Brad Paisley on the Time Carl Dean Drove Dolly Parton to His House

Dolly and Paisley were filming the video for "When I Get Where I'm Going," and her husband patiently waited in the car. "He was so happy to be in the shadows," Paisley says

One of the emotional highlights of Wednesday’s Dolly Parton tribute concert in Nashville — CMA Presents I Will Always Love You: A Celebration of Dolly Parton — was Brad Paisley and Sierra Hull’s performance of “When I Get Where I’m Going.” Originally recorded as a collab with Parton for Paisley’s 2005 album Time Well Wasted, the song has become especially moving to Paisley following the country icon’s death in August.

“It’s really hard to believe that this song, which I did with her, is now about her,” Paisley tells Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast.

The singer-guitarist recalls his idea for the song’s music video: a simple setup of people holding photos of the loved ones they had lost. For him, it was his Aunt Rita. For Parton, it was her “pappy,” and she arrived at Paisley’s house one afternoon, with her husband Carl Dean, ready to film her part. While Parton worked and the two chatted, Paisley recalls Dean waiting patiently in the car.

“Carl Dean, her husband, was just so happy to be in the shadows. She was in here a while. We walked around and talked in the house and had a great day,” he says. “And she went out to get in the car, and I see him waving. He didn’t even come in! He was just so happy to drive her around. And she got in the car, and she drove away.”

Parton and Dean were married in 1966. In 2025, Parton announced that Dean had died at 82. They had been married nearly 60 years. Parton died a year later, at 80.

“Dolly would do anything she believed in,” Paisley says. “When I cut [“When I Get Where I’m Going”], I said, ‘I’m cutting this, but I need something that takes it into the angelic realm,’ and so I sent it to Dolly and said, ‘Would you sing this with me?’ She wrote back, ‘Absolutely.’”

Watch Paisley’s full interview below.

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Staged at Nashville’s Belmont University, CMA Presents I Will Always Love You: A Celebration of Dolly Parton is streaming now on Hulu. Proceeds from the event benefit Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Other performers included Ella Langley, Zac Brown, and Carrie Underwood, who closed the show with “I Will Always Love You.”

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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.