Brad Paisley‘s new album is almost here! Tomorrow, April 9th, marks the release date of Brad’s album, Wheelhouse. You already know some of the songs on Wheelhouse, including Brad’s recent number-one single, “Southern Comfort Zone,” as well as his new smash, “Beat This Summer.” With 14 songs in all, plus three interstitial tracks, Wheelhouse is an album that became a new kind of adventure for Brad, one where he tried to push himself, producing the album himself, recording it in a converted farmhouse at his Tennessee home, and looking to his road band, the Drama Kings, to play on the album. From front to back, it’s an album where Brad really tried to do everything outside his usual comfort zone — and Brad admits, that’s a scary thing to do. (AUDIO INFO BELOW)

• Brad says that the process of making an album is a lot like painting — and some days, it’s a struggle to capture what you really had in mind. (AUDIO INFO BELOW)
• Brad talks about how he came up with the album title, Wheelhouse — and he’s a little surprised it hasn’t been used before now! (AUDIO INFO BELOW)
• Brad wrote or co-wrote all of the full songs on Wheelhouse, in addition to welcoming an array of special guests, including Charlie Daniels, LL COOL J, Eric Idle, Mat Kearney, and more!
• And if you can’t get enough great Brad music, you’ll want to pick up Brad’s Wheelhouse (Deluxe Edition), which includes four bonus tracks! It’s also available on Tuesday, April 9th!
• Look for Brad on the cover of the April 15th issue of Country Weekly — on sale right now! And if you’re a guitar maven like Brad, you won’t want to miss some tech talk with Brad, as he becomes the first country artist ever featured on the cover of Guitar World magazine — it’s the May issue on stands now!
• Be watching for Brad all over the small screen this week, with April 9th performances on the syndicated Ellen DeGeneres Show, as well as ABC’s Dancing with the Stars. On Wednesday, April 10th, catch him on NBC’s Tonight Show with Jay Leno before he plays ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday!
• And speaking of Brad on Good Morning America… When Brad joined the anchors for some fun throughout the morning on April 1st, one segment talked about six-year-old drumming sensation Avery Molek and prompted an invitation for the youngster to perform with Brad when he returns to the show this Friday! For more, check out this story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette!
• Get behind the scenes on the making of Brad’s new album with the very cool Building a Wheelhouse Interactive Book, created and designed specifically for the iBookstore. Check it out!

  Brad Paisley says that it took some years of music-making before he got to the point that he was ready to make an album like Wheelhouse. (:44)
“It’s very scary to take a musical chance, and there’s things you can get away with later that you cannot get away with in the beginning. I couldn’t have made this album in the beginning. If you would actually have gone back in time and played this album for the kid that made Who Needs Pictures in 1999, I don’t think I would’ve believed that you actually had a copy of my future album. I think I would say that you were crazy, that there’s no way that’s what I’m up to. And it takes going through a lot of things in your life to get to a point where you’re ready to sing a certain song. It’s only because I made albums like Who Needs Pictures and Mud on the Tires and Part II and stuff like that that I get to a point where I’m ready to take a chance on somethin’ that’s way less predictable.”

  Brad Paisley says that making an album comes with a variety of creative challenges. (:49)
“It can be a challenge to get exactly what’s in your head on tape because sometimes…well, things don’t cooperate like you would want. I mean, the, you know…air doesn’t cooperate on certain days. Acoustics are different than you think. The best thing that happens in a record is the thing that you didn’t expect. And you just never know ’til you get somethin’ on tape, and then you…it’s completely like painting, in that you paint yourself into a corner at times, and you have to figure out your way out. And it’s sort of like you start…everything that you put on a canvas affects the thing next to it. And that’s the way it is with a record. You can throw on this really distorted guitar in the middle of this chorus that’s really big-sounding, but the minute you add five other things, that guitar isn’t the right thing anymore.”

  Brad Paisley talks about the genesis of his album title. (:51)
“The lyric ‘wheelhouse’…actually, I started thinkin’ about that as a thing that encompassed what I was tryin’ to do, which was the comfort zone being the strike zone, the area where you’re at your most effective, and our goal with this album was to challenge what is that and to figure out if I can operate outside of that, ’cause I would have never been comfortable doin’ some of these things early on. And I wasn’t sure what the lyric was to ‘Southern Comfort Zone’ until I started thinkin’ about the term ‘wheelhouse,’ and I was havin’ a discussion with Kelley Lovelace, my best friend and co-writer, and I just said, ‘I love that term “wheelhouse.” And I don’t think there’s been any albums called Wheelhouse.’ That feels like, you know, it should have been an REO Speedwagon album or a Van Halen album, you know? ‘The new album from Van Halen — Wheelhouse!’ You know? ‘This is Brad Paisley and Wheelhouse!'”