The Tucker Carlson Show - Aaron Lewis on Being Blacklisted from Radio & Why Record Labels Intentionally Promote Terrible Music

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

Aaron Lewis on the sleaziness of the music industry, the attempts to cancel him and why he despises Bruce Springsteen. (00:00) The Origins of Lewis’s Love of Country Music (06:49) How Country Music Has Been Infiltrated (12:06) Why Lewis Is Blacklisted From Radio (28:36) How Record Labels Exploit Up-And-Coming Artists (35:52) How Lewis’s Politics Have Impacted His Music Career (49:52) The Joys of Nature, Fishing, and Hunting (1:20:27) The Backlash Lewis Faced After Questioning the Ukraine/Russia War Paid partnerships with: Masa Chips: Get 25% off with code TUCKER at https://masachips.com/tucker PureTalk: Go to https://PureTalk.com/Tucker to make the switchJoi + Blokes: Go to https://joiandblokes.com/tucker to get 20% off all products and therapies with code TUCKER Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How'd you wind up singing country music? Well, my childhood, the soundtrack to my childhood is all country music. That's all I heard from the time I woke up in the morning until the time the lights went out. It's funny, you're from Northern New England, which I think people don't associate with country music, but it's... Oh, yeah, for sure. Country, like out in the woods, everybody's listening to country music. For sure. But, yeah, I would, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' house.

Where? in Wallingford, Vermont. Spent a lot of time there. It was a safe place for me. And my grandmother would wake up in the morning, and the very first thing that happened before an egg hit the frying pan or anything was the country radio got turned on.

Wow. And it was on all day long. And the very last thing that got shut off, before the light got shut off was the radio. So, I mean, it didn't matter if I was going fishing with my grandfather or whether I was at the house. If we were going fishing, I can still visualize the pile of eight tracks on the floor of his Grand Tarino with the boat tied to the top of the car.

And it was just, it was permanent. it. There was always country music, always. And if we were in the boat, he was singing it. So my whole childhood is just steeped in country music. So when I decided, excuse me, when I decided to do something different because I had gotten to the end of my contract with Stained, and I was now free to do whatever I wanted to do, I had always thought about putting out a solo record, if you will. A lot of lead singers do that. I didn't want it to be stained light. I wanted to do something different and reinvent what I was doing without reinventing myself.

Yes. and the only direction to go was country music because it was such a part of my being part of my my whole childhood memories and the landscape of it so

when I decided that I was actually going to do something by myself that was the direction that I went it's funny I think people think of country music as a regional music Southern, Appalachian, you know, Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, kind of the birthplace.

They don't think of it as the music of the country. So it's like Central California, Bakersfield, of course. Oh, yeah. Vermont. Bakersfield is a piece of Texas. Of exactly. In the middle of California.

And you grew up in northern New England, which is, you know, very rural, one of the most rural places in the country. And you get out of the cities in New England, And it's as country as country gets. And it's as red as red gets. Even the state of Massachusetts. Oh, I know.

If you look at the state of Massachusetts broken down county by county, the whole state's red, except for Boston, Worcester, and Springfield. Yeah. You get outside those three big cities in the state of Massachusetts, which is one of the worst in California, too. You get outside those big cities, it's all red. Yeah, not a lot of Kamala voters up near Mount Shasta. No.

No. No, not at all. It's just music is such a window into attitudes and culture, and it's just, it's funny that country music is basically popular everywhere outside the cities. Mm-hmm. 100%. Interesting. So how, was it weird for you to go from one genre to a completely different one? Weird? I don't know if it was I don't know if it was weird it was foolish by everybody else's accounts because I had already built something substantial

in the rock industry and I kind of walked away from that and went to a completely different genre that there might be some overlap of stained fans that also liked country music but I was certainly in that moment shooting myself in the foot and having to basically start over because my value in the industry was

towards the rock industry and nobody knew who I was in the country industry unless they would listen to rock music too. So it kind of in perfect me form, I took the hard road and decided I was going to change genres along with putting something out by myself,

which would have been hard enough as it is. How has country music changed itself as a genre? I don't really recognize country music anymore. Really? Well, what's playing on the radio? Like, how do you draw a line from what's on the radio now and called country music to what was on the radio when we were kids called country music.

Like, there's no, there's no line to be drawn. I listen to Bluegrass Junction, so this is all outside my world. But tell me how it's changed. It's been infiltrated by California, just like everything else. Ooh, really? When, within my career, about halfway through it, everything changed in the industry and a lot of consolidation happened. A lot of people lost their jobs at whatever record label they were at or they were in the top 40 side of things and everything got condensed and they lost their,

well, they all either went to Nashville or they went to country radio. and I truly believe that that has something to do with why country has become so popified where it's like the land of the misfit toys where it's not really country, it's not really pop, it kind of rides right down the middle of it and becomes its own thing, and they should call it its own thing, like it should have its own genre and classification. and instead they call it country and i don't know how you can put george jones and merle haggard in the same sentence as as morgan wallen or or or the rascal flats i mean how do you even how does that correlate how does that fall into the same category because it it doesn't in any way to me which is better country yeah we have pop music I think pop music with a country twang is a little weird

why did they do that happen organically or do you think it was on purpose it's the it's the control mechanism it's the people in in power calling the shots and being the taste makers if you will and and choosing for us what we want to hear and then stuffing it down our throat until we accept it you may have noticed this is a great country with bad food. Our food supply is rotten. It didn't used to be this way. Take chips, for example. You may recall a time when crushing a bag of chips didn't make you feel hung over, like you couldn't get out of bed the next day. And the change, of course, is chemicals. There's all kinds of crap they're putting in this food that should not be in your body, seed oils, for example. Now even one serving of your standard American chip brand can make you feel bloated, fat, totally passive and out of it.

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Use the code Tucker for 25% off your first order. That's MasaChips.com Tucker. Code Tucker for 25% off your first order, highly recommended. There's something a little radical, or maybe more than a little radical, about traditional, you know, Johnny Cash doing, you know, a live show from the Folson Yard, you know, it's like it's pretty untamed in a lot of ways. I mean, there's like a true outlaw, not a fake outlaw element, but like a real outlaw element. I think the country music is is Americana. Like, it's the, it's through the genre that we as the country of America are certainly

responsible for it came from here it yeah it didn't come from somewhere else where where rock had a lot of english influence all those english bands from back in the sixties and stuff and but they brought country music is country music still isn't worldwide it's it's big in germany it's it might have it's kind of listening audience in in england and in germany but it's it's it's kind of listening audience in england and in Germany, but it doesn't expand much further than that. Like, country music is an American genre. And it's become less American and more international, more like Barcelona. It's just everyone's city.

Right. Like, it's like, oh, again. So it's nobody's city. It's like the land of the misfit toys. That's the best way to describe it, where it doesn't fit in pop, doesn't fit in country, just kind of, but you can. push it in either direction and it would and it works but it has no it doesn't have its own soul if you will it's not it's definitely not pure to the genre do you think um that there's still a

demand for it i mean could country music yeah real country music could merle haggard make a living today who i don't know i mean i would certainly hope so. But if you listen to the landscape that's on country radio right now, I don't see where he would fit in at all. I don't see where I fit in at all. Are you on the radio? No. Really? No, they won't play me. They don't like my, my, my, uh, thoughts on things. Really? How important is, well, it's obviously you, how many shows you do last year? Oh, probably 175, 580 shows last year. Yeah, so obviously you're...

