A whole new stage for Steven Tyler
The iconic rocker turns country artist — and storyteller for an intimate summer tour
You’ve never seen Steven Tyler quite like this.
A year after launching a solo country career, the Aerosmith frontman is hitting the road this summer with a new band (Nashville-based Loving Mary) and a different approach to playing live. On his 19-city Out on a Limb tour, which kicks off July 2 in Las Vegas, the rock icon is trading arenas for more intimate concert venues, where he’ll rework Aerosmith classics and tell stories behind some of the band’s most beloved hits.
The idea stems from an acoustic performance he did last fall as part of PBS’s series Front and Center.
“What would I not pay to go see (Paul) McCartney, but instead of playing with whoever he’s with now, actually do (a show) where he tells you what he was thinking when he wrote Yesterday?” says Tyler, 68. “That’s what I’m doing. I figured I’d talk about Sweet
Emotion and Dream On and where I was when I wrote it, and Seasons of Wither and how I played it.”
Fans got a sneak preview of Out on a Limb Monday in New York, where Tyler hosted a benefit show at Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall for Janie’s Fund. Created by the singer in partnership with Youth Villages, the initiative offers support to young women and girls who have been abused or neglected. That has been important to Tyler since he wrote Aerosmith’s stirring Janie’s Got a
Gun, about a girl who takes revenge on her incestuous father. “When I wrote Janie’s Got a
Gun, I didn’t really know who or what it was — it was just a phrase off the top of my head that worked in the particular piano riff I was writing,” Tyler says. “But soon after, I found out about how many girls get abused in America and around the world.”
Since touring with Aerosmith last summer, Tyler has played a handful of one-off concerts and festivals, and he recently bought a home in Nashville. He has released two singles as a country artist ( Love is Your Name and
Red, White and You), and is finishing up a still-untitled album with producer T Bone Burnett.
“It’s a full-on country feel,” Tyler says. “People ask me, ‘Why’d you go country?’ It was almost a shoo-in. I always wanted to do Everly Brothers.”
Although the project hasn’t been embraced by everyone (including his Aerosmith bandmate Joe Perry), Tyler says the change of course is just what he needed right now.
“Look, I don’t expect to hit like The Beatles or be the second coming of Aerosmith,” Tyler says. After four decades with the band, “it was time for a little break. I’m such a passionate person that if I don’t go after my muse like that, I’ll wind up on drugs again. I’ll wind up arguing with people and just no good.”