Leftists have portrayed Jason Aldean’s song “Try That in A Small Town,” now Number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100,  as a racist anthem to lynching, especially since Columbia, Tennessee, where the video was shot, was the site of a 1927 lynching.

In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous.…

— Jason Aldean (@Jason_Aldean) July 18, 2023

Brad Premo, a combat veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division and the founder of the Leadslingers Whiskey told RedState he grew up in Columbia, and the Left has it all wrong. Premo, who lives in and runs his spirits company from Nashville, said:

My dad is an auto worker, and I was born in Michigan, lived there until I was 10, and then when General Motors opened the plant in Spring Hill, which is just north of Columbia, my family moved to Columbia, Tennessee, and that’s been pretty much home base for my family for the last 30, 33 years now. I personally consider myself to be blessed and very lucky that I grew up in a small town.

I could be wrong, but whoever, you know, decided to film the video at the square in Columbia, they probably picked it cuz it’s a beautiful square with a historic courthouse; it just makes a great setting having no idea that anything bad had ever happened there.

I don’t want to downplay the, you know, how horrific lynching was. It’s definitely a stain on our history. But Murray County and Columbia, Tennessee, one, is not really known to anybody outside the immediate area. I’m sure this New York Times reporter has never heard of Columbia, Tennessee until he started wanting to find an angle to write about this video.

Secondly, very few people in Columbia know about that history. There were comparatively few lynchings in Columbia compared to some other places in the South—that’s not to excuse it, but, you know, I make that point in that those events were over 100 years ago and just really have not been a major piece of the history of that town.

I think about the way I grew up in Columbia— I had a great childhood, and a lot of that was because I lived in a small town. I mean, I kept a fishing pole in my trunk, and I’d be out if I saw a nice-looking creek; I’d just pull up the side of the road and jump in and start fishing.

Premo said he is not a big Jason Aldean or country music fan, but the sentiments of the song ring true to his memories of Columbia.

The small-town feel, it’s a more laid-back way of life, and people wave at each other when you pass on the road. You’d be standing in line at the grocery store, and you’re probably gonna strike up a conversation with a person behind you.

Given the politics attached to the song, the Iraq War veteran and former paratrooper said his life was much more segregated in Michigan than in Columbia.

I had the unique experience of having lived in Flint, Michigan–that’s where I was born—and having lived in Columbia. The entire time that I lived in Michigan, I never spoke to a black person the entire time I lived there—and it’s not because my family avoids black people or anything like that. I was never around black people.

A lot of places up north, it is highly segregated. I moved to Tennessee and to Columbia, and I walk into my fourth-grade class for the first day, and half the class are black kids.

That the first time I was ever in a classroom with people who weren’t white, and it’s the first time I even had the opportunity be to make friends, who were not white kids like me. I didn’t have any problems, and it was never a problem, but people wanna paint the South with this broad brush that we’re all just inherently racist and evil people.

He says that racism isn’t a problem constrained by geography, though, saying,

But I would submit that racism, yeah, it’s alive in the South, but you know what? It’s alive everywhere.