Photo caption: Brian Simpkins, of Logan, W.Va., was featured in Brad Paisley’s music video for “The Medicine Will.” (YouTube screenshot)
Brian Simpkins, from Logan, was featured in the music video for “The Medicine Will.” Now, Paisley’s team is offering to pay for his facial tattoo removal.
BY: CAITY COYNE – NOVEMBER 24, 2023 6:00 AM
It was nothing short of chance that landed Brian Simpkins, a Logan County native, on computer and television screens across the country earlier this year as part of West Virginia native and country music star Brad Paisley’s new single, “The Medicine Will.”
The 40-year-old works at least 360 days a year. While he loves to fish and hunt, having the time to do so is rare. But after taking a fall this spring while trying to help remove a neighbor’s roof, Simpkins broke his leg and was rushed into emergency surgery. Wheelchair-bound, he was out of work for eight weeks.
“That’s a long time for me. They had me doing physical therapy and all that, but I didn’t know what to do with myself really,” Simpkins said. “I started going to Chief Logan State Park to fish. I’d pack my wheelchair up in the truck, get there and hobble out to the water.”
On one particular day, it was raining while Simpkins waited for the trout to bite. His wife and father-in-law went out with him earlier to set up a tent so he could stay at least a little dry while he fished. Then, two men pulled up in a truck with cameras.
“They said they were filming a documentary for Brad Paisley and honestly I didn’t really believe them, but they had at least like $3,000 worth of cameras on them. You don’t see that too often,” Simpkins said. “They said they were interested in talking to me and I said ‘sure,’ but then before we could start a windstorm hit and their gear, a bunch of it, landed in the water.”
The weather wouldn’t allow for an interview to happen, so Simpkins gave his phone number and address to the men in case they wanted to follow up.
“I didn’t really expect to hear from them, then the next day an even worse storm hit and we were out of power,” Simpkins said. “Well, they did call. I told them they could come up to the house but the power was out. They didn’t care, they said that we could talk outside.”
One of the men was Jim Shea, a videographer and producer who has worked on music videos with Brad Paisley since the 1990s. Shea and his colleague drove through downtown Logan to Simpkin’s house.
“Basically — that’s where this started, the whole project started there,” Shea said. “We were so grateful as soon as we pulled up to the house — we had driven by it the day before and I had thought that would be a great place to shoot, but we didn’t stop. Now, we were there and Brian — this guy we just happened to meet — lived there.”
With the street blocked for four hours, Shea stood up cameras in front of Simpkins and his family to hear his story. It was the first time the Holden-native had really spoken in front of anyone, he said.
“I didn’t know what they wanted me to share, but they just kind of asked me what my life had been like and let me go from there. What I had experienced and what it was like to grow up down this way,” Simpkins said. “I didn’t want money, I didn’t want anything, nothing but to get the word out there and try to help someone else. I wanted to put the [pharmaceutical] companies on the spot — they’re the reason the opioid epidemic has happened. They’re the ones that did this to us.”
Simpkins has been in recovery for substance use disorder for about four years now. His addiction started when he broke his shin when he was 15 years old. A doctor wrote him a prescription for oxycodone, and for the next decade — until he was charged with daytime burglary and put in prison for 15 years — the drugs dictated his life.
At the time of his interview with Shea, Simpkins had no idea what song or project his story would be used for. It wasn’t until September, when “The Medicine Will” dropped as a single, that he understood.
‘The Medicine Will’
The song is somber and slow, and Paisley’s country voice croons the damning lyrics that explain coal mining communities and their people coming to terms with the opioid epidemic and the pharmaceutical companies that are to blame for it.
“We dug that mine a mile below us / and built up this little town / Oh and we’re still digging holes / but these are six feet down,” one part of the lyrics read.
And the chorus gives the song its name: “There’s coal under the mountains / and gold in them there pills / if living here don’t kill you / the medicine will.”
