Brad Paisley Makes ‘Country Music’ His Mission

Any artist bold enough to title an album 'This is Country Music' definitely has a lot to live up to, but with one listen to the 15 songs on his new disc, released today (May 23), it's obvious Brad Paisley delivers the goods. The Country Music Association's reigning Entertainer of the Year recruits an interesting mix of special guests including pals Carrie Underwood and Blake Shelton, rockers Don Henley and Sheryl Crow and even legendary actor/director Clint Eastwood to weave a colorful musical tapestry that showcases the diverse elements that have influenced his career.

It's a sunny spring day on Brad's 85-acre Tennessee farm. Sons Huck, 4, and Jasper, 2, are taking an afternoon nap as Brad settles into a comfy chair to talk exclusively to The Boot about the making of the new record.

"I always go through periods of time in the recording process of an album that I think 'well, this is going to be the end of my career. This is going to stink,'" Brad confesses. "Every artist has those thoughts. I'm sitting there thinking about the previous album or two, 'American Saturday Night' which followed '5th Gear.' Each of them has been a little different from one another. On 'American Saturday Night' [there's] 'Welcome to the Future' and the song 'American Saturday Night' and 'Then' and 'Water' and I'm thinking, 'How am I going to do that?' So this time I just didn't."

Play Brad Paisley's Full 'This Is Country Music' Album Free

Instead of serving up cultural observations or personal vignettes, Brad took a more universal approach on the new album. "We didn't talk about social commentary. 'American Saturday Night' had a lot of current events through my perspective, very personal, extremely personal. It talked about meeting Kim," he says of his wife actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley. "I talked about the birth of my son, or at least the ultrasound [in the song 'Anything Like Me']. I talked about my grandfather on [the song] 'No.' I talked about him, his influence on me. That was fairly biographical.

"'Then' was completely our story," Brad continues, referencing the No. 1 song, which celebrates his relationship with Kim. "'Welcome to the Future' was through the eyes of my generation looking at my grandfather's, thinking about the next one, and thinking about how far we've come with racial progress and technological progress. It was as personal as I could get without being just too much information -- and it might have been, actually -- so this album I didn't want to do that. There's a way to still put your heart into something and not write an autobiography."

Arista

Instead, the title track became the foundation for the album. "This one was framed by the song 'This Is Country Music, which was exactly the mission statement of this album," Brad says of the tune he co-wrote with longtime friend Chris DuBois. "If you listen to what that song is saying from the first line: 'You're not supposed to say the word cancer in a song,' which we do seven songs later, to the chorus 'This is real. This is your life in a song,' I have an obligation when I set an album up to be that theme that I do that. The words of that song aren't 'this is real, this is my life,' it is 'this is your life in a song,' so this album is me observing. There are obviously very true things in this album about me, but then there are other things. There are stories and observations, things like 'A Man Don't Have to Die,' which I didn't write, but I heard that song and instantly thought, 'This is exactly where I want to go with this album,' which is absolute reality for some people."

'A Man Don't Have to Die' is a powerful song, penned by Josh Thompson, George Teren and Rivers Rutherford. "This song deals with what it's like to be alive in difficult times," Brad explains. "There are aspects of that song that anyone can relate to. There's a person in church that is saying, 'Look, I don't need to hear about the consequences of my life, I'm living those consequences. Tell me about the upside of me sitting in this pew' and that is as country as it gets."

Brad wrote or co-wrote 12 of the 15 songs on the new record. The album also deals with the tougher side of life on 'I Do Now,' a stone country ballad dripping in angst and regret. 'One of Those Lives' is a poignant song about a family dealing with their little boy's cancer. Brad wrote the song with Kelley Lovelace and Lee Thomas Miller and he uses it an opportunity to give a shout-out to Target House, a part of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.

"Target House is where a family winds up if they are told their child is going to require more than six weeks worth of treatment," Brad says. "Target House was built by Target as a place they can have the best situation a family could want, and that is they are together. The art room and the gym were both donated by my friend [ice skating champion] Scott Hamilton, who introduced me to this place. I donated the lodge, which is a hangout area in the center of the house where there's a pool table and Guitar Hero, TVs and a fireplace. It's just a place to hang out and play games. Amy Grant did the music room."

