Aaron Lewis doesn’t have any control of when songs come flying out of his head. “Songs just kind of come out of me like food poison,” he said during a telephone interview Thursday morning. He will get into a recording booth and sing to the music playing behind him. After he records it, he listens to what he sang and decides what works and what doesn’t. He’ll find a verse or two that he can use as the “backbone” to a song and fill out the rest of the song from there. Whether a song is for his solo country music career or rock band Staind, Lewis said, “I approach them the same way, just with different cans of paint.” Much of the difference is the lyrical content. “Country has allowed me to take my lyrical expression elsewhere. Staind has always been a purging of my feelings that I carry around. It’s nice to write songs that don’t hurt,” he said. Lewis returns to the Honeywell Center in Wabash Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $27, $39 and $60, and can be purchased at the box office from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday by calling 260-563-1102 or visiting www.honeywellcenter.org Lewis rose to fame as the lead singer of Staind. The band formed and released their first album in the mid 1990s. Lewis decided to go into country after some self reflection. “I was just thinking about what I was going to do different for a while. I realized I stayed true to myself throughout this whole career I have had and never molded myself for anyone,” Lewis said. “I realized the only thing I could do as a solo project ... to stay true to myself and to change things up was to put out a country album. Country was the first music I ever heard in my life.” During his first eight years of life, Lewis’ grandfather was his first babysitter. Through him, Lewis was exposed to legendary country artists like Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash. “Then we moved away from Vermont where grandpa lived and no one listened to country anymore,” Lewis said. His dad was listening then to artists like Cat Stevens and Gordon Lightfoot. “So country music went away (in our house), so I missed country music in the ’80s and ’90s until I started participating in it,” Lewis said. “For a while, honestly, I had no desire to listen to country. Then I got older.” It suited his life more as he was no longer an angry young man. He’s almost 41, married, and has three children. In 2011, Lewis released his debut country EP album “Town Line.” It earned the No. 1 spot on Billboard's top country albums chart, while his first single, “Country Boy,” was certified gold and received ACM and CMT Music Awards nominations. “Country Boy” featured guest appearances from George Jones and Charlie Daniels. Then this past November, Lewis released his first full country album “The Road” on Blaster Records through Warner Music Nashville. “The Road” features 10 tracks, including “Granddaddy’s Gun,” which is the first song Lewis has ever recorded that he didn’t write himself. It was written by Rhett Atkins, Dallas Davidson and Bobby Pinson. Lewis said he recorded it for multi-faceted reasons. He’s friends with the song writers, and he was under some time constraint. He wanted 10 songs on “The Road” and he was recording the album while on tour with Staind. He’d fly to Nashville, Tenn., to record it on his day off from the tour and then fly back. “I’m not afraid of a hard day’s work,” he noted. On several songs, listeners can hear different vocal textures from Lewis, depending on how strained his voice was from the Staind tour. “On ‘State Lines’ and ‘The Road,’ you can definitely hear the wear and tear on my voice,” he said. “It wasn’t going to stop me from recording the album. I didn’t want to go back and record the parts of the album where my voice was a little more rough. It was what it was.” Lewis said he writes 99 percent of everything he’s ever recorded. He tours like a maniac, including touring out with Staind at times six nights a week. On May 5, 2011, Lewis made his first concert appearance at the Honeywell Center. His only bandmate during the show was Ben Kitterman, who played the pedal steel guitar. For the March 28 show, Lewis said it was going to be “a very traditionally country show. It’s a full band. It’s the same way you hear it on the record. I’ll switch it up here and there, but it will be more focused on the two records of material I’ve put out for my solo career. It’s not so much Staind or covers.” For more information, visit: www.aaronlewismusic.com www.honeywellcenter.com
