Love for working class, service people is Tippin's theme

Courtesy Aaron Tippin

Aaron Tippin

Well-known for singing the praises of the working class and people who serve, country singer Aaron Tippin has long felt a special kinship with the men and women charged with battling blazes in this country.

But the importance of what firefighters do literally hit home for him three years ago, says Tippin, who performs at a benefit for the Memphis Firefighters Association Friday at the Agricenter's Show Place Arena.

"One of my neighbors decided to burn trash on the windiest fall day of the year, and almost burned my house down," recalls Tippin, who lives on a 500-acre farm "out in the sticks" near Liberty, Tenn., about 60 miles outside of Nashville. "(The fire department) and the forest service came with a crawler crane and fire trucks and saved our house. So, I've kind of got a soft spot for them."

His gratitude toward firefighters has even led Tippin, an aviator since he was a teenager who has three planes, a hangar and 2,000-foot runway on his property, to issue an open invitation to his local fire department to use them.

"If they need a firefighting platform from the air, it's open to them," says Tippin. "I think they're part of a great team. Not just our fire department guys but our law enforcement guys and our military guys. I'm fond of anybody who's serving our country."

That Tippin should have such a soft spot for the working man should come as no surprise. The 53-year-year old, who when his house was threatened joined in to help dig fire ditches and save livestock, has never shied away from hard work.

Raised in South Carolina, he earned his pilot's license when he was 15 years old, about the same time he started playing in bands. At age 20, with a wife, and baby daughter on the way, Tippin took a job as a private pilot. After a few years, he quit, tired of feeling like a taxi driver, and picked up music again.

For several years Tippin worked as a laborer by day -- heavy equipment operator, truck driver, tobacco cutter, whatever he could find -- and played music by night, a routine that eventually drove away his first wife. Cleaning up his lifestyle, he came to Nashville in 1986 to compete on a daily, televised talent competition. After winning his day, he lost the artist of the week competition but received encouragement from "Ode To Billy Joe" singer Jeannie C. Riley.

The next year, Tippin moved to Nashville and worked as a welder until he signed his first publishing deal.

In 1991, at the ripe age of 33, Tippin made his debut as a recording artist. His first single, "You've Got to Stand for Something," become an anthem of the first Gulf War that year and set a precedent for blue-collar themed songs to follow, including 1993's "Working Man's Ph.D." In 2001, Tippin provided the country with another wartime song in "Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly," which raised more than $250,000 for the American Red Cross in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.

A decade later, Tippin sees America under attack again as the working people he identifies with and sings about struggle with the economy.

"I think the majority of this nation is feeling the crunch now if you look at where unemployment is today," says Tippin, determined to stay apolitical. "People are coming out and saying things like, 'Man I wish I could afford a T-shirt, too, but I'll have to get it next time Aaron.' But they're out there doing it and making it and making the best of it. When they come to a show, they're looking for a lot of fun and to drive the blues away."

Tippin tried to haul some of those blues himself on his last record, 2009's In Overdrive. The light-hearted collection was devoted to one of the most time-honored traditions in country music, the trucking song, with covers of the oft-recorded "Six Days On the Road," Eddie Rabbit's "Drivin' My Life Away," and theme to the Burt Reynolds movie Smokey and the Bandit, "East Bound and Down."

"What fun that was," says Tippin. "I'm just an old truck driver. I still drive the bus once in awhile. I get up there and hang out in the front and do my part. I just felt I need to do my tribute to the truckers and help America remember that everything they eat or are using probably came to them on the back of a truck."

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Aaron Tippin

8 p.m. Friday at Agricenter Show Place Arena, 7777 Walnut Grove Rd. Tickets: $26. For tickets and other information, call (901) 324-9010.

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