Jaron Lowenstein Says a Country Prayer

With a title like 'Pray for You,' the debut single from Jaron and the Long Road to Love seems unlikely to engender any controversy ... until the chorus kicks in, that is.

The song, which is quickly gaining traction at country radio, starts off sweetly enough as a minister admonishes a parishioner to turn the other cheek and wish his ex well. Instead, the aggrieved party turns cheeky, praying that all kinds of misfortune befall his foe.

The tune was inspired, in part, by a woman who did Jaron Lowenstein wrong. "After breaking up with an ex-girlfriend, I realized that her saying 'Things aren't working out' meant 'I'm cheating on you,'" he says. "So I sat down to get revenge the best way I know how: the three Ps: pen, paper and a piano."

The protagonist in 'Pray for You' doesn't let his ex off so easy. Instead, he prays for such relatively benign incidents as "a flowerpot falls from a windowsill" or "your birthday comes and no one calls" to the more malevolent "I pray your brakes go out running down a hill" or "your tire blows out at 110."

Despite the fact that it's all meant in good fun, the song, which Jaron co-wrote with Joel Brentlinger, is a lightning rod at some stations.

"There are occasional calls about people hating the song, but they tend to be from people who are still angry at the chicken for crossing the road in the first place," says Jaron, who self-released the single.

Just like in the song, some members of the clergy are even weighing in. "One pastor wrote, 'The lyrics provide catharsis and teach the jilted party that after all the screaming, praying and cursing [at] the ex is over, we're left only with ourselves ... so we might as well dispose of our anger so that we can wake up to a brighter tomorrow'," Jaron reports.

If Jaron Lowenstein's name sounds familiar, that's because he was half of Evan & Jaron. The duo, which included his identical twin brother, scored three Top 40 hits starting in 2001, including 'Crazy for This Girl.' After stepping away from music for a few years, he realized he was ignoring his calling. "Back in March, when the country was so scared about the future, I picked up a guitar to make myself feel better and it worked. I realized then that I needed to share that feeling with others. It was my job to entertain people and I had stopped doing that." He relocated from Los Angeles to Nashville this summer "and humbly crashed on my buddy's couch ... I'm still there."