Aaron Tippin

Aaron Tippin is ready to rock.

Thats right: the most countrified of country-music performers is changing his style. He made his reputation with such hard-core honky-tonk performances as "Working Mans Ph.D.", "Kiss This",  "Youve Got to Stand for Something", and "There Aint Nothing Wrong with the Radio", but now hes trying something a little different.

Dont worry. He's still Aaron Tippin, and he'll always be a country singer. But his sound is getting a makeover.

"I feel like theres still great music in me," says the multi-million selling entertainer. "The only evolution is that I'm putting more of the roots where I came from -- the Carolinas -- into the sound.  It has the southern-rock influence, with that rockin guitar sound from The Marshall Tucker Band and Charlie Daniels. I'm cross-breeding that with the steel and fiddle. And you'll still hear me yodeling on the new stuff."

"Its just what I call cranking it up to 11. I want to draw new ears to Aaron Tippin. I also think the fans who originally liked Aaron Tippin are still out there. And I think this will bring them back to life and bring my music back to life for them."

Thus, the new single has the perfectly self-descriptive title "Ready to Rock (In a Country Kind of Way)". It does indeed rock his sound with new energy. Yet it is also undeniably and unmistakably country.

His career began in 1990 with RCA Records where five of his albums became Gold Records. One is Platinum. Between 1990 and 1997, he scored six top-10 hits, had two No. 1 records and created such memorable moments as "The Call of the Wild", "I Got it Honest" and "Whole Lotta Love on the Line". He appeared on the soundtracks of such films as The Beverly Hillbillies (1993) and Fire Down Below (1997) and became the commercial spokesman for ChannelLock Tools. Success as a songwriter for others also continued, as Garth Brooks, Charley Pride, Kenny Chesney and others recorded Tippin tunes.

He signed with Disneys Lyric Street Records in 1998 and immediately scored back-to-back hits with "For You I Will" and "I'm Leaving". Aaron Tippin's popularity spiked again in the new millennium thanks to the chart-topping "Kiss This" (2000) and "Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly" (2002), as well as his sixth Gold Record and first Academy of Country Music awards nomination. Another high-profile appearance was on 2003's tribute CD The Songs of Hank Williams Jr.: A Bocephus Celebration, singing the anthemic "Family Tradition."

During the first Gulf War in 1990, Aaron Tippin had become the first singer to go to Saudi Arabia to entertain the troops. In 2002 he went to Afghanistan. Since 2003, he has been making annual visits to our forces in Iraq and become the spokesman for the Paralyzed Veterans of America. In 2005 he became the first country artist to donate funds to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
"When I'd sing 'Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly', I started sending five-gallon buckets out into the crowd that said, Katrina on them. People just poured out of the stands. I get all choked up watching that. I recorded the song right after 9-11, but its not about 9-11. Its about Katrina. And the next time it will be about whatever catastrophe we Americans have to deal with. I wrote it to represent a feeling that we can always come back to. Be proud to be an American. Thats whats most important when the chips are down."

"The fans are truly amazing. Theyre the reason I still have a job. Im a very lucky man. Ive been fortunate enough to have written some songs that have had an impact on some people. After all the years of doing this, what means most of all to me is to have written a song and hearing people say, Hey man, thats neat."

"I am in the music business now more than Ive ever been before. Im like a six-year-old on a bicycle on my first down-hill run. I dont know whats at the bottom of the hill, but I am excited and unafraid. So its scary and fun and all these emotions at once."