And to add to his cheer squad, country star Randy Travis and his wife, Mary, spoke to Fox News and wholeheartedly backed the song. They're giving Aldean even more love and support amidst all the fuss.
From Fox News:
Mary, who speaks for Randy after the singer suffered a major stroke in 2013 and now has limited speech, said, "You know, when we heard the song, when we saw the video, our first inclination was, we live in a small town. We feel the same way. And we want the world to feel that way because we really do want to protect our country."
Randy nodded in agreement as she added, "There's some things that have gotten sideways … and it's not racial, and it's not any of those things. It's just where we want to be as a country and the things that established our country. Why is it so hard to believe that we're going to protect our own? I mean, that's what we do with our armed forces. That's what we do with our family. If somebody storms in your front door and threatens your wife or your children, what do you do?"
She argued, with Randy nodding and saying, "Yeah," in support, that the footage in Aldean's video came from media outlets covering actual current events, "So, it didn't strike us as anything that he was highlighting any more than what news media did."
She also noted the issue that people have been taking with the courthouse featured in the video. It was the site of a lynching in 1927, but Aldean's wasn't the only project to feature that specific location. Several movies and music videos have been filmed there, including the 2022 Lifetime Original movie "Steppin’ into the Holiday" with Jana Kramer and Mario Lopez; the 2022 Paramount holiday film "A Nashville Country Christmas" with Tanya Tucker; and a Runaway June video for their 2019 track "We Were Rich."
"As far as the particular courthouse or whatever," Mary said, "any courthouse in the United States of America that's been around a while … something happened there. And so just to go and pick a courthouse and then identify, ‘Well, that happened there,' you could go to any courthouse across the country and find something you didn't like going on there."
I'm totally on the same page as Randy and Mary Travis.
Especially regarding that "courthouse" drama. Come on, let's be real; finding any significant building in this country without a dark history is like searching for a needle in a haystack.
