Brad Paisley has been palling around with William Shatner for more than two decades. The Star Trek actor made a memorable cameo in Paisley’s 2003 video for “Celebrity,” playing an acerbic Simon Cowell-like reality-show judge, and the pair have continued to collaborate in music videos. Most recently, they teamed up in the studio: Paisley co-produced Shatner’s new spoken-word album, Love & Other Mysteries. It’s a callback to Shatner’s 1968 LP The Transformed Man, and its cover art even nods to that beloved cult classic.
But, Paisley stresses, it’s not a joke. “It’s not gimmicky at all. He means everything he’s saying,” the country music singer-guitarist tells Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast. “Bill is so willing to be all things when it comes to being interesting. He’ doing a heavy-metal thing right now. He’s happy to attempt anything, and it’s an amazing lesson for all of us, at 95.”
Paisley first met Shatner through a mutual friend and was invited to one of Shatner’s Monday Night Football parties. He said he instantly encountered an inquisitive fellow creative. “I never dreamed I’d even meet Bill,” he says. “He was so much different than you imagined he’d be. He was so hungry to meet people…and understand other art forms. And he was immediately fascinated with country music.”
But Love & Other Mysteries, co-produced by Paisley and Luke Wooten and featuring musical arrangements by Paisley, Gordon Mote, and Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, isn’t a country album. It’s a blend of various musical styles, over which Shatner recites his dissertations on life, romance, and growing old (or resisting to).
Paisley says Shatner phoned him up with the idea for the album and suggested it’d serve as a legacy statement. “He said he’d written some really important songs, and more importantly, a bit of a memoir,” Paisley says. “He said, ‘I want this to be my statement for where I am at for 95 years old.’”
In a special episode of Nashville Now recorded at Paisley’s home studio, he also speaks candidly about his song of solidarity with the people of Ukraine, “Same Here”; the opioid crisis in his native Appalachia; his opposition to a proposed Nashville data center; and his commitment to helping those in need with the Store, the charitable market he runs with wife Kimberly Williams-Paisley. He also lets us into how he wrote a buzzy new song for South Park, and shares his favorite memory of Dolly Parton. Watch the full episode below.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by Deputy Editor, Head of Country Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Shania Twain, Shaboozey, Vince Gill, Lainey Wilson, Sheryl Crow, Ashley McBryde, Brothers Osborne, Midland, Maggie Rose, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Kings of Leon, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys, the Black Crowes, Braxton Keith, Carly Pearce, Amy Grant, Luke Grimes, Brandon Lake, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Noeline Hofmann, Adam Mac, Aaron Raitiere, Devon Gilfillian, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Michaela Anne, Ink, Ne-Yo, Rival Sons’ Jay Buchanan, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, Clever, Love on the Spectrum’s Tyler White, Willie Nelson scholar John Spong, and authors Marissa R. Moss, Josh Crutchmer, Mark Gray, and Jonathan Bernstein.