Pretty much all of them sold out. You're doing fine. I'm doing just fine. It's nice to not have to bow down to the powers that be. It's nice to not have to undermine my value in a market because the radio station

wants to get as much out of my show as they can so they sell my ticket for a low-dow $10 ticket and they've just devalued my value in that market by selling such a cheap ticket when I can sell hard tickets I don't I don't need to sell sell myself short by by doing favors for a radio station is that how it works oh First, you sell your soul to the record label, and then you sell everything else you've got to the machine, which is the radio that drives music. Really? Is it satellite or terrestrial radio? All of it. All of it. Satellite just took over. Yeah, but it's the same idea.

Same concept. So how does, if you don't mind revealing the sleazy underbelly of the business, like, that you don't participate in, apparently, how does it work? um we're the we are the the indentured servant I mean I think that indentured servitude laws are literally still on the books

in California so that they can get away with what they do with us the performer the artist you're talking about yeah everything every every penny that we ever get paid from a record label is all a loan it's all alone They, they, to give you a, just a conceptual breakdown, this is all just kind of a, take a dollar.

Yeah. So 25 cents of that dollar, let's just say, it's probably more, goes to the record label, just because, because they invested. The rest of it, business management takes their percentage. lawyer takes their percentage management takes their percentage business manager takes their percentage then the government takes their percentage and then the overhead and then what's left let's call it 10 cents at the end of the day that goes back to the record label to pay back the loan that they gave you of the money that they gave you up front. Actually.

So any money that I've actually made from the record label, I've made them 80 times as much. Like, that's it of a dollar. Let's just say there's 12 cents left. The 12 cents actually goes to pay back. back the record label for the money that they gave you. It's insane. How does that still exist?

Because of the laws on the books. It's like, it's insane. Are the record label people adding a lot to the process? Are they creative geniuses? No. I just love how all the people who are getting rich from creativity are the least creative people. Yeah, they're the ones that can't create. but they are making the most money off of the creatives.

We're here because who wouldn't want a record label? Who wouldn't want to live this dream? Who wouldn't want to make music, if they're a musician? Who wouldn't want to make music as their livelihood? So we're in a very fucked up situation where there's a thousand people behind me. Yeah. That would kill me to have my freaking job. Yes, exactly.

So I'm in, I got no leverage. Television's the same. I got no leverage with the, with the industry. Yeah. Because I'm, I'm a, I'm a, I'm easily chewed up and spit out because there's a thousand people behind me waiting to get chewed up and spit out. How long did you participate in that system? It was 2012 or 13. that last stained record that we put out was

was the last record where I really had to do the dance and play the game with radio and not ruffle any feathers and not offend anybody and play the game. And then once that contract was done, I tried to play the game with country music and then I released a song called That Ain't Country that was basically talking about the whole industry

that has created this amalgamation of music that doesn't really fit in a genre and that was the end of it. I put out a song, trying to get country radio to play it about them and they didn't like that very much. Okay, so you attacked the distributor and then we're surprised when they didn't distribute it?

Yeah, super smart. Yeah, super smart. I admire your purity. But principled. Exactly, but principle. That's hilarious. So that didn't work. So what did you do?

Did it work? Well, I don't know. It basically, it didn't work to my advantage to be getting played on the radio. But it certainly freed me from. Being a servant to radio. Yes. So it's a, I, it is so freeing to not be under that thumb. Yes.

I can write songs that are over three and a half minutes long. I can put lyrics and songs that I want to put there. You know, I'm just, I, I'm no longer held to the industry standard because I'm not necessarily trying to participate in the industry game. I go out there I play successful shows I have a fan base that seeks out my music and doesn't just listen

to what the radio stuff's down their throat and I'm very, very blessed and very, very lucky that I don't have to participate in the game anymore. How was Spotify changed it? I'm a Spotify billionaire.

I've had over a billion spins on Spotify. If I only had a penny for every spin on Spotify, that would be fantastic. A dollar, a quarter, a penny from every spin with over a billion spins on Spotify. all I have is a plaque. Well, you never got paid? It's so, by the time Spotify plays it, there's so many people in the middle, I don't even think a penny comes my way, to be honest with you.

For a billion spins, you made no money? I don't think so. That's not how Spotify works. Well, how does it work? I'm not sure. I just know that it cuts a lot of people in on my financial stream. that's all i know a lot of people who are not you right that once again aren't the creatives and they're the ones making all the money so you think so they were creative in how they came up

with something to get into somebody else's money's terms what's called creative accounting which is a form of creativity long unrecognized in the west um i would call it being a leech but yeah i would i would say the same if it ain't broke don't fix it's a cliche for a reason because it's pretty good advice, but sometimes it's not true. Cell phones are a glaring exception. You've got your cell phone, you've had it for years, you don't change. Sometimes your cell phone battery life fades, or maybe your processor can't keep up, but your phone is bound to run into trouble eventually, no matter what the problem is, and replacing it early is much better and often far cheaper than replacing it too late. Enter Pure Talk. This month, if you switch to a

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That's amazing to me. It's a billion plays more than and you don't get paid. I don't, I mean, I might have. It certainly wasn't enough for me to notice, whoa, where the hell did all this money come from in my bank account oh i got spun over a billion times on spotify that's why i mean do i know for sure that no money came in no well if you don't remember then obviously it's minuscule comparatively speaking that is so interesting have there been um that's basically the whole thing the amount of money that we generate as the artist, what we get back for that is minuscule, comparatively speaking to what everybody else with their hands in the cookie jar makes.

So whenever I hear people talk about the... I'm not complaining. Well, you should complain. Well, I'm very blessed and I'm very lucky, and I'm, and, you know, obviously God has a plan for me because this, the way that all of this has just happened and I am just a passenger and I'm not driving this ship. But, and I'm very lucky and very blessed, but I can still recognize the faults to the system

and not necessarily be complaining about how amazing of a ride I've had doing this. It's just, it's interesting. I mean, but I should just say Spotify has been such a huge blessing for us on this podcast. I mean, it's just crazy. It's an amazing new, way for people to consume.

Yeah, and it's run by a guy I know who owns it and I think is a good guy and committed to speech. And so I'm very pro-Spotify, but I just didn't understand that the creators on the music side were cut out of the benefits. Again, not cut out completely.

No, but I mean, a billion, that's a lot. I mean, I should have seen a pretty significant deposit into my account for that. that many spent. Well, what's interesting is they probably paid somebody, but not you. So you hear the... Yeah, probably. I'm sure my record label got paid. Well, you see the accounting of the U.S. economy, like, what's our GDP? You know, how much money is the United States economy generating and, like, a lot? So the question is not, you know, is the engine functioning. The question is, where's the money going? And my complaint about the U.S. is not capitalism,

which clearly works. It's about who benefits from it. And it does seem like the least useful, least creative, certainly least patriotic, but least decent people make all of them big money. And I think that's, this is another example of it. Like, how did Larry Fink get so real? Like, what did Larry Fink do for America, et cetera, et cetera?

