Brad Paisley has made a bunch of cool records with other stars — think about “Whiskey Lullaby” with Alison Krauss…or “When I Get Where I’m Going” with Dolly Parton…”Oh Love” with Carrie Underwood…or fun songs from his albums with the all-star Kung Pao Buckaroos that at times have included Dolly and Bill Anderson, George Jones, and Little Jimmy Dickens. And now, with the release of Brad’s new album, Play, on November 4th, we’ve got a crop of great new collaborations, including songs with B.B. King, Steve Wariner, the late Buck Owens, and Keith Urban, who duets with Brad on the Top-10-and-climbing smash single, “Start a Band.” In addition, the album hosts a previously unreleased version of Brad’s number-one hit, “Waitin’ on a Woman,” featuring Brad with Andy Griffith as they were heard in the song’s music video. Brad says he’s “really proud” of these songs because to him, “they do add up to something greater than either party in some way.” Although recording with B.B. made Brad a bit nervous — mostly because the two men met for the first time when they were recording — the experience was great. Brad says B.B. is just “a smart, charming, wonderful guy…and you get the sense that he couldn’t help but do anything except a musically artistic thing.” (AUDIO INFO BELOW)

• One of the truly special recordings on Play is a song called “Come on In,” written by Buck Owens. It was a song that Buck had begun recording, but had remained unfinished at the time of his death. Brad and Buck had been friends, and Buck was a hero of Brad’s. In fact, when Brad was inducted into the Opry, he wore the jacket Buck had worn on the cover of his classic Carnegie Hall Concert album. So when the Owens family let Brad have the song to record, they knew it was in good hands. “His family was nice enough to give me that track and let me do my thing, and it’s really amazing, and he sounds just great,” Brad says of Buck. “He really would be so happy about this.” (AUDIO INFO BELOW)
• In addition to the special collaborations, Play features an abundance of way-cool instrumental tracks — one of which is an event record in itself! If you love amazing guitar-playing, you’ll love “Cluster Pluck,” which features Brad picking with some of the guitar world’s greatest heroes, including Vince Gill, Albert Lee, Brent Mason, John Jorgenson, Redd Volkaert, James Burton, and Steve Wariner!
• Yet another amazing collaboration stands in the spotlight as Brad talks about his marriage and “5 Reasons a Good Woman’s Worth the Wait” in the November 24th issue of First magazine, on sale Monday. In it, one thing Brad shares: “The best marriage advice I’ve received is that love is a choice and not something you should just expect. You have to choose to love that person even when you can’t stand them for whatever reason.” He points out, of course, that his wife Kim “must have to remind herself of that a lot more than I do!”

  Brad Paisley feels great about how things turned out with the collaborations on his new album, Play. (:22)
“I’ve often heard collaborations that I thought, ‘Wow, that doesn’t work.’ I luckily don’t feel that way about anything on this record, but I have heard, certainly heard those before, and I am really proud of these collaborations because they do add up to something greater than either party in some way. I’m glad that these things add up to be greater than the sum. I mean, it’s really cool.”

  Brad Paisley talks about recording with B.B. King. (:38)
“I was mostly nervous when we were goin’ to record with B.B., just nervous about the fact that I had never met him before and that I was supposed to say, ‘Hello,’ meet the guy, shake his hand, and then record this song with him, you know, and get him on tape in a good way, and that’s never an easy thing to do. I don’t write songs very well with people that I’ve never met, and I don’t usually record very well with people that I don’t know well enough to be able to be completely, you know, candid and honest, and anyway, but he is such a smart, charming, wonderful guy who walks in the room, and he makes you at ease, and he’s ready, and you get the sense that he couldn’t help but do anything except a musically artistic thing.”

  Brad Paisley recalls the evolution of his new album’s duet with Buck Owens. (:41)
“We didn’t start until after he died. I mean, he, his family was nice enough to give me that track and let me do my thing, and it’s really amazing, and he sounds just great. He really would be so happy about this track. And I’m really proud that there’s a song on my record that just says Buck Owens as the writer, too. He wrote it all by himself, and the only words I changed were the ones I had to change for tense, and for…by two people doin’ a duet, of course, you change it from ‘I’ to ‘you’ on certain words. That’s it. And they sent me the track in the spring, we listened to it, and I went, ‘I can make that into something really neat.'”