At the end of Jason Aldean‘s 2023 Highway Desperado Tour, the “Dirt Road Anthem” singer showed his gratitude for his tour opener, Corey Kent, with an outrageous gift.
It has become a rite of passage in country music that the headliner buys something nice for their opening acts at the conclusion of a tour, as a way of saying thanks for partnering up with them.
Kent was a guest on Taste of Country Nights recently, so we asked him: What did Aldean get you as a gift?
“I knew you were gonna ask me this, and this is gonna make me seem bougie,” he said with a laugh, adding: “He got me a Rolex.”
But that Rolex isn’t just a watch, it’s a symbol of something much bigger.
Kent explains that Aldean took him “under his wing and brought me on my first big tour.”
“He was like, ‘Garth Brooks did this for me when I went on my first big tour — he got me a Rolex, and I still have it to this day,'” Kent says Aldean told him.
The “This Heart” singer admits he’s never had anything so expensive or valuable — or even so meaningful — given to him. He almost cried when Aldean presented it to him.
At first, Kent says he didn’t wear the watch, just kept it in a safe and would open it sometimes just to look at it. Once, he wore it to a wedding. But he realized it shouldn’t spend its life in a safe, and he decided to wear it more often, saying to himself: “‘This is dumb. This is an awesome watch and I’m gonna let it spend its life in a safe?’ So then I started wearing it and I was like, ‘I’m just gonna start wearing this as much as I can.'”
Fast-forward to 2025, and Kent is opening for Morgan Wallen on his I’m The Problem Tour on select dates, beginning with NRG Stadium in Houston on June 20. We can’t wait to ask him what Wallen gives him.
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