Paisley shows his true colors
Is Brad Paisley joking again, or is he serious?
It’s tough to tell sometimes. This is the guy with a hit song about a country boy wanting to check a woman for ticks.
But it throws him when a reporter refers to him as a “mainstream country star” – even while he’s relaxing in a plush tour bus outside a packed stadium where he’s about to headline.
“It’s really bizarre for me to hear you say mainstream country star regarding my name. You know what I mean?” Paisley says.
“I feel like I’ve arrived in some sense because there was a time when I wondered if I’d ever be anything more than just a niche – you know, this guy who plays sort of traditional country music and is forgotten about.”
With his latest album, “5th Gear,” just out, Paisley, 34, seems at the top of his game. The first single, “Ticks,” is already at No. 2 on the Billboard country charts.
Q: You have humor in a lot of your songs. Are the funny ones easier for you to write than the serious ones?
A: I don’t know if they’re easier. Sometimes they’re harder to perfect. I think that humor, for me, is a way of making an album well-rounded. There’s got to be a few of those for it to feel like one of my records.
Q: You and your wife, actress Kimberly Williams Paisley, had your first child in February. How is that reflected on this album?
A: It shows up a lot more than I thought it would. I really fought it because people would say “Oh, it’s going to help your songwriting.” I’d think, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But it definitely came out, not so much in songs about babies as in songs about nostalgia.
Q: Can you give an example?
A: “Letter to Me” (about a man who wishes he could write a letter to himself and send it back in time to when he was 17) is the most apparent where there’s the influence of my son. As I wrote it I saw a second chance emerging in the song, and the second chance is epitomized in the fact that I have a son now. When I wrote it, I didn’t know if we were going to have a boy or a girl. Maybe deep down I knew all along.
Q: Did you fret a lot when you were 17?
A: I think every 17-year-old other than a rare few do. I turned it around and by my senior year was popular and did well. But my sophomore year I was so miserable and shy. There’s a line in the song (“Letter to Me”) that says, “And you should really thank Mrs. Brinkman.” She was – and still is – the speech teacher at John Marshall High School. She told me “You have to take this class. When you get up with a guitar you’re fine. But you need to know how to talk in any situation to a group of people if you really want to do this for a living.” It was a pivotal time in my life.
The birthday bunch
Director Sidney Lumet is 83. Actress June Lockhart is 82. Singer Carly Simon is 62. Actor-comedian Jimmie Walker is 60. TV personality Phyllis George is 58. Actor Ricky Gervais is 46. Singer George Michael is 44. Actress Linda Cardellini (“ER”) is 32.