CRESCENT People: Aaron Tippin (Part 1)

You’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.

It’s great advice to get and to give, and for South Carolina’s Aaron Tippin, it put him on the highway to country music super stardom.

With nine studio albums (five gold and one platinum), Aaron has had over 30 singles on the Billboard chart including 3 number ones and a string of top tens.

Traveling the world performing for American troops overseas, signing at venues across the country, and still recording music that resonates with country music audiences, Aaron is continues earning his “Working Man’s Ph.D.”

On a recent tour stop in the Palmetto State, Aaron closed his MacBook and sat down with CRESCENT to talk about coming home, the rebirth of country, and how the industry has changed. 

AARON COMES HOME

I’m glad to be back home. Even though most folks may not know, I wasn’t born in South Carolina.  I was actually raised here, and if anybody asks me where I’m from, I always say South Carolina.

The way I talk, the raisin’ I had definitely came from here.  In that regard, I consider myself a South Carolinian, enough to where I’m wearing this tattoo which is the South Carolina state flag, so, to me, that makes me a South Carolinian.

My daughter still lives here (Blue Ridge/Travelers Rest), Charlotte.  Matter of fact, I’m a brand new Pawpaw.

There’s been a lot of excitement in our family.  She’s the only one left up there, though.  My Mom is gone. Both my sisters, one of them lives down south in Greenville.  The other one lives in Florida.  And Dad’s gone.  He lived his last years in North Carolina.  She’s the only one left where I grew up.

VISITING THE OLD HOME PLACE

Oh, man. It breaks my heart to go back and see my home place.  That’s the farm, where I grew up and I look up there, and that’s my home.  Somebody else is living in it.  It’s always tough for me to drive by and look up on that hill.  I love to go travel the community where I grew up.  I took my boys through there several times and say, “That’s the creek I used to swim in, right down there.  We had us a swimming hole, we dammed it up.”  All kind of things I’d tell them I did when I was growing up.  It’s changed quite a bit.  Lots of development out there where I grew up on Jug Factory Road.  Boy, now, there’s houses lined up and down it.  Used to be nothing but woods.  Boy, me and a dog and a .410 shotgun.

THE EARLY 90s: A REBIRTH OF COUNTRY MUSIC

Those were great days in country music.  The biggest genre on the radio stations. Country was big.  I wrote a song of that time called “I Was There the Day Country Took the Throne,” and it was a great heyday.  Me, Joe Diffie, Sammy Kershaw, Mark Chestnut, heck, there were a ton of guys who all came out about the same time.  Tracy Lawrence was right behind us.  It was just really, really awesome days, boy.  Country music was big and everybody was selling platinum records.  It was a time when the music ruled, and it showed.  It shined.  Folks came to the shows in droves.  We sold a lot of records, and things were good.  Somewhere along the way, I guess the formula got changed, but those were good days.  I’m happy to have been in that class because still to this day, I can go places and they’ll go “Wow, we saw you back in 1992. Your song had just come out.”  It was just an awesome time.  I remember those days and how great they were.

CHANGES IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY PROVIDE ADVANTAGES

Well, it’s changed quite a bit.  The recording industry…I was one of the first guys to ever record digitally in Nashville.  My album was the first on RCA to be digitally recorded.  That was all new.  And that went from being digitally recorded to being nowadays it digitally recorded but it is so simple and so easy to do.  Sitting in front of me is a Mac laptop and you can record a whole session, master an album, on this computer.  It’s very capable.  It has a program that fits right in.  It’s very different.  We don’t have to spend as much time in the studios as you used to.  I have a small studio at home and do all my vocals and all the backup vocals.  We do ‘em all at our house, at our own studio.  We’re capable of doing that instead of having to pay for a big studio downtown.  In that regard, it’s really, really moved, advanced and been quite an advantage for somebody.  Now, myself, having my own record label, doing more than music, I feel that Aaron Tippin fans want to hear out of Aaron Tippin.  It’s a blessing to have that opportunity now to be able to do my vocals, do other parts, guitar parts, harmony parts, everything right there at my house.  I get a chance to stay on the job a little bit more without having to drive so far.

For Part 2, Click HERE.