Figured out a way to completely leach off of everything that's already there. Well, that's certainly the way it seems to me. It certainly does, right? So how do you make money by getting on the road? That is how, and that's why I work as hard as I do. Because that is where I make my money. I don't make money on record sales. I don't make money off of spins.

I make money off of merch and actually playing shows. Wow. But that's a much, it feels like that's a much more direct transaction. Like, you're running the venue, you're performing for two and a half hours or whatever, you're getting a cut of gate. Like, there are fewer middlemen in that, right? There seems to be less of a, less of a machine that puts itself in between. Yeah. But there is this thing that has taken place since I got my record deal, 28 years ago, 27 years ago.

is called a 360 deal where now the younger artists they're sharing the profits for everything. The record label gets a cut of their merch the record label gets a cut of their live performance pay. The record label gets a cut of 360, everything. No matter what you generate.

Because they can. Because there's a thing. thousand people behind every single person with a record label, with a record deal that wants it as badly as you did before you got it. And they can give you the shittiest deal on the planet because if you don't take it, the guy behind you will. Wow. And they're not only greedy and dishonest, ruthless, they're also very political, right? The record labels. And usually in the wrong direction, and I don't understand how a record label that, I mean, it certainly isn't capitalism with a conscience, but it is, it's certainly capitalism where the record label is in it to make money. And it's not necessarily about what's the art that is being created by the creative.

It's about the money that that creative artist is going to generate for the record label to cover the 15 failures that they brought to the table. Yes. And dumped all this money into. I get it. Publishing's the same way. Yeah. So, you know, you've been in it your whole life. You've toured with everybody.

Pretty much everybody. You were telling me last night about smoking weed with Willie Nelson on his bus many years ago. So you've toured with everybody. How many creators, artists, performers in your business in private hate and resent the record companies? Most, most. Most, if not all. I don't know that in a private setting, in a private conversation where things aren't going any further. I don't know of anybody that I know in that.

the business that would have good things to say about it. Would it be possible for a decent person to start a record company and record label? I would think so. I would think so, but the problem is, is that the, the, the, the operating system, it's just, it's not decent. So a decent person could start a record label, but unless they change the entire formula and in the entire way that the whole business is ran, the business itself is lecherous. So a good person could start it, but unless they change the whole thing, it's going to be the same. Right. So getting elected to Congress. Yeah. It's pretty obvious now that this country is

getting weaker than ever, meaning the population is unhealthier. That's what Maha is about, trying to counteract this long-term trend that's culminated in a disaster. Americans are so unhealthy, we can't staff the military. And it's really, really sad. Why is this happening? Maybe because sick people are easier to control. Whatever the reason, there are answers to it. One of them is Joy and Bloaks. They are revolutionizing supplements with smart supplements are personalized for you. They're based entirely on your genetics, your biomarker. data, they're not guessing. So they use labs, advanced labs, that measure up to 110 key biomarkers. Then their clinicians design a precision supplement plan that's updated as your body

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right away. Go to Joy and Blokes, J-O-I-N-Blox.com slash Tucker, root cause medicine. It's the way health care ought to be. So when did you start having conflict with your corporate masters over politics? Hmm. Obama getting elected. That was a moment, wasn't it? And you weren't fully on board? Huh. Hell no. You didn't worship black Jesus? I, I, I, immediately recognized it as a as a horrible blow to our country immediately not even knowing why yet yeah like i just knew instinct tells you instinctively in my gut i knew that we had made a massive massive mistake as a country yeah that's for sure and so many balls got rolling during that time frame that we're still that we're still trying to slow down oh i know it but yeah

when TMZ would get me when I landed in Los Angeles and I was walking through the airport and they'd get me and ask me questions and that was that was when I started expressing my my feelings and my opinions on you know how they get you? Do you know the answer to this question? I found out I've been gotten a few times at LAX by TMZ and other airports and I once asked like how did you know I was? was on that plane like you know because they know they know because they bribe the airline the guy told me this they bribed the airline to give them the manifest makes sense now that that makes sense how out of nowhere they're like hey yeah like what where what how'd you even know i was here thanks united bless you american um you know it's it's pretty anyway so they would you'd roll off the flight at LAX someone come up to you and ask you a question what did you say oh I was I have I have I had no issues

then nor do I have any issue now telling anybody exactly how I feel um and you know I I was already talking about the unconstitutionalness of Obama's actions and what he was doing and I mean mentioning that what he was doing was borderline treasonous and that was how I started the ball rolling and what kind of responses you get because you weren't allowed to criticize Obama there for a while or else you were I can't remember the word racist I know I've been I've been labeled that

and then there was there was one time I was I was playing a show down by the down by the border and I mean, I've played a lot of shows And I've played a lot of shows back before I had a record deal And this was the rudest crowd I had played to in, I don't know, 15 years I'm playing completely acoustic all by myself Not even any extra musicians on stage or anything

Just me and my guitar I could not get them to shut up all night just talking over me like I was the jukebox. And I made the mistake of back then at the end of the show, I would do a song completely unplugged where I would pull a chord out of my guitar and I'd walk away from the microphone and I'd go stand right on the edge of the stage.

And I would acoustically play the last song with no microphone with no nothing, belting to the crowd and for some strange reason after such a rude evening i decided i was going to do that and try to prove everybody wrong they're going to listen to me whether they want to or not so i attempt to try to start the song i explained to them what i was going to do through the microphone before I stepped away from the microphone. And I attempted to start the song. As I got to where I started to sing, the volume had gone up and not down.

Now, mind you, there's no sound system anymore. It's just me singing to the room. So I stop. I walk back around. I go to the microphone. I explained to everybody what I'm going to do again. I start again. Volume goes up.

so I go back to the microphone and I was and I'm gonna I was like you know listen I don't have to do this I was trying to do something and a lady that was standing right there in the front row like four people from the center she's like tell him to shut the fuck up in Spanish and I said close to the microphone I wasn't necessarily talking into the I was talking to her but it was close and I said, I'm sorry, ma'am, I don't speak Spanish, I'm American. The world ended for like a week all over the, like broke the internet. Aaron Lewis, a racist, Aaron Lewis, this. A racist. Right, because I said, I'm sorry, ma'am, I don't speak Spanish, I am American. That was what I said. Beats me, but that's what went around.

Peres Hilton did a hit piece on me about how much of a racist I am. Put the video connected to it. And if you watch the video, you see that the whole interview is, I mean, the whole piece is a complete bullshit and a complete fabrication of all of it. And they would write these hit pieces and actually attach the video that completely contradicted the hit piece. Yeah, it doesn't matter. But it doesn't matter because people wouldn't actually, they just read. And Perez Hilton, boy, I haven't heard that name in a while. Is he still alive?

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe the Vax got him. I don't know. Possible. That's wild. So you are a racist for saying... But I don't speak Spanish.

I'm American. When America, it says clearly in the books, in the naturalization process, that you have to have a full working knowledge of the English language before you can become a citizen in this country. Yeah. Well, you know, in... English is not a race. The United States is not a race. There's nothing about race in that sentence or sentiment. I know.

