Brad Paisley – Son Of The Mountains: The First Four Tracks – EP

EMI Records Nashville

Release Date: September 29th 2023

Reviewed by: Joshua Andre

Brad Paisley– Son Of The Mountains: The First Four Tracks – EP (Amazon mp3/iTunes)

Track Listing:

Son Of the Mountains (feat. Dan Tyminski & Jerry Douglas)
The Medicine Will
So May Summers
Same Here (feat. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy)

Prior to 2019, I don’t think I was ever that much of a fan of country music. Sure, I listened to the odd song from Carrie Underwood, and from Keith Urban, when they were on the radio; but other than that, I didn’t actively seek out the genre until I started blogging about country artists. And hence, I wasn’t in the ‘know’ about popular country solo artists and popular country bands. Even after I listened to country music on the regular from 2019 onwards, it was of ‘popular’ more contemporary artists such as Maddie & Tae, Maren Morris, Thomas Rhett, Keith Urban, Gabby Barrett, Carly Pearce, and Walker Hayes, to others like Carrie Underwood, Tim McGraw, Lindsay Ell, Cassadee Pope, Little Big Town, Lady A, Rascal Flatts, The McClymonts, Miranda Lambert, Chris Stapleton, Ingrid Andress, Mickey Guyton, Jimmie Allen and Russell Dickerson… and even Taylor Swift! Even 90’s artists like Martina McBride, Faith Hill, Shania Twain, and LeAnn Rimes, all resonated with me also. But there’s one kind of country which was incredibly indifferent to me. That kind of country was… bro-country, the kind that Blake Shelton, Luke Bryan, and Florida Georgia Line embodied and championed. Brad Paisley was also another one of these artists, and I became numb to these songs as they all sounded the same. Since reviewing Life Rolls On though, as well as Body Language, nothing much has changed music-wise and lyric-wise. But as this year is still a year of me taking the plunge and trying to listen to albums I wouldn’t listen to normally; let me dive deep into Brad Paisley’s new release called Son Of The Mountains, an EP with the first 4 songs from the upcoming album of the same name.

I don’t know much about Brad at all. He just wasn’t an artist I was connecting with back in the day. But for this EP, there are good songs and there are extremely forgettable ones as well, and I will dive deeper into that in a minute. The title track is a free-spirited, country/rock hybrid celebratory track that shines a spotlight on Brad’s roots in the region of Appalachia, and is a bundle of loud, raucous fun; while the melancholy, sombre and reflective melody “The Medicine Will”, speaks about the opioid crisis in Appalachia, and what concerns and worries Brad about the addiction in these places. “So Many Summers” is a inspirational melody about taking life by the reins and living life to the fullest as you don’t know how many summers or years who have on this earth. Sadly though, the tone-deaf “Same Here” ends this EP, and is a left-wing political statement with the Ukrainian president- something that could’ve bene conveyed in a less divisive way like Mandisa’s “Bleed The Same”.

Brad Paisley is an artist whom I still don’t really connect with. “The Medicine Will” and “So Many Summers” are the highlights here, and though the title track is engaging somewhat, the collaboration with the Ukrainian president feels forced and out of place. Son Of The Mountains is an OK EP. As a forthcoming album, I’m not as excited, but I’ll check it out if I have time. And will I like it? Maybe. It remains to be seen, but it’s not really an album I’m overly excited for. Albums and artists can just be ‘ok’ and can just be background music. Brad is one of these artists- but for other listeners, he’ll be their favourite artist. And that’s more than ok. “Same Here” is skippable. But the other three are decent- and here’s hoping that the full length album reminds us that good music is good music, even if it comes from a left-field place.

It might be giving me too much credit, if you call it a concept album. It has a direction, or more of a slant. There’s a vantage point that stays the same, which I describe at the beginning of these new videos, where I’m talking about the hollers where I hail from and the music that came from there, really.

They did two different things where I’m from. They powered America with their blood, sweat, and tears and back-breaking labor for many, many, many decades. And then a lot of those immigrants that moved here to work the coal mines from Scotland and Ireland and places like that really did shape what we know of as hillbilly music, [which came to be known as] country music. And this was a record where my focus was sort of going back there and exploring a little of that.

It came about because of a few songs that I wrote that really just felt like the right thing to write, one of them being “The Medicine Will,” another being “Son of the Mountains.” And then this slant of looking at, I guess, how this place shaped how I look at the world. I look at this world through the eyes of somebody who grew up in that situation, and these are unique people, really unique. And you can’t put them in a box and say this is exactly who they are at all times. They’re very free-thinking, really emotionally intelligent and resilient people where I come from up there. And it was fun to go back after all these years and really explore that musically. Because sometimes you go off on these tangents in a career, and I don’t know that you lose your way, but you certainly —in a good way — get lost, from Hollywood red carpets to doing really fun side projects, whether that be playing with rock legends or getting to know my heroes at the Opry. But to go back there and really see that not only is everything that I think about the world sort of shaped by that place, but since I left, it’s been devastated. It’s been attacked. It’s been truly exploited and targeted. And so it became really important to tell that story.

The first song, “Son of the Mountains,” is more sort of a chamber of commerce piece. I mean, you see that video and you think, “I want to go whitewater rafting. I want to go up and down the river and meet these people…” It’s not the whole story, but that story is true. It’s beautiful. It’s a great place to be from. It’s a terrific way of life up there. I envy, to some degree, that area on some level, in the simplicity of life that’s still there. As well as the… I don’t know, it’s just good people. They really are.

And then, the other side of the coin is, you could miss the fact that some of the most painful and criminal things that have happened in our country to any certain group of people in the last 20 years have happened there. And, you know, this opioid crisis has hit my state the hardest of anywhere. It’s truly something to see how this idyllic place has been affected… I mean, it’s just been brutal. And so, I talked to (UMG Nashville CEO) Cindy Mabe when we were talking about what order to put things out. And I said, “I don’t love anything where it’s just ‘Son of the Mountains’ first.” Because I didn’t want anyone to think that I was turning a blind eye to harsh reality. And at the same time, I’m really glad they both are coming out, because I think if you only put out “The Medicine” right now, that’d be the whole story. But I definitely think the two of them together help set the picture for the rest of this album.

But once you got those together, things that follow on this album, they don’t all follow the same theme. And in that sense, it’s not necessarily a concept record, but it’s not a far stretch to see how they work together. I mean, even when it goes into “So Many Summers,” we’re talking about growing up where I did and seeing the passage of time, which is the natural thing to do after those first two songs. And then from there, with “Same Here,” I go talk about what’s going on in the world from the vantage point of somebody who’s asking these questions of: Well, I’ve shown you what I believe, how are we the same? Far across the sea and such [in Ukraine].

I don’t know if I’ve earned anything, but I definitely feel like once you write something that you believe in, it’s wrong to hold it, if you believe it. I believe in the things I’m saying so much that it’d be wrong to sort of say, “Well, you know, why don’t we just put one of these ones out that it’s about love or heartbreak or something a lot easier.” It’s nice to feel like it’s more important than normal to get this out, in the sense that I definitely feel an obligation to the people that I have met and know from that area that have been paying the price for what happened there. And the ability to both show how great it is back there and also how much injustice there has been… It’s rare that musically you get that feeling that there’s something that’s more important than just chart position.