Brad Paisley released an EP today entitled “Son of The Mountains – The First Four Tracks”. The title is elf explanatory. These are the first four tracks from Paisley’s upcoming full length album to be released in 2024. The project has been teased over the last few days on his social media channels using interviews with citizens talking about their experiences of struggle growing up in a state plagued by the opioid crisis.
The EP kicks off with the prideful and rebellious “Son Of The Mountains” that thunders out of Brad’s Fender Telecaster with authority. This song and its accompanying video is the West Virginia’s tourism industries day dreams come true. Filmed in multiple places around WV the video features Brad and fellow musicians playing on the New River Gorge’s Tunney Hunsaker Bridge. The track features homages to our past and who we are as a people. This song is a great one to turn up in the car and cruise with the windows down. The video is populated with interviews from local residents talking about their pride in their home state.
We hope you enjoyed that raucous celebration because Paisley quickly grounds the listener with the sadder side of our state via the second track “The Medicine Will” that talks about the vicious plague of the opioid crisis that still holds the state in it’s death grip. Grab the tissues. Filmed in a coal mine, the video for the song is laced with interviews of people who have been on the frontline of the struggle and those who have been directly impacted by addiction. The chorus alone is enough to move any of us that have known the loss that accompanies the grip of addiction.
“There’s coal under the mountains |And gold in them there pills | If living here don’t kill ya, the medicine will”
The climatic third verse of the song brings it home for those who are tired of the constant fight that we have faced since the pharmaceutical companies targeted the Appalachias with their promise of non addictive pain pills.
“I believe way down below us | Deeper than that mine shaft runs | There’s a place for those that did this to us | And it’s hotter than the sun.”
Check out Brad’s interview with the Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic at Variety, Chris Willman below.