Right. Yeah. Oh, boy. You just brought me back to an earlier time. I don't think that would happen now. I don't know. People are so over that. People are over it, but I think that that side of things probably still would have tried.

Well, now they call you an anti-Semite, probably. I'm any of the ists. You're right. Oh, wow, that's wild. So how did your manager and assorted handler's record label feel about this? I mean, it was just one of those things where you just had to kind of let it go by. Yeah. Just let it die out, let it play its course and go away.

Was the crowd mad when you said that? No. Yeah. Right. No. And then I tried one more time to say. the song and they wouldn't listen and i put my guitar down on the stage and walked off stage oh what'd you do that was already two plus hours into a show it's not like they they they they

were like it's not like any of the show got taken away from them right at all i was done i was just trying to do something special and and they didn't want it so so did you ever have con like direct conflict with an employer over politics with an employer yeah with the label i mean my record label president we've had some pretty heated discussions about politics and and he i mean when you do the whole breakdown and you start talking really bare bones basics there's a lot of things that he agrees with me on but when you bring all the rest of it in

we don't see eye to eye on much of anything right I get that a lot reasonable people similar values actually but they're just they see themselves so differently and they're just committed to some weird

partisan addiction it's almost like a feel-good addiction like a like a like it's a virtue signaling addiction that people seem to have that for some reason feel so guilty about their own life that they need to create these things to virtue signal and make themselves feel like a better person because at the end of the day how they present themselves and and behave in life is is is unfulfilling for them so they somehow have to virtue signal to make them feel better about their unfulfilled lives it's it's a very strange

strange thing i have found as a 53 year old man looking at the people that are younger than me that They're going to take over this country when I'm gone. They just want to be a victim. Like it's the craziest thing happening with our culture where all of our younger generation, there's more pride taken in being a victim than there is in getting over and getting through and moving past.

whatever it is that you were a victim of it's not pull your bootstraps up and and and stand up and and keep moving forward anymore it's it's lavish in the victimhood as long as possible and that just doesn't compute with me no like i don't that's not what i was taught at all at all at all You weren't encouraged to whine as a child? No. I wasn't either. Honestly, if I was whining, I don't think that my voice was even acknowledged. Of course not, as it shouldn't be.

Right. Do you feel guilty about growing up as rich as you did going to Hotchkiss and Yale and all the advantages that you had? I grew up. Very much like most in this country. We were lower middle class at best. The first memories that I have are living in a single wide trailer in a trailer park in Castleton, Vermont. Charming place?

Super charming. It's not the Vermont of weekend getaways, is it? Not so much. It's not Stowe, really. Um, and my dad back in the 60s, he bought a hunting camp up on the side of a mountain in Shrewsbury. And he moved us from the trailer park to that hunting camp. It's in the, it's in the song country board. My dad picked the place up for 1,500 bucks back in 1964.

He bought this hunting camp on the side of a mountain for 50s. $1,500, and he moved us into that hunting camp. And by the time we moved, he sold that same place for $85,000, I think. And that was what put us in a regular middle class neighborhood at that point. That was the up that he turned that $1,500 investment into $80,000. something. I've always wanted to live at my hunting camp. I think that's the dream for a lot of people. I would just like to live in a

hunting camp. What was that like? As good as as a kid? Yeah. Lonely. I bet. Lonely, I had to keep myself occupied. For sure. I was out in the middle of the woods as a five-year-old kid. What's your mom say? What does

a woman say when her husband moves her to a hunting camp? I don't think my mom minded. I don't think my mom minded. There was like she had the garden out front and and they were always, I mean, my parents were kind of hippie-ish. Yeah, that sounds. I mean, my dad got arrested at the Yankee nuclear power plant for protesting back in the day before it was up and running.

Yes. Was it, I mean, what was deer season like if you already live in the hunting camp? It wasn't there. We would go to Wallingford and to Damby and up where the family was and the Lewis farm was in Dambi and was, you know, half of the... Damby is almost like a volcano, like an inactive volcano, where at the top of the mountain, there's a valley. So it's like an old, like an ancient, ancient volcano that at some point blew off,

but you would never know, but there's a valley on the top of the mountain. and that was the valley that the Lewis Farm was in. And it was like top 10 dairy farms in Vermont. And so the farm is where we would go, and everybody would gather up, and we would do the classic drives and pushes and all that stuff. And it was always rifle. I didn't get into bow hunting until later in life.

Yeah. Well, there wasn't much of it. Not really, not then. No. No, I mean, bows have really come a long way since, like, the mid-80s to now. I remember the first time I heard it, I thought it was like one of the, not bad. I wasn't against it, but I was like, wow, you kill a deer with a bow? Like, Hiawatha?

Like, that was wild. Huh. Do you still hunting fish? I do. All the time. I'm so completely ate up with upland bird hunting. And I'm from New England. So I had never hunt quail before. And I, earlier this year, went on my first quail hunt. And oh, my God, that was it for me. Really? That was it for me. Like, I have gone, I went probably 15 times since I found, found quail hunt. hunting and I hunted all the way up until the last day of the season in Florida is April 15th, 15th or 20th maybe or somewhere around there and literally hunted all the way through to the last day.

And what do you like about it? Everything. The tradition, the tradition is the biggest thing for me. Like I'm all about it. I'm hunting with with a gun that, you know, should be. in a museum or in somebody's private collection and and I those are my hunting guns. What do you hunt with? I'm a big 4-10 guy. I love the 4-10. It's the smallest the shotgun gauges. It is the smallest of the shotgun gauges.

It is the most gentlemanly, if you will. But I'll be out there in full Philson regalia. and looking like I just came out of a safari or something. And I'm all about it. I respect the tradition of it. The camaraderie, the dogs. Oh, my God, I love watching the dogs work. They're unbelievable.

Watching a dog slam into a point like that, like somebody just shot him with electricity. Just, it's amazing. It is amazing. It is amazing. It is amazing that that's almost as enjoyable as the actual flush and the shot is actually watching the dogs. I totally agree with that. That's half, three quarters of the enjoyment is experiencing that whole thing with the dogs and how amazingly trained they are.

I mean, just, how does a dog know to do that? I don't know. It's amazing. It's latent. I mean, I think it's in the dog, and your job is to bring it out. It stinksual, and then you've got to bring it out. That's it. It's amazing.

Can you hit a quail with a 4-10? Almost every time. Really? Yes, sir. You're doing 180 shows a year. How'd you get to be such a good shot? I had a, I was hunting with my dad, bird hunting for roughed grouse and Woodcock, just like you love so much, at seven, eight.

Yep. I think I got my first double for Woodcocks at 10 or 11. Got my first double on grouse at like 12 or 13. Wow. I've never done that. The grouse one was like it couldn't have been more perfect. Three grouse all went up at the same time and they all flew straight away from me. I probably could have got a triple if I was using a semi-auto and not a- You had another barrel.

