Photo by Ed Rode
Ready to take a musical cue from Travis Tritt and put some drive in your country? Maybe just take a drive ever so slightly outside the city to the (sort of) country to catch a concert from a legendarily country artist? Look no further than Hop Springs. It’s true—no pshtt.
Tritt and his world-renowned country-clubbing style are taking to the large outdoor stage at the local beer park/music venue in April as one of many stops among a plethora of new concert dates for Tritt in the coming months. He and his band (this date is a full-band stop, although not all on the tour are) are sure to bring the Southern rock and classic country heat, along with new music, too. After some delay last year, Tritt’s new album, Set in Stone, is set for release on May 7. Plus, appropriately enough for a brewery, his nostalgic new single (following the first, the reassuring Aaron Raitiere co-write “Ghost Town Nation”) from the project is titled “Smoke in a Bar.”
So put some drive in your country. When the music gets you dancing, you know that can’t be wrong.
Accomplished director David Abbott directed “Smoke in a Bar”—“he’s the best!” said Tritt about Abbott (Abbott directed the fun-loving, all-out brawl of a video “You Can Have Him, Jolene” for CMT’s Next Women of Country family girl group Chapel Hart, too).
“It’s getting back to that classic, no-frills, outlaw-country sound,” Tritt says of Set in Stone. Not that he ever left such a sound, but still it’s refreshing to say that after a long hiatus from full-length original projects, the whiskey is still working plenty well. Released through Big Noise Label Group and produced by Dave Cobb (Chris Stapleton, Shooter Jennings, The Highwomen, Sturgill Simpson, The Oak Ridge Boys), the new album features 11 new songs, eight of which were co-written by Tritt.
Set In Stone marks Tritt’s first original full-length studio album in over a decade. He pays homage here to all sides of his musical personality along with the trademarks of his originality—be it through opening with the rowdy “Stand Your Ground” or powerful love songs like “Leave This World,” with searing country-rockers like the first single, “Ghost Town Nation.”
Some of the most landmark moments of Tritt’s iconic career have Murfreesboro to thank. His memorably heart-wrenching trilogy of music videos “Anymore,” “Tell Me I Was Dreaming” and “If I Lost You” still feel like mini-movies as they vividly follow the story of war veteran Mac (portrayed by Tritt), his best friend and the love of his life, Annie. Some of the moments in these stories were filmed at Murfreesboro’s Tennessee State Veterans’ Home. To this day, Tritt says he holds the utmost respect for veterans, no doubt in large part to this video project.
“The thing I love most about this particular song is the video that we did for it,” Tritt said of “Anymore” at a show in 2019. “This turned out to be one of the biggest hits of my career and that was a wonderful thing to see happen, especially since I was one of the writers on this song. But the video actually gave me my first acting job. In this video I played the part of a disabled American veteran. And I knew as soon as I read the script, it was going to be something special. But I was also nervous. I was nervous because we were going to film it in an actual veterans’ hospital in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. And everybody in the video with the exception of myself and about four other actors were all veterans . . . either veterans that were actual patients or staff members. And I was afraid, because I had never served . . . I was afraid that those people were going to hate me, that I was going to go in there, sit down in a wheelchair and try to portray myself as one of them and they were going to look at me and go ‘Who does this guy think he is?’
“I was very concerned about that,” he continued. “And the morning that we started filming . . . as soon as I sat down in that wheelchair, I found myself surrounded by all of these actual veterans. And I found out very quickly, they did not hate me at all. Quite the contrary, they were just happy that someone was there to tell their story. Before the day was over, I knew every single one of them by first name. They told me very personal stories . . . it was just a very special experience.”
A few weeks later the team brought the music video to debut at the VA.
“I was sitting to the side of the stage, watching the video play on the big screen,” the artist said. “I wasn’t watching the screen. I was looking out into the audience as the video played. Before it ended I looked out and I did not see one person in the audience who didn’t have a little bit of a tear rolling down their cheek.”
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“It touched my heart so much that as soon as I got home, I called my senator and my congressman and I said, ‘I don’t know if there’s anything that a country music singer like me can do, but if there’s any way that I can be of service to veterans or veterans’ issues in this country, I would like to volunteer for that.’”
As a result of those calls, Tritt served as the celebrity chairman and the spokesperson of the Disabled American Veterans Association for four years in a row. The two years following that, he served with the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
“That six-year period was one of the greatest times of my life,” Tritt said. “If you look up the word ‘hero’ in the dictionary, you should see the faces of all of these men and women right there next to that word.”
On that note, take the time to get out and enjoy this April 23 Hop Springs experience in an open field. As Tritt sings in “Where Corn Don’t Grow,” hard times are real, there’s dusty fields no matter where you go, but you may change your mind, ’cause the weeds are high where corn don’t grow.
And here’s a quarter’s worth of free advice: don’t let the term “pod” keep you away from the socially distanced event. It might sound otherworldly but all it means is that you and your present company will be ever-so-slightly separated from others by a small fence.
Travis Tritt with opener Frank Foster play Hop Springs Beer Park on Friday, April 23, at 7 p.m. Tickets are available via Ticketmaster; options include both pod seating and general admission. Hop Springs is located at 6790 John Bragg Hwy.
Find more on Travis Tritt at travistritt.com.
It’s a goofy thing but I’ve just gotta say, hey! I’m doing alright. There’s some hard times in the neighborhood. But why can’t every day be just this good?
