(CMT Offstage keeps a 24/7 watch on everything that's happening with country music artists behind the scenes and out of the spotlight.)

Jason Aldean took the stage at California's Stagecoach festival on Friday (April 27), but not before thinking back to his first time in 2007. The crowd was sparse, it was hot and he was far from being the headliner.

"Man, it's a tough gig," Aldean told the Los Angeles Times, remembering those festival shows early in his career. "You go out in the middle of the day, it's 100-something degrees. A lot of times when you play early on, not everybody's at the show yet -- they're hanging out in their campers or whatever they doing. It's not like later in the night, when the weather starts to cool down and everybody comes out. It's tough for an artist who has to go on early in the day, and we did our fair share of that stuff."

And while Aldean has definitely climbed the gig ladder in the last five years, he prefers to just be known for his music and his live shows.

"I really haven't been a media darling. A lot of people are; they're almost known more for their media stuff than they are for their actual music. For me, this was about going out, playing our songs, playing our show to let people see what it was that we did," he said. "It was never about smoke and mirrors."