So for people who don't, I'm sure we're going to lose an audience point here, but for people who don't know what New England grouse hunting is, can you describe it? A grouse is a big woodland bird About the size of a chicken About the size of a chicken And they they strut like a turkey does Yeah And they

They're one of the most beautiful birds And they're one of the hardest Yes They're as fast as an effort 15 and you literally have if you get two seconds as a window of opportunity for that shot that's a lot that's a lot yeah that's a lot they they go off and it's like and they're gone you literally have that much and they're gone and the noise I'm making is what it sounds like when they take off from their from their wings hitting their body and it'll it will stop

your heart like yeah and there are no pen raised rough grouse i mean they're just all wild birds 100% and they're as wild as wild gets and for you to go out and have a successful day of roughed grouse hunting or partridge as they're also called yeah um you've you've accomplished something that's for sure you you get a limit and you're actually done for the day and can't keep hunting for the day with roughed grouse you are you have accomplished something if you're doing it on foot i've never done that but um never limited out on grouse but like how many how far per bird do you think you walk and grow something miles miles unless you unless you have found a uh a thick population you will cover some ground and you will put in a lot of work it's probably why i like whale hunting

right now you get older because i'm i'm i'm 53 i don't necessarily want to walk into a piece of woods that is up and down and the thickest they of course they live in the thickest crap oh yeah so you're really really really really putting in a lot of effort to possibly put up one bird where with quail hunting if you go to a plantation where that's their deal is quail hunting with a nice leisurely stroll nice leisurely gentlemanly stroll through the woods you can put up a hundred birds

instead of possibly one yeah in that sense the the hot and heavy action is what kind of keeps, makes the quail hunting thing kind of at the top, if you will. Quail hunting is a rich man sport, rough grouse hunting in New England is a poor man sport. Quail hunting is a rich man sport because of the fact that the majority of the quail hunting that you can do at this point in, in, our, in our society and in our growth as a country, everything else,

it's really hard to actually find wild quail to begin with. Yes. So what you're hunting is a put-and-take situation. So there's an overhead to it. Yeah. And you're paying anywhere from a thousand, to astronomical prices to go and hunt this place. Some places are insane and so exclusive and so private that even if you had the ridiculous

amount of money to pay, you can't. But yes, yes, it's a, it is a rich man sport in the sense that it's hard to go do it on your own time with no dime for sure you you got to go to a place that for the most part you got to go to a place that it charges you because there's a massive overhead for the cost of the birds and the cost of everything so um if you know musician if you had to pair a musician with these two kinds of up on bird hunting you'd say Bruce Springsteen who's the representative of America's Working Man. Oh, yeah, totally.

He would be a Graves Center. Like, I would put him as my representation any day. Do you know Bruce Springsteen? No, thankfully. What do you think of him? I think that he is a disgusting display of not appreciating what was handed to him for, as in this country as being an American, the success that he has had,

the fact that he duped us all with one of the most anti-American songs ever and called it born in the USA as some sort of celebration of how great it is to be born in the USA. I'm angry at myself for not seeing it for so long. And actually giving him, in my mind, the credit of being a representation of blue-collar America. I think that he has forgotten where he came from.

I think that if you're not careful doing it. this this career that that me and him have both been so blessed to have had if you're not careful it will consume you and and it's obvious that it creates a situation where you've lost sight of the reality of the country that you live in because you've you've lived such a Cush, um, you've had so much, you have so much,

that it's really easy to take a stance that is so anti-everything. That you, that you were lucky enough to have, lucky enough to create, lucky enough to

to be to change your your situation in life and he's just lost touch with the struggles he's lost touch with the struggle and it seems like most people who have lost touch with the true struggle of life those are the people that vote for these fucking idiots those are the people that feel like they have to virtue signal those are the people that somewhere along the way they

feel guilty for the success that they have had so they somehow have to make it up with this nonsensical bullshit that, like, you grew up at the same time, Tram, I did. It was the most unracially driven, the verbal beating that we took over and over and over our whole childhood of, you don't judge a man by the color of his skin, you judge a man by the content of his character. and like it was the best that our country has ever been and I think that that didn't work well for the Democrats and the communists.

Why? Because they thrive in the chaos. They want us at each other's throats. They want us bickering internally. so that we have no sense of shared country pride, that we have no sense of shared morality because they've created so many things artificially for us to fight about. I mean, there is no doubt in my mind at this point.

It's not coincidental. it's purposeful like there is definitely a a power center in this world that definitely does not want to see us as the the shining light on the hill no no at all they're against peace and prosperity and well because there's no money in it self-sufficiency and god um yeah no i i couldn't there's no money in it with we're all you know how can they exploit us if we're we're all united and getting along when we're all looking out for each other as human beings how can they exploit us they can't so they have to they have to keep us in a constant state of conflict when did you start to realize this as i got old enough to be carrying the weight of

that responsibility on my shoulders yes like knowing full well that okay it's my turn now i have assumed the responsibility which we are all supposed to do that the country is in my hands it was in my father's hands before that it was in my grandfather's hands before that and as as our as our generations grow and get older each generation it's now their turn to become and take over as the stewards of this amazing, beautiful country. And we forgot about that for a little bit. And we haven't been doing that over the probably the past 30 years. And that's not okay with me. Like, it is my responsibility now as a father and a proud patriot

it's my responsibility now to make sure that what I hand over to the next generation behind me is better than I found it because that's what we're supposed to do that's what we were taught our whole lives you walk into the woods

you leave it cleaner than you found it you find one piece of trash it doesn't even matter one piece of trash and you pick it up and you put it in your pocket you have left that better than you found it. And our generation, that's what was instilled in us, beaten into us.

That's for sure. Yeah, that's, that's the moral imperative. I come from the generation of, of still, it's probably the last generation of as a kid. Now, did it fuck me up and make me feel like my, my voice doesn't get heard? And I, like, I, in like a, an incessant, thing for me is to be heard because I didn't feel like my voice was heard as a kid at all

because I was like the last generation of kids that are kids are to speak when they're spoken to and that's it like I got that from my grandparents like children are only to speak when they're spoken to that's fair and children are to be seen and not heard also fair unless they have something interesting to say sure yeah but if you don't I think in general if you don't have something interesting to say. I think that all that all supports the whole thing of because I said so. It doesn't, I don't have to give you a reason as my child as to why. Like, because I said so, there's a huge lesson with that in life.

Your boss isn't going to explain to you why you have to do something. and he's going to tell you to do something and you need to just do it. There's going to be situations in life where if somebody tells you to do something and you hesitate and don't do it, your life could be in danger. It's just a lost art form. It's a lost art form. Parenting is a lost art form. I said that all the way back in 2001 on the cover of Rolling Stone.

parents have forgotten how to be parents. Like, I realized that all the way back then. And it's only gotten worse. Yeah. The average kid these days, the biggest parental figure in their life is their computer or their phone. It's not their parent.

Yeah, it's the internet. It's insane. We are knowingly and willingly flushing everything down the toilet out of convenience. It's so convenient to have this fully operating computer in my hand at all times. It's so convenient. Every important piece of thread that makes up the fabric of this country is being picked out one at a time.

And it's going to leave us with this empty shell that nobody knows what to do with it now. Because we've already discarded and thrown away everything that kept us on a path, on a good path in life. It feels like new people will rebuild a new and different society in place of the Americans who were here when you and I were born. And that's scary. Oh, I know. That's scary. If we hand this country off as the stewards of today, if we hand this country off to the younger generation without fixing it first

and they're able to do what they've been taught to do, this country will cease to exist. Certainly will not be the shining light on the hill anymore. I don't know that it is already. I mean, the love and want and desire for this country to go back to where it was for a lot of people is still strong. But I don't know if we have the wherewithal as a society, as an entire country, to pull our heads out of our ass as long enough to fix it. It's scary. I'm scared.

