Aaron Lewis first made a splash on the music scene back in the early 2000s as the frontman for Staind when the group’s first single, “It’s Been Awhile,” helped springboard its third studio album into the top spot in the Billboard Top 200 album charts.
Lewis has remained busy since then, even embarking on a solo career, but if it has been a while since you have heard his stuff on the radio, he said there is a good reason for that. The 53-year-old made the switch over to country music, but he said his politics have kept his music from getting much airplay.
“They won’t play me,” Lewis said in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson. “They don’t like my thoughts on things.”
Lewis said it all began when Barack Obama took office.
“Obama getting elected,” he said. “I immediately recognized it as a horrible blow to our country, immediately, not even knowing why yet.”
Lewis told Carlson that he “just knew instinctively in my gut that we had made a massive, massive mistake as a country.
“TMZ would get me when I landed in L.A., and they’d get me and ask me questions and that was when I started expressing my feelings and opinions on politics.”
Taste of Country noted that Lewis also had a situation at a concert in Texas when he told the crowd that he did not “know how to speak Spanish. I’m American,” that led to him being called a racist.
“The world ended for, like, a week,” he told Carlson. “Broke the internet. Aaron Lewis a racist. Perez Hilton did a hit piece on me. They would write these hit pieces and actually attach the video that completely contradicted the hit piece.”
Despite the criticism, Lewis told Carlson he still believes in his sentiment.
“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 of this country,” he said.
Despite his lack of airplay, Lewis told Carlson he is happy and plays “175, 180 shows (per year). Pretty much all of them sold out.”
“It’s nice not to 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 me ticket for a low-dough $10 ticket and I’ve just devalued my value in that market by selling such a cheap ticket.
“I don’t need to sell myself short by doing favors for a radio station.”
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.pennlive.com ’
