Brad Paisley is set to release two new songs — “Son Of The Mountains” and “The Medicine Will” — on Friday (September 29th), and he will premiere the music videos for those songs ahead of the launch with an exclusive YouTube Live stream event set for Noon CT.

Brad, who is from West Virginia, wanted to tell the stories of these people who are in dire straits, but telling them without judgment on the side of the people. He wrote “Son Of The Mountains” first, and it in turn laid the groundwork for the rest of the songs he’s been working on for the last several months.

“The first song I wrote for this record was ‘Son of the Mountains,’ which was – kind of started out as a fun thing, but then I – you know – I say some things in that. It goes by you, but I say some stuff. This song is really about freedom, and my home state’s motto is ‘Montani semper liberi’ I think that’s how you say it. It’s Latin; I don’t know, but it means ‘Mountaineers are always free,’ and so freedom at all costs is the type of thing, and that’s kind of the point of that song, especially,” says Brad. “My cowriter on it is Lee Miller, and his great uncle – like when we were writing this song, we had this first verse that was a whole different verse than what it ended up being. He’s from Kentucky. I’m from West Virginia, obviously, and I said what would be the thing that says it’s like a – I don’t – we don’t listen. When they make rules, we don’t agree with, we don’t do it. (laughs) That’s kind of the West Virginia thing. And he said, ‘Well, I have an uncle that went to prison running moonshine,’ and I said, ‘Why in the hell didn’t you say that in the first place? That’s the coolest.’ He’s like ‘Well my family doesn’t talk about it. We’re not really proud of it.’ That would be bio line one for me if I had that in my family. So, it’s a true story. His uncle was hauling jugs across state lines into Tennessee and spent years in the federal prison, so that’s that song. And it’s like yeah try and – you know Prohibition didn’t work in that area of the world. We didn’t listen to it, you know. It was disorganized crime there. In Chicago, it was organized crime, and West Virginia was disorganized, but it was just moonshine stills.”

“The Medicine Will” is a song he wrote about the devastating opioid crisis that has affected that part of the country, where coal mining and timbering were about the only jobs available, but with that came injuries and severe pain. The residents of these towns were prescribed opioids to relieve the pain, but it created an epidemic of major proportions of addiction and in many cases, death. There are a few different statistics from different towns receiving MILLIONS of pills. In Kermit, West Virginia, 12 Million pills were delivered to the town of less than 280 people and 30 Million pills were delivered to just three pharmacies in Mingo County, one of the poorest counties in America.

“I spent a couple of days in West Virginia interviewing survivors and first responders and people that have been working on this, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Brad. “I mean, I come from a town that’s changed since I left it. From ideal to – there’s this underbelly of things that are scary that weren’t there. And that is really near and dear to my heart this cause of holding the companies responsible that targeted that area, and they did. They targeted them. They knew that these people that power our country digging coal are – they need pain killers to do what they do.”

Brad, along with his band and musicians Dan Tyminski and Jerry Douglas, filmed “The Medicine Will” music video in a coal mine in Bluefield, West Virginia. Brad says, “I’ve never felt anything like what was like – you know with like ‘bout a six foot ceiling and coal everywhere and just like dug out.”

Watch the livestream with Brad and journalist Chris Willman at noon right HERE.