I'm scared for my kids. I lose sleep over what this country is going to be for, good Lord, my grandkids. It's bad enough for my kids. Yes. But another generation, my grandkids, if this doesn't, if this ship doesn't get righted, what are they even going to have? Is their life going to even have the, even the slightest semblance? of what our lives were? Do our kids now?

Is their life even the slightest semblance of what me and you had as kids? No fucking way. How's it different? You've got three kids. We were latchkey kids. You didn't even have to lock your door. Like, you came home and so many parents weren't even there.

And there was no worry. Like, I never had a key to my house. house. I don't have a key to my house now, actually. Because of where you live. Yeah, well, right. No, that's right. And I love it out here. This is like, no, I agree. No, but you're, you're right. I mean, the feeling of safety, um, what was kind of unquestioned. The feeling of trust, just overall trust of your fellow man. There's not, there's that that's, that's instinct. It's, that's instinct. It's, it's it's extinct it doesn't it doesn't really exist anymore so you travel by vehicle by bus through

america i don't like to fly i literally have not flown on a commercial plane since everything shut down for covid wow good for you i'm i will i drive everywhere unless I absolutely have to fly, and then I am guilty. I won't fly commercial, but once, maybe twice a year when I absolutely have to fly, I will be bougie and get a plane. But because you're traveling overland, the majority of the year, I see. what this country is. Exactly. So that's, what do you see? And you've been doing this for, what, 30 years? You've been on the road across America. I have watched the flyover states

just crumble. You go into a small town, half the businesses are boarded up. You know, those small classic, what you would think of as Americana, those Norman Rockwell, towns they're all boarded up there's nobody downtown there's no commerce there's there's there's there's a dollar general down the street yeah there's a walmart 10 minutes away but every mom and pop shop is all gone family businesses that have that have provided for that family and provided for the town with the business that they provide, it's all gone. Everywhere? Pretty much.

Pretty much. What are the, you play in every region of the country? Yeah. What are the toughest parts of the country right now? Rural. Yeah. Rural. Second, you leave the cities.

And that was. And it's in, and it's, and it's. undeniable, visually right there in front of your face, you have to close your eyes to not see it. So why does no one ever mention that? I never, I, every U.S. Senator I know, I know all the Republicans. I mean, they're very upset about Iran or Ukraine, but I don't ever hear them mention their own states outside the cities. I know. It's disgusting. And these are supposed to be the people that are the representatives of that area. You wonder, has Tom Cotton ever been to the Delta in Arkansas? Like, when was the last time he was in the Eldorado, Arkansas?

Right. And I've been through all of Arkansas. And it's poverty stricter and falling apart. Yeah, I know. And that's anywhere. Tennessee? I know. Like, anywhere.

I know. 30 years ago, 40 years ago, Pine Bluff, Arkansas was a real town. and now it's one of the most dangerous places in the country i just wonder like what do they think i don't know and i don't understand why their policies never work like they never ever work i don't know of a single communist policy that has actually done good for whoever it was that the policy was designed for. None of them. It's only about destruction.

It is. It's only about destruction. Well, here's the story you probably haven't heard a lot about. The Chinese mafia is exploiting rural America to create a drug empire. This is not available on cable news. The network's not telling you about this, but it's totally real. Communist-affiliated drug gangs destroying parts of the United States, the parts that Washington ignores, to sell drugs, laundering money and building a black market network inside this country's most beautiful but least served areas. We've got a brand new

documentary on this. It's called High Crimes, the Chinese Mafia Takeover of rural America. It's available now on Tucker Carlson.com. It's excellent. The purchase of churches and schools to aid the operation, the jerry rigging of power boxes to steal electricity, foreign pesticides, collusion with the Mexican cartels. It's unbelievable. By the way, one of the drug houses is like walking distance from my house. I didn't know that. It's a layered and fascinating story. Head to Tucker Carlson.com to watch now. We think you'll love it. So here's one of my favorite quotes, my favorite Aaron Lewis quotes, my book of Aaron Lewis quotes. You know, everyone in music is like an outlaw. I'm a rebel, and they all say the same thing, and they all mouth the same pietys, read the same stupid bumper stickers,

kiss ass to the same powerful people. So this actually is kind of an outlaw thing to say, and here's what you said in 2022. And I'm quoting you, you know, as fucked up as it sounds, maybe we should listen to what Vladimir Putin is saying. I got in so much trouble for that. And I will continue to quote you back to you.

Maybe when Klaus Schwab and George Soros and every other earth-destroying MF or all jump on the same bandwagon, maybe just maybe we should take a good look at that. Why are they trying to protect Ukraine so much? What do they all have to lose? So I would think, like, in a country with creative people, a free country, that you'd be one of many people asking the single most obvious questions. Why can't we listen to what the other side is saying?

And why are all these people who were pretty obviously bad also vested in this one far away country like what do they have to lose i mean first of all bless you for saying that um second did anyone ever answer your question um nope nope um i lost employees employees oh yeah people people that not direct employees in my like in my knit circle yeah but external employees people that worked for me in in in different areas that wouldn't that that wanted nothing to do with it anymore it's it's a it's a funny story and you're part of it the reason i said that is because i had literally just watched your show oh gosh and you were the one to say hmm maybe we should have maybe we should listen to

put and see what he has to say and i was like well if tucker has said it on fox how that worked out for me. It worked out for both of us the same way. I agree. It worked out for both of us the same way. It took weeks for that one to go away. Really? Oh, yeah. But I just, I'm not an artist.

I'm a guy who gives his opinions on YouTube, but I appreciate artists, which is to say people whose whole job is to pursue the truth, you know, whether they get there or not. But, I mean, that's their job. And every society carves out room for them

to do that and a healthy society isn't run by artists don't want them they're not in charge of the power grid okay but a healthy society does kind of listen sometimes to what they say because they're saying unconventional things challenge you to think a little more deeply about things you assume are true are they actually true um you pay artists to say things like that so it's just wild to live in a society where artists are leading the charge for conformity they're like no no obey When did that happen? I don't know, but it's very weird. It seems like what once was like on that edge is now so blunted and everybody is just a spokesperson for the machine.

It does feel that way. Because they're all afraid of losing their position in the machine. Yeah. When all of the higher-ups think the opposite that you do, most of the time in this industry, those people don't have the wiggle room that I do. Yeah. So they have to conform or they lose their spot. I was lucky enough to have built and created my spot before I chose to not conform. So I didn't necessarily lose my spot

Just because I didn't conform Because I had already built it And they couldn't take that away from me at that point Like They've already tried to cancel me They've already done everything that they can do To talk shit about me So now they just ignore my existence

Now they don't even say bad things They just don't say anything at all It I don't say anything at all. I don't. It doesn't seem to have affected your sales. It doesn't seem to. You had one of the biggest songs in the country a couple years ago. Everybody hated it.

