If ever an artist has earned the right to title an album This Is
Country Music, it’s Brad Paisley. It’s not because he’s the
Country Music Association’s reigning Entertainer of the Year or because
his H2O Tour was 2010’s top country trek in attendance or because he’s
sold more than 12 million albums and scored 18 #1 hits at country radio.
It’s not because he’s been performing professionally since he was 13
as a regular on Wheeling, West Virginia’s famed Jamboree USA, becoming
the youngest person ever inducted into the Jamboree Hall of Fame. It’s
not because he’s won 14 CMA Awards, including Male Vocalist of the Year
three times or because of the record-setting five consecutive Academy of
Country Music Male Vocalist honors that count among his 14 ACM wins.
Paisley’s ninth studio album is titled This Is Country Music
because this is the singer/songwriter/guitar virtuoso’s heartfelt homage
to the music he’s loved since childhood. It’s a multi-faceted tribute to
all the elements that embody country music from the young artist who
single-handedly made Grand Ole Opry legend Little Jimmy Dickens cool to
a new generation of country fans and who collaborated with the late Buck
Owens, providing him with his only CMA Award win. Paisley’s
well-documented march toward stardom has been an inclusive journey that
has taken many of his heroes with him along the way.
He continues to do that on This Is Country Music. The title
track and lead single name checks some of the format’s legendary hits
such as George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” Merle Haggard’s
“Mama Tried” and Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line.” “The first song
written for this album was ‘This Is Country Music,’” he says. “If you
are going to call an album ‘This Is Country Music,’ the last
thing I want to do is have somebody listen to it and have them say to
themselves, ‘No, it’s not.’ So in many ways, this is the ‘countriest’
album I’ve done. The heart of it is totally country. I even threw a song
out on this project that I loved, that could land on a future project,
because it didn’t say ‘this is country music’ to me.
The album’s second hit single, “Old Alabama,” finds Paisley not only
sampling Alabama’s classic hit “Mountain Music,” but reuniting Randy
Owen, Jeff Cook and Teddy Gentry to perform on the track. “It’s really a
combination of what they do and what I do, which is not hard because
I’ve ripped them off so many times over the years,” Paisley says with a
smile. “They’ve been a major inspiration to me. I saw them play live
many, many times. I remember going to the Civic Arena in Wheeling when
they played and their opening acts were Clint Black and Lorrie Morgan.
They were one of the first arena acts in country music. They were the
first to really bring semi-tractor trailers down the road and have a big
production.”
Alabama is an obvious influence for a country musician who came of
age in the ‘80s, but on This Is Country Music, the three-time
GRAMMY® winner paints a more expansive, textured portrait of the genre
he loves. “I’m trying to do something brand new utilizing the influences
that made me who I am,” Paisley says. “Some of them are not necessarily
right within country music, but they are more important to modern
country than you might think. There are influences that come into play
like Eric Clapton. When I try to play or harness anything that has some
soul to it, I’m usually channeling him . . . Don Henley and the stuff
that The Eagles did in the ‘70s, they are responsible for what you hear
on country radio now.”
Paisley wrote or co-wrote 12 of the album’s 15 tracks, recruiting an
eclectic cadre of special guests, including Henley, Clint Eastwood,
Sheryl Crow, Marty Stuart, Carl Jackson, Carrie Underwood and Blake
Shelton. Henley lends his distinctive vocals to “Love Her Like She’s Leavin’.” “It’s a real romantic song, and it feels like something that
either he would have written or his band, The Eagles, would have done,”
says Paisley. “So I thought he would be the perfect voice on the song.”
Paisley first met Eastwood at the White House during a Kennedy Center
Honors reception. The legendary actor and his wife, Dina, then enlisted
Brad to perform for one of their charity events in California. “When I
was working on this record, and we wrote this instrumental, I had
Eastwood in mind,” Paisley says of the tune he co-wrote with Robert
Arthur and Kendal Marcy. “We started writing what felt like a western,
and I thought we could call this ‘Eastwood.’”
In addition to always including an instrumental on every album,
Paisley is also known for recording a gospel song on every album since
his 1999 Arista Nashville debut, Who Needs Pictures. This time around he
revives the classic “Life’s Railway to Heaven,” the first song he ever
sang in church when he was nine years old. “I had Marty Stuart, Sheryl
Crow and Carl Jackson all singing harmonies on that,” says Paisley, for
whom 2011 marked his 10th anniversary as a member of the Grand Ole Opry.
“It turned out great. Wait until you hear their harmonies.”
On This Is Country Music, Paisley once again works with
longtime producer Frank Rogers and co-writes with such frequent
collaborators as Lee Thomas Miller, Ashley Gorley, Tim Owens, Kelley
Lovelace and Chris DuBois. He and DuBois wrote the title track and
penned more verses than would fit into a radio single, so Paisley opted
to use some of the extra verses as intros for other songs throughout the
record. The result is a wonderful narrative thread that gives the album
an even more cohesive feel, like a great movie reeling with a vibrant
cast of characters such as the girl who is “Working on a Tan,” an
energetic ode to summer that finds Paisley channeling surf guitar legend
Dick Dale.
“A Man Don’t Have to Die” is a sobering tale that many people will
find easily relatable about living in difficult times. “One of Those
Lives” is a poignant song about a childhood cancer. “New Favorite
Memory” is a sexy number about falling in love with someone all over
again during an unexpected moment.
This Is Country Music also includes duets with two of
Paisley’s fellow country hitmakers, Carrie Underwood and Blake Shelton.
“It’s a fun song about getting somebody off your mind,” Paisley says of
“Don’t Drink the Water,” a duet with Shelton, who will be joining him
this summer on his H2O II: Wetter & Wilder World Tour. He and Underwood
join forces on the incredible ballad “Remind Me,” about a couple looking
to rekindle the spark in a relationship. “It’s a song 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,”
Paisley says. “I love the honesty about that song.”
Paisley and Underwood had previously teamed on “Oh Love,” a track
from his 2007 album, 5th Gear, and the two friends have hosted the last
three CMA Awards telecasts. “There is no limit to how high she can sing.
She’s amazing,” Paisley says. “I asked, ‘Is there any note you can’t
hit?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know,’ and I was playing it for her, and I
said, ‘How about high G,’ and she went, ‘Yeah, I can hit that.’ There’s
honestly nobody better, and her instincts were perfect, too. When she
came in to sing, every take was perfect. She 100% nailed it every time.”
In recording This Is Country Music, Paisley’s goal was not
only to sonically capture the varied tones and textures of country
music, but to lyrically reflect the lives of the people who love it.
“There are stories and observations in songs like ‘A Man Don’t Have to
Die.’ I didn’t write that song, but I heard it and instantly said, ‘This
is exactly where I want to go with this album,’ because it is absolute
reality for some people,” he notes. “In the title track, when I sing
‘This is real. This is your life in a song,’ not every one of these
songs will be you at this moment, but several, I guarantee, will be. If
they aren’t right now, a lot of them have the potential to be a story
that applies to your life. That’s our job in country music.”
