(...Story Continued from Previous Page) "It was fun," he
recalls.
At first, the plan was to make the instrumental album a side project as part
of the marketing campaign for "5th Gear," Paisley's 2007 studio album. "But we
realized it was a lot more relatable and interesting and fun than we expected it
to be," Paisley says. "On this, I didn't know what we would have. It's like not
knowing what the gender of your baby will be at all and then there it is. In the
end, we ended up with something that isn't an unlistenable thing for a non-music
person." He laughs as he realizes he's hardly given his love child a ringing
endorsement, but that's a testament more to his modesty than a lack of
mainstream accessibility on "Play." Indeed, in addition to Urban, the CD
features vocal duets with B.B. King, Buck Owens, Steve Wariner and Andy Griffith. The genre-busting instrumentals gallop
through surf ("Turf's Up"), rock ("Cliffs of Rock City"), bluegrass ("Kentucky
Jelly"), gospel ("What a Friend We Have in Jesus") and smooth jazz ("Kim"). He
also gathers a murderers' row of top guitarists (Gill, Wariner, James Burton,
Albert Lee and John Jorgenson) for the cleverly titled country jam "Cluster
Pluck."
Still, Paisley knows that releasing such an album could be viewed as risky in
this day of slumping CD sales, especially for a superstar whose sales are
integral to his label's bottom line. He's only slightly joking when he says, "I
saw some of the other label heads around town and they were like, 'That's great
that [Sony BMG Nashville label head] Joe Galante let you do this,' but you could
see they were thinking, 'I don't know if I would have!'
Paisley hopes his audience loves the album and, furthermore, that it will
permanently dispel the seemingly endless surprise his fans show when they
discover that he's a red-hot ax man.
"I still get people who I can tell are fans of mine and they say after the
show, 'I had no idea you could play like that.' Nine years [after my first
album], after how many TV awards shows and 'Letterman' and the 'Tonight Show'
and trying our best to connect the dots, what's it take? In that regard,
'Play's' a great view into who I am that you might not realize otherwise."
Listeners will also be impressed by the company Paisley keeps on "Play."
Performing with King, Paisley simply says "was one of the best days of my life
... I was just so excited that he would want to spend any time with me at all,
let alone record with me. He holds court. He comes in armed with jokes and ready
to make friends with everyone in the room." Paisley also got to handle King's
beloved guitar and constant companion, Lucille. "His assistant walked in off the
bus with Lucille, she enters the building before B.B. It's a great
entrance!" Instrumental "Kentucky Jelly" includes a four-word introduction
from none other than Snoop Dogg. "He did about a
seven-minute intro and what you hear on the record is all we could use," Paisley
laughs. "Rap uses a whole different set of words so we kept the parts that would
keep me from having to label my album with a warning label. He's a really big
country fan; he was a very reverent person towards the whole genre."
Paisley starts a tour to promote the album in January, which means a whole
new round of pranks will start. The notoriously merry prankster made headlines
in late October when cameras at the Nashville airport caught him being falsely
arrested for "noodling" as part of a gag orchestrated by his recent tour mate
Jewel. "She's the queen!" he says with awe, noting that she adhered to the first
rule of prankdom: "A great prank needs to be something people can see. It can't
be that you put crickets on her tour bus and she has to listen to them all the
way home. No one saw it, that's just annoying. We're not just doing these to
make their lives miserable. It has to be public. We're here to entertain."
Melinda Newman is a freelance journalist who covers music and
entertainment for the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington
Post, the Hollywood Reporter, Performing Songwriter and other outlets. She is a
former talent editor and West Coast bureau chief for Billboard
magazine. |
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