Everybody in charge hated it. Am I the only one? Yeah. Yeah. There was an outward call within the industry for me to be canceled and to lose my record deal. And my record label president, who we don't see eye to eye on politics at all, stood up for my right to free speech. and my right to creativity and as an artist my right to express myself however i want what didn't they like about the song that it was a patriotic country-loving point out the what the fuck is going on right now

yeah point of view and they didn't like that they they they didn't like that i was pointing out the obvious in a time where every single one of us was sitting there scratching our heads going what in the fuck is going on in this country i'm i'm 49 or 50 at that the time or whatever it was and I've never seen anything even remotely close to what's going on right now in this country like where did our sense of free people go where all of a sudden we're just conforming to these rules that just don't make any sense it seems like they're just taking handfuls of shit and throwing it against the wall and seeing what sticks and I was like, what the fuck?

Am I the only one who's seeing this? Who's, who's recognizing how completely, how completely absurd the whole concept was of shutting everything down? How do we survive that? as a as an economy as a as a as a the wheels that need to keep moving at all times just screeched to a freaking halt and you know me and and jeff steel and irideen got together and everybody was wearing masks at the time everybody was was was was distancing them themselves from everybody that moment in time was one of the most destructive moments in time

that we've ever experienced it it destroyed our our close-knitness it destroyed human beings are our social people they want to be in groups they want to be together we we want to we're you know we we we want to come together instinctively and to do that like there's a there's a whole lot of people that that are responsible for that that that should be held accountable for what they did i couldn't agree more i'm i'm still blown away by it. I still I still feel like the words

to that song are just as relevant to this moment that we are sitting in right now as it was five years ago when we were locked up and told that we had to wear masks and then we couldn't

I had a mask in my car just to put on if I went into Dunkin' Donuts or if I, and that didn't even last for very long. A month into it, I was like, this is fucking bullshit. I'm not, I got thrown out of Dunkin' Donuts one day for walking in without my mask on. You're throwing out of Dunkin' Donuts?

And like, like, rudely. Really? Like, you are putting everybody in this, in this place's life, endangelo. and you should be ashamed of yourself. Wait, Duncan, it's a place where homeless junkies shoot up in the back. Right, right, yeah, yeah, same place, yeah. Yeah, okay. But what you were doing was unclean.

Right, yeah. So, yeah, I never knew that people were that easy to train. I never knew they were that obedient. I never knew there were that many people with no self-respect at all. At the time, I was living in a very, very left. town, Massachusetts, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Lesbian capital of the world. Mm-hmm.

It's where Smith College is. It is a festering cesspool of anti-American everything. What's the happiness level, would you say, in North Hampton, Madison? Misery. I don't see, I don't see anybody smiling ever, ever. They are all, all these people that feel the need to virtue signal, time they turn around are some of the most miserable people you've ever met in your life. Oh, I've noticed. Oh, yeah. What are they mad about?

Their own failures? I don't know. I don't know why it's such an incessant need these days to do it. Like, just live a good life. All this virtue signaling, all this fake outrage. age just live a good life yeah treat people good you'll get treated good in return how'd they how'd treat you in northampton if they knew who i was probably not very good country music's not that big i'm not i'm a i'm not the artist celebrity i hate i don't even like using that word it makes me feel weird. I'm not the artist that wants to get noticed. I try my best to

stay under the radar. A successful day for me of going out and about is not getting noticed. So it doesn't I don't even remember where I was. Sometimes I get on a roll and I lose track.

Well, you just picked the right town for anonymity. I mean, if you were, say, the Indigo Girls or the Dixie Chicks. Wouldn't be able to walk down the street. No. But you really? Did you choose Northampton because you know not a single person there has ever heard of your music? At the time, it was out of convenience. But.

I certainly would not choose, nor do I, now that I don't live in downtown Northampton, I don't choose to go there. I will go into Northampton for pretty much one reason and one reason only. And his name is Sam, and he is the sushi chef at Moshe-Moshi. Oh. And I will go and I will sit down at the sushi bar with Sam. drink sake with them and eat sushi. So you'll make the sushi pilgrimage,

but no more residential time there. No. What's your, let me ask you a couple questions about what you like. I want to try that flavor. Oh, it's the best. This is sweet nectar. We just came out with it,

and I got like a case of it. So I've been on it and I really like it. What are the other two new flavors, the other couple flavors? I know that I heard you said. We have a bunch. We've got fruit and mint and wintergreen and all that but this is um and we've got a bunch of other flavors we're working on but that uh

the government makes it hard to introduce new flavors it's crazy well because you're you're you're trying to get the kids that's what it is yeah i can't i'm not even allowed to talk about that topic nicotine for the children it's totally verboten um i started really young i'll just say that and i'm glad i did but anyway uh i know everyone disagrees with me but that's how i actually feel so i'm to say it. I had my first cigarette at eight. That's pretty young. And I've actually been smoking, like, have a pack of cigarettes. I've been smoking since I was like 13. Yeah, me too. But I quit at 45. And what brand do you smoke? American spirits. It's a good cigarette. It is. As far as a cigarette goes.

It's delicious. It's delicious. It's delicious. It doesn't have all the, extra 1,600 chemicals that they put in there to make it more addictive, to make it burn faster, to make it burn slower. Right. They even put chemicals in there that are contradictory to themselves. Yeah, for fireproofing their cigarettes. I mean, it's all, yeah. And then an American Spirit will go out on its own.

No, I know. If you, I smoked American Spirit Blues, the light blue, and I always took the filters off. And I just thought, wow, that's the strongest cigarette in Maine, America, if you do that. It's an incredible cigarette. I don't smoke anymore. Anyway, sorry, I'm not promoting smoking. That would is delicious. Very delicious.

More delicious than anything I've ever done before or since. I'm just, that's why people do it. By the way, the piety around smoking, obviously smoking is not good for you. I don't want my children to smoke. It's not good for you. It smells. It looks gross. All of those things.

I disagree. And it's. such a satisfying five minutes removed off your life. Well, you think about people who kind of openly brazenly, publicly send young men off to die in pointless wars on behalf of some other country. Like, that's just par in the U.S. Congress. They all can't wait to do that. And they face no moral sanction whatsoever.

But if you were to light a cigarette and someone saw you, you'd be like, like a monster. Look, I'm not arguing for smoking. I'm just saying it's good to have a sensible moral hierarchy in mind when you assess other people's behavior. Like some things are bad, but some things are worse than that. Right. Right. And make your choices accordingly. Well, kind of. And make your judgments accordingly. I mean, I do think violence is bad. Sure. And sending off other people's kids to die is one of the worst. things I can imagine and yet that's celebrated you would think that that would be like a really hard decision it's not it's not no it's like the easiest decision for them to make it's

Lindsay Graham literally can't wait and I do think all of them should be forced to go to the front lines in Ukraine and worry about getting droned how about this not because I wish them harm but because there should be some skin in the game I just want some fucking truth yeah I agree I I want to know why Lindsay Graham is such a Ukraine, like, what were you doing over there, Lindsay in 2014? I think that's fair to ask. What were you doing? Why are you so vested in Ukraine? Why would you put Ukraine over everything else?

like what is going on i mean as as you know as so many people are fully aware the ukraine is one of the dirtiest and most corrupt places in the world aside from the united states run by a stalinist by the way who canceled elections closed the biggest christian denomination in the country put the priests and nuns in prison like him murdering his political enemies i can't go to ukraine i get killed if I went to Ukraine, a country that might tax dollar support. Right. And Lindsay Graham was like, no, that's great. I don't know. I mean, let's just wake up a second. This is bonkers. It's degrading us. It's beyond immoral. It's like self-harm at scale. It's crushing the United States. It just makes me wonder how many of these politicians that make these decisions that were like,

what the fuck are you even thinking? Did you get caught in a honeypot? Did you do something? And they caught you doing it and now they have you under their thumb. Oh, I know. Like, Madison Cothorn got ran out because he started mentioning stuff like that, started talking about the parties that happen and start. They got rid of him as fast as they could. He's a good dude. Well, Matt Gates, same thing.

