Brad Paisley Shirt Shows Hope

Brad Paisley was at the center of a controversy a few months ago with his song “Accidental Racist.”  At the time, there was a lot of discussion about the song and what it meant.  Brad was asked to perform and talk about the song on the Jay Leno show.  That night, something happened that surprised even Brad.  He talked about it with Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton:

“I probably have 500 t-shirts that I keep in the back of my bus that either my stylist buys or I find somewhere.  When I was going to do the Tonight Show, it was an important night, because Jay was going to give me time to talk about Accidental Racist. So I was careful what to wear.  I looked through my closet, and found this shirt that said ‘I Show Hope,’ and I thought, that’ll be great.  That’s exactly what I want to say. 

So I put the shirt on, and go on stage, play the song, and the wife of my co-writer Lee Miller, they adoped a bi-racial boy, which is one of the places the song came from.  She works for an organization called ShowHope, which is Steven Curtis Chapman’s adoption agency, which places these kids in homes.  Anyway, Lee calls me and says ‘That’s a really nice touch wearing that shirt for my wife.’  I went, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.  I just thought it said the right thing.’  Then Lee gets a call from Steven Curtis Chapman’s daughter, who is freaking out.  She gave me that t-shirt when I was at the factory 3 years ago.  Steven is a really spiritual guy, if you know his story with adoption, he’s way into that.  She gave me a t-shirt, and somehow it ended up on my bus in California, and this is one of the first times I wore it.  She told Lee, ‘I remember this, I gave him that t-shirt, and ran up the stairs, and me and a bunch of girls prayed, and said I hope he wears it at the right time.’  I have a photo Lee sent me that he took of the screen that’s insane.  Those are those things in life you don’t know how to deal with.”

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