Staind’s Aaron Lewis on a country road

It’s been more than two years since Aaron Lewis released his current country album, “The Road.” But don’t expect a new album from him this year.

“I kind of missed my window of opportunity to get it out this year,” Lewis said in a mid-February phone interview. “The last thing in the world I want to do is put out a record in the fourth quarter.”

The fourth quarter would be fall, and that’s the time when many of the biggest-selling artists release albums so they’ll have new music available in time for Christmas shoppers. Unless you’re a household name, a fall release is a good way to have a new album get lost in the shuffle.

So Lewis is aiming for the first half of 2016 to release the album, even though he could go into the studio tomorrow if necessary.

“It’s all written and it’s ready to go,” he said. “I’ve just got to go into the studio and actually fully record it.”

In fact, Lewis said he probably will perform songs that are earmarked for the new album on his full-band tour this winter and spring.

“I have a tendency to throw in songs that are written that haven’t been recorded yet, so I’m sure there will be quite a few songs in there that are going to be on the next record,” Lewis said.

Whenever the new album arrives, it will be in the same stylistic vein as Lewis’ debut EP, 2011’s “Town Line” and the full-length, “The Road.”

“It’s more good old fashioned traditional country – something that I feel like the country genre needs desperately,” Lewis said. “There ain’t much country in it at the moment.”

Indeed, Lewis is one of only a handful of contemporary artists in today’s rocked-up, low-twang era for mainstream country whose music sounds at all rooted in the classic country of Merle Haggard, George Jones or other artists of the 1960s and ‘70s.

That situation is rather ironic considering that Lewis has more rock credentials – and rock credibility – than virtually any of today’s stars who are amping up country with a big dose of rock.

He is the lead singer and one of the songwriters in Staind, one of the more popular hard rock/metal bands of the past dozen years.

Beginning with its third album, 2001’s “Break the Cycle,” Staind had three straight albums top the “Billboard” magazine album chart (2003’s “14 Shades of Grey” and 2005’s “Chapter V” were the others). The two albums that followed, “The Illusion of Progress” (2008) and “Staind” (2011), were also significant successes.

With his background, Lewis would seem more than capable of writing songs that would fit on mainstream country music. Lewis, though, is emphatic about staying true to his traditional country roots.

His terse response to whether he thinks about writing radio-suitable songs when he makes an album said it all: “F*** no. I’m not going to let radio destroy my music.”

Instead, Lewis is proud to be seen as one of the most traditional of today’s country artists. And even in a genre where careers are usually built around having hit singles, he is finding he can have a viable solo career even though his highest charting single has been “Endless Summer.” That song (from “The Road” album) peaked at No. 39 on the country singles chart.

“I’ll tell you, all of those artists that are desperately depending on country radio playing their songs don’t sell any more tickets than I do – until you get into like the top ones that sell out arenas and things of that size,” Lewis said. “But any of us that are down playing the theaters and honky tonks and those types of places, none of those artists that are desperate for radio to play them and artists that are getting a lot of radio play, they don’t sell any more tickets than I do. I guess that goes to show you that you don’t have to sell your soul to the radio station people in order to sell tickets.”

Lewis came to his country music sound honestly. Growing up in Massachusetts, he was immersed in traditional country.

“Traditional country music was what my childhood soundtrack was,” he said. “My grandfather was a huge country music fan, and the radio, the music was on all the time, always, always, always, from the time that people woke up in the morning to the time that the last light got shut out. It was literally like the radio got shut off and the last light went out and everybody was in bed.”

Lewis figures to keep plugging away with his country career by touring extensively in 2015.

Although Staind toured last summer, the group is currently on hold.

Lewis said Staind guitarist Mike Mushok has joined a new band fronted by former Three Days Grace singer Adam Gontier and will concentrate on that venture for now.

“We haven’t broken up. It’s not disbanded,” Lewis said of Staind. “He (Mushok) is just off doing what he’s doing and I’m doing what I’m doing,”

And if Lewis isn’t getting a promotional push from country radio or with a new album, he has been in the news recently for a pair of incidents. He would just as soon forget the first news-making event.

In October, he flubbed a line in “The Star Spangled Banner,” when he sang the national anthem before game five of the World Series. Instead of the line: “What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,” Lewis used part of another verse, singing “What so proudly we hailed were so gallantly streaming.”

“It absolutely destroyed me,” Lewis said. “That’s one of the most sacred songs to this country and to have sung the right words, but in he wrong spot, that was pretty devastating to me. I don’t even know that I’ve gotten over it yet.”

Lewis also was caught in a swirl of controversy when he sang a satirical version of Tyler Farr’s hit, “Redneck Crazy,” at one of his concerts in January. Lewis took issue with the song lyrics, which talk about a guy who shows up at 3 a.m. at an ex’s house to disrupt whatever she’s doing with a new boyfriend. “I'm gonna lean my headlights into your bedroom windows/Throw empty beer cans at both of your shadows,” the song says.

Lewis objected to such behavior being called “redneck crazy” as opposed to just plain crazy, as if only rednecks would do such things.

But a video of Lewis’ parody of “Redneck Crazy” was posted to YouTube. The Internet blew up and website TMZ called his performance “an attack on women.” That, of course, was a misinterpretation of Lewis’ intent.

Meanwhile, many messagers felt the video was an attack on Farr, who did a number of radio interviews in which he took issue with Lewis and his version of “Redneck Crazy.” Lewis said he has not yet been able to talk with Farr to try to put the issue to rest.

“I mean, radio stations had him (Farr) calling in to talk about how he felt about it,” Lewis said. “And I heard one of them, and he was like ‘I don’t know what I did to piss in his Corn Flakes.’ So even he didn’t get it. I wasn’t making fun of him. It was the lyrical content of the damn song, painting that behavior as redneck behavior. I know plenty of rednecks that wouldn’t do something like that.”

This story was originally published April 6, 2015 at 11:00 PM with the headline "Staind’s Aaron Lewis on a country road."