Matt Gates, same thing. They're like, oh, you had sex. I don't know how Marjorie Taylor Green has somehow made it this far, aside from being a woman. I don't think they have anything on her. I think she's a decent person. Yeah, I think she's incredible. But it was so funny with Gates.

They're like, he starts making, you know, unauthorized noises about this or that. And all of a sudden, they're like, well, you had sex with children. Okay, where's the evidence? And by the way, where's the indictment? They never indicted him for it. Oh, I know.

So how can you accuse somebody of a crime and then not the government is accusing him of a crime and then not indicting him for it? why is that not a crime in itself? If Matt Gates had sex with children, indict him, arrest him, put him on trial, and prove it. Or you're in trouble yourself for destroying his character. Using my tax dollars to commit slander against your political opponents? Yeah, that's a crime.

Right. But no one's ever prosecuted. And but that's, what that does is it puts the fear of God into all the other freaks in Congress, all of whom have some, not all, but many of whom have something. to hide, including people we've just mentioned. And they're like, whoa, you know, I better stay way away from the boundaries because I could get hurt. Sure.

It just casts a pall over everybody of fear. You obviously don't feel that. No. How long can you do 180 shows a year? If I'm doing the country thing? Yeah. Forever. Really?

well Willie Nelson does it he's 90 yeah I can I can if I live that long I could I could still be the country thing I could still be doing that the stained thing that's a that's a little bit more taxing yeah I believe to my to my voice it's a lot of yelling it's a lot of screaming it's it's it's a lot more taxing to where if I'm being completely honest There's probably more of a shelf life to my country thing than there is to the stained thing. Yeah. There's probably going to come a point where I'm going to have to be like, you know what, it's too taxing on me and it takes too long for me to recover from being on tour with stained for a month. And there's probably going to come a point where I'm going to be like, for longevity's purposes, I need to either do less shows or not so many in a row or the country thing, man, I could do three shows a day every single day and never blow myself out.

And enjoy it? You have to be pretty damn blessed in life. to be able to continue enjoying a job. Yeah. It is a job at the end of the day. I'm blessed that I was able to create my job around something that I love and that I'm driven to do. But as a job, there's parts of that that kind of really.

and the experience of it all. It's the music business. The music part I love. Yeah. The business part, it can ruin the part that I love so much. That's why no one enjoys porn. Sorry, I should have said that.

No, but it's true. I mean, like any time you, you know, take a good thing and make it a business, it diminishes it, of course. Oh, God. are poor kids these days they're they're sex addicts and porn addicts before they even had sex I know it's depressing they're learning about sex through porn yeah and yeah that's a that's a healthy sex life it's yeah yeah speaking of like creating a moral hierarchy the people who make

and profit from porn I mean I don't know why they're not in prison but um I talk about exploitation Oh, yeah. Right. But it's the cigarette smokers and the people who doubt Zelensky who really should lose their jobs. Okay, let me end on a happy note. So you've said a lot of tough things about the music business and the people who profit from it. You describe them as leeches. I don't know that to be true because I've never been in your business, but we all know. We all know that. They're all calling them a leech. That's a pretty negative connotation. Just a blood-sucking parasite. In general, what a leech does is it parasites off of a living organism. And that leach isn't the one that's responsible for the life that it's leaching off of. Exactly.

And so it's an analogy. I don't want to be that negative or, like, hateful about it. I'm very grateful to my president, the record label president for standing up for me and for, but, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a business and a, in a situation that you stop paying attention for a half a second and you're ate up and spit out already and you're gone. Yeah, I believe that. It, uh, so who were, so here's the, the question I want to end on.

Because it is a positive question. Having been in it for 30 years, who are the good guys? Who are the artists who you know personally, who are actually in the green room good guys? Ooh, long sigh there. I keep my circle pretty small. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, Bob's, Bob's my friend.

That'd be Kid Rock. Mm-hmm. You know, I, I don't interact very much with the rest of the industry, really. I mean, I don't find myself in Nashville very often. I don't go to the gatherings and the parties. and the and the i'm i live out in the corn and the soybeans and the tobacco and and you know there's miles in every direction around my house of just agriculture i i so i don't really interact with the business very much.

I'm very particular about my inner circle and who I consider a friend. And I don't have a lot of those. So, I don't have a lot of... Big picture here, Aaron Lewis. I gave you a chance. So I was like, all right, who are the good guys? And you're like, uh?

Well, you know, this... This business is tough. Would you want your kids to go into it? No. And they've had, my, my oldest daughter, Zoe, is on one of my records singing traveling soldier by the Dixie Chicks, actually. And I don't know. So many people approached me. Like, I'll give her a record deal.

let's let's let's she doesn't want nothing to do with it my kids have my kids have been on the receiving end of all the shit that comes with this industry and all the sacrifice and all the all the the the the the disappointment and the you know i'm a i'm a slave to the grind you know the The grind has taken precedent over important things in my life that I can never get back. You know, monumental things. My kids' first steps, my kids' first words, my kids' first days of school, my kids' last days of school, my kids' graduations. I haven't been able to be there for a lot of them.

The sacrifice is real. Yeah. But it's created a situation where I just don't let very many people in. So in a big roundabout circle to answer your question, I have a lot of acquaintances in the industry. Like there's people that I have huge love and respect for. I'm like pen pals, like me and you. text all the time, me and Marilyn Manson text all the time.

Yeah. I haven't seen. He'd actually surprise you. I interviewed him in the 90s, Brian, and I thought he was smart in maybe 1999 at the Chateau Marmont, L.A. Brian is one of the most intelligent, profound conversations I have ever had with somebody. I like he's a and I use the word evil lightly but he's like an evil genius he is fully aware of every single button he is purposely pushing like all it's all been he's genius like he knows exactly what he's doing he knows exactly what buttons he's pushing and he's pushing them on. purpose.

Interesting. He's amazing. Jonathan Davis from Korn, one of my favorite people. I can believe you text with Marilyn Manson. He's like my modern day pen pal. We never actually talk on the phone. We just text.

Give him my best. I will. Aaron Lewis, thank you. Thank you. I'm going to go bird shooting with you. I look forward to it. I can't wait. I can't wait to watch you use your new hammer gun.

I don't know if I'll be able to use it correctly, but we'll find out. Thank you. My pleasure. We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day. We know the people who run it. Good people. While you're here, do us a favor. Hit follow and tap the bell so you never miss an episode.

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