it is so vulnerable or is it easier to write because you're simply just
Putting the truth down on paper or in lyrics
Depends on how you feel about it as a songwriter
The hardest songs on you are usually the easiest songs to write because there's so much emotion behind them
Mm-hmm, and it almost writes itself. It just kind of pours out of you as a songwriter
Anyways, I mean, I know that some people would be like, oh, yeah, it just pours out of you
one thing that I've after hundreds of songs and 21 years of doing this with a record label and
Close to 30 years of doing this in my 47 years of life. No 30
Yeah, 30 years Wow
You know high school bands and everything else more than 30 years. I'm supposed to write songs
I really think that this is what I was supposed to do, right?
State I'm in
Was a really easy song to write. Mm-hmm
I think you know not being a songwriter the part that I would feel would be difficult is that I would almost want to censor
myself because it's so personal and
I might try to stop myself from letting the world see that deeply into me
But I mean, I guess that's the the makings of an amazing songwriter
I've shared more in my songs over the years than I've shared in
Personal conversations with my closest friends. Hmm. People just don't know it. Well, I would recommend that they look at the lyrics
They study the lyrics they listen
One of the things that I've always tried to do as a songwriter is
The more perfectly vague I can be in those songs those songs that that I just alluded to that
I've expressed more
And people just didn't know it because one of the things I've always tried to do is be perfectly vague
Mm-hmm
so that
Ten people could listen to that song and at least come up with five
different things out of those ten people that maybe two people might hear it the same way right but
50% each one will be something different that they got from that song
well
and that's what was interesting when I was listening to the album and
Making these questions because I remember when you and I had a conversation about your last album
You are very resistant to doing what is traditionally called a cut-by-cut
Where you tell the story behind the song and what you intended and what it was supposed to mean
Because you didn't want to take that right from your fans to be able to interpret it in their own way
Because I was purposely being vague in those songs and I didn't want to talk about what those songs were about
for real
I've clung very tightly to the if I tell you what the song is about
Then I rob you of your interpretation of what that song was and and it might ruin it for you
You might have thought it was about something completely different and clung to that and related to that so much
Mm-hmm, and then I tell you what it's really about and you're like, ah
Right, but with these songs, there's not much vagueness
It's a different point in my life a different mindset going into it
These songs aren't supposed to be vague. These songs are supposed to be owning it
You do indeed and one other thing I wanted to ask you about state. I'm in
I mean you have two of the most iconic voices out there right now on this song with you
Jamie Johnson and Alison Krauss
Is there sort of a validation?
To have those kinds of artists approve or like so much what you're doing that they want to put their voices on it with you
No, not at all. Okay, I'm kidding
Of course, you know with all of the efforts of invalidation that I seem to
Encounter it means everything to me that greats like George Jones and Charlie Daniels and
Willie Nelson and
Jamie and
Allison and
man, Vince Gill and
Every session guy that's ever recorded with me. Mm-hmm. It's almost the only validation I get
Mmm side for my fans, right?
I sit there going my money's no greener than anybody else's money and I'm paying the same money for these guys to be in here
But they don't have to do it, right? They don't have to do it
They certainly don't have to be excited about it every time it comes around
They don't have to have an absolute blast in the studio with me every time that they do. Mm-hmm, but they're there
They change their schedules around. It's pretty awesome. It is
Well, I want to play this song for people because I mean I just the the heart-wrenchingness of it as I listen to it
And it is the title track from the album accordion. That's an accordion that ran in around where really it's an accordion
I never would have put that in this song or thought that that was this in the song
We were getting clever in the studio. Evidently. I'll have to listen again and see if I can hear that accordion
This is the title track off Aaron Lewis's new album, which we are celebrating today with his album release special
It's state. I'm in on big machine radio