Of course, in addition to such songs that deal with more serious issues, 'This Is Country Music' also serves up such lighthearted fare as 'Don't Drink the Water,' a duet with Blake Shelton and 'Working on a Tan,' which finds Brad paying homage to surf-guitar legend Dick Dale. Then there's the upbeat anthem, 'Camouflage,' which Brad says his two sons love.

"Little kids will grab any song that has a word that you can shout and I love the imagery of that because that's also my fan base," Brad says. "It is as important a fashion accessory for the modern-day redneck as a dip of snuff and that's a fun look at life in my audience. If we were outdoors in the woods, I wouldn't be able to see half my crowd."

On his current hit single, 'Old Alabama,' Brad pays tribute to the legendary '80s band and enlisted Alabama's Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry and Jeff Cook to perform on the track and in the video. "A lot of it was done in Charlotte. My friend, Rick Hendrick, who runs Jeff Gordon's race team as well as Jimmie Johnson and Dale [Earnhardt] Jr.'s, supplied the entire setting for it. He has a great complex over there with old cars and a drive-in movie theater, which we used when the Alabama guys came over and filmed their part. We all wind up at this drive-in. It's all about driving. And Dale Earnhardt's daughter is in it and she's actually a great driver. She does burn-outs in this old Chevy Chevelle from the '60s. It's pretty neat."

While filming the video, Brad says they turned a few heads when he and Jeff Gordon took the #24 car out for a spin. "We got out the 24 car and drove it around the back roads in Charlotte and people were losing their minds," Brad says with a laugh. "We just took it down the road and it was completely illegal. It doesn't have working headlights or blinkers or anything, but who is going to pull him over? We were going down the road in the 24 Chevrolet and the thing sounds like a nuclear bomb going off. I got to drive it, too. It was really thrilling for me."

Another big thrill for Brad was just having Randy, Teddy and Jeff on his album. "I'm really proud to have them. They are so important to country music's future," Brad says. "Guys like me, Jason Aldean and Blake Shelton -- these guys that are on the charts now -- we played 'Mountain Music,' 'Tennessee River,' 'My Home's in Alabama,' 'Lady Down on Love' and 'I'm In a Hurry' and all those songs, 'Born Country,' 'Song of the South,' those were the songs that you could not leave out of your set if you are from my generation."

Like many young country artists, Brad was also influenced by the Eagles. When he, Chris DuBois and Ashley Gorley penned 'Love Her Like She's Leavin,'' Brad thought it sounded like something the Eagles would have recorded so he enlisted Don Henley to sing on the track. "I can't think of many groups who are more of a country influence than the Eagles," says Brad. "Don Henley has influenced our generation in a way that few country artists ever will, and this is a man who adores country music and understands it, so having him sing harmony and getting to pretend that I'm one of the Eagles for a night was a thrill for me."

In the lyric, Brad finds himself getting relationship advice from an uncle, and using poetic license he decided to name the guy Uncle Bill. "That song feels like an old country song to me, the country music advice song," he muses. "The advice from an older, wiser person happens at least once an album for me. It really does. When I used an uncle in it I used Kim's Uncle Bill. I'll never live that down. He's going to be 'wise Uncle Bill' from now on."

Brad also recruited Clint Eastwood to whistle on a western-flavored instrumental that he wrote with Kendal Marcy and Robert Arthur, aptly titled 'Eastwood.' "My two little boys introduce that with Clint Eastwood, which is ridiculous," he says, shaking his head and smiling. "They've now performed with Clint Eastwood."

Brad first met the actor and his wife Dina at a Kennedy Center Honors event held at the White House. "I rarely will approach someone at an event like that," Brad says. "I usually give people their space, because I figure they don't care about meeting anybody else ... but I had to. There he stood and so I walked up and said, 'Hey, Mr. Eastwood, I'm Brad Paisley,' and he [called to his wife] 'Honey, come here. Our daughters would love this.' He said, 'We should get a photo,' and I said, 'We definitely should get a photo!'

