Steven Tyler launching solo tour at The Venetian

Las Vegas tends to be even more nostalgic than usual around the Fourth of July, but this weekend brings something brand new from an unlikely suspect: Steven Tyler.

While hardly a year goes by without Aerosmith playing Vegas — though the band is now calling next year’s outing its farewell tour — Saturday at The Venetian is the first night of a solo tour previewing Tyler’s first solo album, “We’re All Somebody From Somewhere,” due July 15.

“Nashville’s been so good to me in the last year and a half,” the 68-year-old rocker recently told reporters in a teleconference. “The vibe here in Nashville is ridiculous. The passion, the soul. There’s still a big soul beating here … . So I’m loving it and I can’t wait to get on the tour with my country band, if you will.”

Tyler will do the solo tour with an existing band called Loving Mary. He acknowledged he “kind of got jealous” of other Aerosmith solo projects, though “nothing is really a solo anything,” whether it’s done with his old band or his new Nashville collaborators.

“I just wanted a record that, as they said in the old days, is like four or five deep. Which means there’s possibly, possibly four or five singles,” he said. “And as you know, country music still plays stuff with melody. I have a sorcerer’s grasp of melody, I like to think.”

Those looking for flag-waving entertainment should know one song on the new album is called “Red, White &You.” No guarantees it will be on the set list, but Tyler said this to reporters:

“I’ve got ears for classic. I’ve got ears for great riffs that I could just throw down on. … So when I heard that I thought, well, this is something that could possibly be a single because of the way it bangs into the chorus, literally. ‘Bang, bang, baby like the 4th of July,’ and it just caught my ear.”

The album also has a new arrangement of the Aerosmith hit “Janie’s Got a Gun.” But Tyler told reporters the jump to country is easier than some fans might think.

Nashville songwriter Hillary Lindsey “turned me on to, to my voice, to a part of it that I never even knew existed,” he said. “And the beauty of coming down here and working with a bunch of country folks is, A, I was cut on country; B, I am a country boy; and C, it was all about the Everly Brothers to me.”

Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com and follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.