Paisley premiered the music videos for “Son Of The Mountains” and “The Medicine Will” on Friday, speaking about them in an interview with Variety. The poignant music videos were directed by Jim Shea and edited by Paisley to represent life in the Appalachian region with “reflections of the beautiful and the painful,” his record label notes. Paisley shared, per his record label:

“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. 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,” he said with a laugh. “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.”

Casey Carter