Brad Paisley began the journey to country music stardom by spending hours in a room with a guitar endlessly trying to figure out how to make the sounds on his favorite songs. Thirty years later, he was still doing just that when Alabama’s Randy Owen showed up at the studio last year with his battered old Music Man guitar. Paisley was using his telecaster to try and mimic that eerie, funky guitar sound Owen made on classics like “Mountain Music” that’s almost as distinct as the band’s rowdy harmonies.
“Are you trying to play ‘Mountain Music’ there?” Owen asked Paisley.
Paisley, of course, denied it.
“Well, that ain’t ‘Mountain Music.’ This is,” Owen said.
“So he started playing and we hit record,” Paisley said with a smile.
Those were the opening notes of “Old Alabama,” Paisley’s second No. 1 from his new album, “This Is Country Music.” It was a moment that encapsulated Paisley’s bold concept for the album and his real appreciation for the genre’s history and art.
When Owen handed the Music Man to Paisley for inspection that day, it was a little like the young gun trying the legend’s six-shooter on for size — for a few minutes at least. And Paisley really appreciated the moment.
“It was really interesting to see the smile on Brad’s face,” Owen said. “He was like, ‘That’s the guitar.'”
That guitar is a piece of country music history, something Paisley seeks to put his own stamp on with his follow-up to “American Saturday Night.” He came up with the idea for the “Country Music” concept at the start of the album while he loaded up the title song with verse after verse — from cancer to Talladega — until it became overlong and unwieldy. Yet he felt like he could keep going forever.
“I just realized there’s nothing off-limits as far as topics go in country music,” Paisley said. “Nothing’s too small in your life to write about. From a toothbrush to spiritual questions to difficulty, drinking, cheating — those are bigger things — sunbathing, you know what I mean? Nothing’s off-limits. We say that very clearly in our music.”
