It’s been awhile since anyone shook things up in the small hilltown of Worthington, Massachusetts. But this past summer Aaron Lewis, the brooding, righteously inked frontman for the rock band Staind, traded lip service for a little hard rock when he rolled up his sleeves, grabbed his beat up Gibson, and hit the road in an effort to help save his town’s elementary school.
When the R. H. Conwell Education Center, which the famed rocker’s daughter attends, was forced to close its doors in June due to budget cuts, Lewis sprung to action. “This town depends on the school,” he said. “We have no commerce. We have a stoplight with a country store, and that’s literally it. It’s a town of 1,200 people and the only thing we have is the elementary school.” The singer, along with his wife Vanessa and other Worthington residents, banded together to form the nonprofit organization It Takes a Community, which is designed to financially assist rural communities in crisis throughout greater New England. “My family has seen firsthand the necessity for smaller communities to have a voice and to determine their own local needs and priorities,” says Lewis. “Our foundation strives to build a collective of local community members and empower them to take charge of their own community’s future.”
ITAC’s first order of business was to raise enough funds to transition the R. H. Conwell Education Center from a district-run facility to a private institution over the three-month summer break. Lewis used his clout as a chart-topping musician and performed some intimate benefit shows in June and July, donating his earnings to the foundation to help in their efforts to reopen the Center in time for the start of classes come fall. “The state took everything,” Lewis says. “We had to buy back all of the desks, furniture, and everything else.” He also threw a major benefit concert in August in his home state where he was joined for acoustic performances by a number of very special friends including Brad Arnold and Chris Henderson of 3 Doors Down, Brendan Kelly of the Chicago-based punk band The Lawrence Arms and The Falcon, the hard rock outfit Lo Pro, and Jeff Keith of Tesla.
In September, the Lewises and a cluster of parents, teachers and volunteers, gathered on the small front lawn of the R. H. Conwell Education Center to welcome 47 students back to the building, which houses preschool through sixth grade. The ever humble Lewis downplayed his significant role in the effort, giving credit to the community as a whole for caring enough about the historical and educational value of the school to fight for its resurrection as a private institution. "We're not turning anyone away," he told Billboard magazine. Sustaining the success of ITAC's initial mission by keeping the school running, he acknowledges, will require a continued dedication. The singer estimates it will cost up to $300,000 a year to keep the school open. But the Lewises are committed to the cause. Already in the works for next summer are another string of benefit performances.
Long a target of critics who paint him as a miserable, bellyaching lyricist, Aaron Lewis is one of our most poignant songwriters. He speaks to a generation of kids through cathartic and compelling songs like “It’s Been Awhile” and “Outside,” and has sold in excess of 15 million albums with Staind. For the past couple years this fervent road warrior has spent his downtime from Staind playing a run of sold out solo acoustic dates where he performs stripped down versions of the band's songs, covers and fan requests. The acoustic gigs bring everything full circle for Lewis, who started out playing bars and coffee houses when he was a teenager. He relishes the intimacy of the shows, which are completely improvised, and the freedom they allow him to play songs the way they were initially written—on an acoustic guitar. “I didn’t own an electric guitar until 14 Shades of Gray (Staind’s fourth album),” says Lewis. “I didn’t even have a guitar with steel strings on it until I was like 14 or 15. I learned on a nylon-string classical guitar. It was my dad’s guitar, and I got that guitar when my dad got a new one.”
Staind is on the tail end of their break from promoting and touring behind their 2008 album, The Illusion of Progress, which has sold 379,000 copies in the US and debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200. Lewis, an avid hunter and fisherman, says the band plan to reconvene in his barn sometime after hunting season ends to start work on their next record.
Although no one's saying what musical direction Staind will take on their next album, fans can expect to hear a definite country flavor on Lewis’s forthcoming debut solo album. “It’s acoustic guitar based and I recorded it in Nashville with a bunch of country session musicians,” he says. Lewis calls the new record a cross between country, James Taylor, and his most well received work with Stand. A release date hasn’t been set for the as-yet-untitled album. The first single from the solo set is called “Country Boy” and features guest spots by Charlie Daniels, George Jones and Hank Williams, Jr.
Aaron Lewis recently partnered with Gibson to launch the Aaron Lewis Signature Southern Jumbo Guitar, which was unveiled to industry professionals at NAMM 2010 in January. The guitar was produced in a limited run of 413 with the first 13 signed and played personally by Lewis and hand-aged in the Gibson Montana Art shop, to look and feel in every way exactly like the original 1951 model Lewis fell in love with at Willie’s American Guitars in St. Paul, Minnesota. “It’s just an amazing sounding guitar,” says Lewis, who is playing the six-string every night on his current solo tour, which wraps in November.