"Then he puts his arm around me and they can't figure out their camera, just like everybody else these days," Brad says with a smile. "He's standing there with me for a minute while she's fumbling around trying to take this photo and he says to me, 'I bet you hate this' and I said, 'Not really, actually. Right now, I'm just fine' because I'm standing there with him and I'm as big a fan as anybody."

Since then the Eastwoods have recruited Brad to perform for one of their charity events in California and when Brad emailed Dina to see if Clint whistled and might want to record a part for his upcoming album, the answer was an immediate "yes." "He's so laid back and such a good sport," Brad says. "You don't direct Oscar-winning films, acting and making history like he has without a sense of humor -- actually some people do, but he didn't. He has a good one. When I was working on this record and we wrote this instrumental, I wrote it with him in mind. We wrote two instrumentals that were possible for this album and one of them was a really hardcore fast jazz thing that I thought was kind of cool, but that obviously does not belong on 'This Is Country Music.' Then we started writing what felt like a western and I thought, 'Well, we could call this "Eastwood."'"

The album also features Sheryl Crow, Marty Stuart and Carl Jackson on 'Life's Railway to Heaven,' the first song Brad ever sang in church when he was nine years old. "If you are going to sing 'telling folks Jesus is the answer can rub them wrong, this is country music and we do," then you've got to have that," says Brad. "You've got to have a song where you are actually doing that."

One of the songs that is generating the most buzz is 'Remind Me,' a duet with Carrie Underwood, slated to be the next single. The lyric finds a couple wrestling to rekindle the spark in their relationship. "It's about the conversation a couple would have. It could be seven months into the relationship, or it could be seven years, but everybody's been there," he says. "You could be 15 years old on your first dating relationship and wondering why you don't feel the way you did five or six months ago about this person. I love the honesty in that song."

Brad also enjoyed singing with Carrie. "It was a real thrill to again collaborate with who I think is the greatest singer that we have as well as one of the greatest that we've ever had," he says. His son, Huck, is also a fan. "My little boy wants to marry her, which is not going to be easy to explain, eventually, why that won't work," he says with a laugh.

Though Huck might have a crush on Carrie, his true passion right now is driving -- even though he's only four. "They like cars and they like the idea of driving something," he says of his boys. "A friend of mine gave me the idea for this. I stuck a car seat in the front driver's side of our Polaris Ranger, one of those little ATVs. So I run the gas pedal sitting next to him, and Huck will drive it. He sits in the car seat in the driver's seat and can steer and I run the gas and brake, sitting right there. It's thrilling because he's actually driving a vehicle. I'm able to stop it, of course, with my foot, but he gets to drive."

For Jasper, the big thrill is getting to ride around in Dad's Corvette, although Brad says they only drive slowly around their farm. "It's not the kind of car that's set up for a kid to ride in," he says. "Luckily, we have enough road on our farm, I'll belt him in, drive around the farm with him in it and not go out on the highway. He loves it."

Though Brad loves being home with his family, he's also looking forward to hitting the road when he kicks off his H20 II: Wetter & Wilder World Tour on June 3 in Virginia Beach. When it comes to fatherhood and his career, Brad admits he prefers to keep them separate.

"They are two separate things. That's how I try to keep it. I really feel like two different people," he says. "I don't want to see Eric Clapton change a diaper. I don't want to see Bono at his kid's PTA meeting. I'm sure they've all done that, but I don't want to see that. I want to see Bono in a pair of sunglasses walking around a major stadium in front of 60,000 people singing 'Where the Streets Have No Name.'"

Brad admits that away from the spotlight, he's a different guy. "There's the guy that's fixing things that break in the house," he says. "I do a lot of that kind of stuff and changing batteries in a Lightning McQueen race car. It's not the same thing as the guy who comes up on an elevator in the middle of the set with a guitar strapped on and hits a chord that deafens you."