Brad Paisley has dropped four new tracks from his forthcoming Son of the Mountains album. The Grand Ole Opry member released Son of the Mountains: The First Four Tracks, which includes the previously-released “Same Here” featuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and “So Many Summers” plus the newly-released, uptempo title track “Son Of The Mountains,” and the powerful “The Medicine Will,” the latter a look at the devastating opioid crisis taking place in West Virginia, where Paisley is from.
In the video for “The Medicine Will,” drug addicts share how they became addicted to opioids, after they were overprescribed pain pills. According to Paisley, 12 million pills were delivered to Kermit, West Virginia, a town of less than 280 people, and 30 million pills were delivered to just three pharmacies in Mingo County, one of the poorest counties in America.
“I spent a couple of days in West Virginia interviewing survivors and first responders and people that have been working on this, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Paisley says (via UMG Nashville). “I mean, I come from a town that’s changed since I left it. From ideal to – there’s this underbelly of things that are scary that weren’t there.
“And that is really near and dear to my heart, this cause of holding the companies responsible that targeted that area, and they did,” he adds. “They targeted them. They knew that these people that power our country digging coal are – they need painkillers to do what they do.”
Paisley filmed the video for “The Medicine Will” in a coal mine, giving an eerie feeling to the contemplative track.
“Me and Dan Tyminski and Jerry Douglas and my band went all down into a mine near Bluefield and sang this,” Paisley shares. “I’ve never felt anything like what was like, with about a six-foot ceiling and coal everywhere and just dug out.”
In contrast, “Son of the Mountains” is an honest look at the good parts of the state that Paisley was born and raised in, and still loves, along with some of the challenges the people in West Virginia face.
“The first song I wrote for this record was ‘Son of the Mountains,’ which started out as a fun thing, but then I say some things in that,” Paisley hints. “It goes by you, but I say some stuff. This song is really about freedom, and my home state’s motto is ‘Montani semper liber.’ … It’s Latin; I don’t know, but it means ‘Mountaineers are always free,’ and so freedom at all costs is the type of thing, and that’s kind of the point of that song, especially.”
Paisley wrote “Son of the Mountains” with Lee Miller, who is from Kentucky. Although they are two different states, both men quickly realized how much commonality the their respective home states shared.
“I said,’ What would be the thing that says … we don’t listen? When they make rules, we don’t agree with, we don’t do it,'” Paisley says with a laugh. “That’s kind of the West Virginia thing. And he said, ‘Well, I have an uncle that went to prison running moonshine,’ and I said, ‘Why in the hell didn’t you say that in the first place? That’s the coolest.’”
Miller wasn’t initially sure he wanted to share that story, which is a source of shame for his family, but Paisley knew it was perfect for “Son of the Mountains.”
“He’s like ‘Well my family doesn’t talk about it. We’re not really proud of it,'” Paisley recalls. “That would be bio line one for me if I had that in my family. So, it’s a true story. His uncle was hauling jugs across state lines into Tennessee and spent years in the federal prison, so that’s that song. Prohibition didn’t work in that area of the world. We didn’t listen to it. It was disorganized crime there. In Chicago, it was organized crime, and West Virginia was disorganized, but it was just moonshine stills.”
Find Son of the Mountains: The First Four Tracks and all of Paisley’s music and upcoming shows at BradPaisley.com.