“The door shuts, and for the next 30 minutes you’re just screwed because you’re not going to be able to think. That’s how it is out there.”Although Paisley has written most of his hits, he’s open to the possibility of recording songs he didn’t write. “Whiskey Lullaby,” his chart-topping duet with Alison Krauss, was written by Jon Randall and Grand Ole Opry star Bill Anderson. “When I Get Where I’m Going,” featuring Dolly Parton, was a No. 1 penned by George Teren and Rivers Rutherford.Many in Nashville’s songwriting and publishing community appreciate the fact that Paisley and producer Frank Rogers are open to outside material.”There are certain artists that never cut any outside songs,” says Rogers, a friend of Paisley’s since their days at Nashville’s Belmont University “We have the best songs in the world in this town. Artists are crazy not to listen.”In looking for songs for the new album, however, Paisley and Rogers didn’t find anything that trumped what he and his collaborators had written.

“It just happened like that this time,” Paisley says.Commenting on the new songs, he notes that “there’s definitely a thread on here of looking back some. If the last album was looking back to high school, this one I look back a lot on who I became from a little boy on. You’ll see it in ‘If He’s Anything Like Me,’ which is about my son Huck and also Jasper … Songs are certainly influenced by how I see the world now through a couple of other sets of eyes as well as my own.” (Huck makes an appearance at the end of the song.)’DIFFERENT TIMES’”American Saturday Night” isn’t devoid of the humor Paisley is known for. Overall, though, it’s a mature effort from an artist with a wealth of life experience. “No one can make the album they made 10 years ago with a straight face,” Paisley says “There’s two reasons: One is you change as a person. To be a true artist, I have to be true to who I am now and write that way.

And the second thing is these are different times.”"Welcome to the Future” — co-written by Paisley and DuBois — is, Paisley says without hesitation, his favorite among all the songs he’s ever written.”We knew we wanted to talk about technology and how the world is changing,” he says. “It’s the hardest thing in the world to take the emotions I’ve had in the last six months and put them in a song, (including) having two boys now and thinking about them. That whole first verse just so resonates with the world I grew up in and the world they’re going to grow up in They’re two different places I was thinking back to the world my grandfather grew up in. In spite of some of the worst times economically that we’ve ever had, there’s a feeling of hope and a feeling of pride.”Paisley hopes some of the new tunes will provide a little musical relief from the daily grind — and he wants his tour to feel the same way. “I wanted to deal with the weekend scene in America, which is what people are living for these days,” he says.