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Brad Paisley, one of the top country stars in the world, likes to throw a curveball. Take, for instance, the lyrics from his hit song "Ticks": "I'd like to kiss you way back in the sticks/I'd like to walk through a field of wildflowers/and I'd like to check you for ticks." Say what? But with Paisley's sweet baritone warming up the tune, the combination is irresistible. "I learned early on that music was about entertaining," says the 36-year-old West Virginian, who has sold more than ten million albums since his 1999 debut. Meanwhile, his latest one, American Saturday Night, is helping him draw fans for one of the biggest tours thissummer. Paisley talked to Reader's Digest from the Franklin, Tennessee, farm where he lives with his wife of six years, actress Kimberly Williams-Paisley, and their two sons, William Huckleberry, two, and Jasper Warren, four months.
Q. Your life seems to be charmed. You first spotted Kim in the movie Father of the Bride and eventually arranged to meet her through a mutual friend, hoping that she'd appear in one of your music videos.A. It's strange how our relationship came about. I have a song on the new album with the line "I went to see Father of the Bride with a girl back home." Later, I broke up with that girl and went to see the sequel, and I drove home wondering who I was going to wind up with, what our kids would look like—not thinking for a second that I had just seen my future wife on-screen.
Q. Why does your marriage work?
A. Because Kim is a real person. Most actors have some deep-rooted issues. A lot of them are absolutely insane. I don't mean that in a negative way; I think the artistic community in general is insane on some level, and that's great. But the sanest actor I have ever met is my wife. And our parents are still together. When you come from two families in which your parents have strong relationships, it's less of an option for you to be the first in your bloodline to break up.
Q. How'd you decide on the new baby's name?
A. Before Kim was pregnant, she came to me and said, "I dreamed that we had a little boy and named him Jasper." I said, "That's cool! I don't know anybody named Jasper." It works both for a guy 90 years old and a little baby.
Q. Are you the kind of dad who changes diapers?
A. I think the days of men saying they don't are over. I'd like to see the guy who pulls that off now. No, I'd actually like to beat up the guy who says he pulls that off.
Q. What's your favorite thing about fatherhood?
A. Our first child, Huck, is turning into a little man. He's obsessed with the heavy equipment we have on the farm. I've got a mini bulldozer, and he's been riding with me since he was three months old. Now he can run it because it's all hand controls, kind of like an Atari game.
Q. You write about heartache a lot. Were you ever really dumped?
A. When I first moved to Nashville to attend college, I was in a serious relationship back home, and it wasn't three weeks before some people called to tell me that she was dating my best friend. I was devastated, but as a college kid, I didn't have a lot to write about, so it was a songwriter's dream.
Q. If you hadn't become a songwriter and singer, what would you have been?
A. I might have been a construction worker. I worked for a contractor one summer when I was 19, carrying pieces of drywall on top of my head, roofing, pouring concrete for buildings. Now I crave coming home and firing up my front-end loader: "Okay, see that piece of granite over there? I'm going to move it over here!"
Q. Have you had any strange fan experiences?
A. I had a stage jumper at the Grand Ole Opry. I was in the middle of "Letter to Me," and this girl ran up onstage and put her arms around me from behind. The staff didn't know what to do. I said, "For anyone listening on the radio, let me describe what's going on. If I sounded strange in that last verse, it's because a girl has had her arms around me for the whole last part of the song." She was from Kentucky. I said to her, "You're going to love it here in Nashville. We have some of the finest penal institutions in the country."
Advice to My Sons
Visualize what you want out of life with all your might. Close your eyes and build it in your mind. If you want to be an architect, visualize the things you want to build. If you want to be a songwriter, visualize the effect your music will have on the audience. That's what I do. If you don't dream about what you want, it will never come true.
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