At the end of the song, Paisley tells his audience exactly what he thinks of the pharmaceutical companies and their executives who targeted low-income coal mining communities with the lies of nonaddictive pain pills through the 1990s and 2000s.
“But I believe way down below us / Deeper than that mine shaft runs / There’s a place for those who did this to us / and it’s hotter than the sun,” the lyrics read.
For more than a decade, West Virginia has led the nation in the number of opioid-related overdose deaths. While that rate is slowing, it’s still higher than other state’s. Per capita, coal mining communities in the state’s southern coalfields have been and continue to be hit the hardest by the drug and overdose epidemic.
Even as prescription pill use has slowed, more people have started using methamphetamine and other, cheaper, alternatives to fill the gap, according to data from the state Department of Health and Human resources. Today, deadly fentanyl has contaminated street drug supplies, often without the knowledge of the people who are using the drugs, making overdoses more frequent and drug use more dangerous.
Simpkins has seen and lived the fallout of the opioid epidemic firsthand. In Logan County, he said, that’s a part of life.
“Everybody I know down here, everybody is dead,” Simpkins said. “They’re not even in jail anymore, they’re dead, and it hasn’t not slowed down. It’s changed maybe, but it hasn’t slowed down.”
An offer from Paisley
Simpkins’ house — seen in the music video behind him and his wife, Danielle — is a big, decorated structure. When he got out of jail in 2018, he used the $400 he had to his name to buy a 1974 camper and built the home around it.
Now, he lives there with Danielle and his 12-year-old stepdaughter, who is also featured in the music video where she tells viewers, “Don’t do drugs, don’t have drugs, keep away from ‘em.”
Simpkins said he spends pretty much every day working as much as he can, taking at most four days off a year.
“Staying occupied and staying away from the influence — that’s how you stay off those drugs,” he said.
Each day, he starts work at 2 a.m., where he drives to different stores across the coalfields and up to Kanawha County doing cleaning services. When he gets home around noon, he tends to his animals — a menagerie of 11 cats and two dogs — before eating, talking with his family, then going to sleep to do it all again. He has regular doctor appointments for medically assisted treatment, and sometimes he’s able to squeeze in fishing or hunting time. Whenever possible, he tries to bring his stepdaughter with him.
“I know what I have to do and I know who I am — I have an addictive personality, and I know that the 30 years I spent throwing everything away with my addiction wasn’t worth it,” Simpkins said. “I won’t go back to that, but I want to make sure people know who is responsible. We [as individuals] may have taken the drugs, but we didn’t bring them here, and I think there needs to be consequences for the people who did.”
While he works every day to put distance between himself and active addiction, the physical reminders of Simpkins drug use are always with him. On his neck, a large bold and black tattoo reads “SAVAGE.” On his cheekbones, “pure” and “hate.”
The tattoos can make life difficult — they’re impossible to miss and often the first thing folks notice when they see Simpkins, he said.
“When I got them, well I really didn’t think I was getting out of prison. A lot of people don’t talk to me, they want to keep distance and make some assumptions and I guess I don’t blame them,” Simpkins said. “Well, then they do talk to me and they realize I’m a very sweet guy. I’ve made mistakes and you can see some of them, but all I want is a chance. That’s all I ask for.”
In his brush with national fame after being featured in Paisley’s music video this fall, phone calls and text messages from people he hadn’t spoken to in years or didn’t even know started pouring in. Amid them was a call from someone on Paisley’s team, which had been communicative about the project with Simpkins, but not regularly.
“They said Brad wanted to pay to get these tattoos removed and I was shocked,” Simpkins said. “The only thing I really asked them for was an autograph for my mother–in-law — she’s a huge Brad Paisley fan and just had [a double mastectomy] for her breast cancer treatments — and well, they did that but then to offer more? I didn’t know what to think.”
Simpkins has spent months now researching tattoo removal, and while he’s still not sure if he will go through with the entire process — which can be painful and sometimes, depending on the patient, not remove tattoos completely — he has a consult scheduled for December.
Simpkins said, whether he gets the tattoos removed or not, he’s been incredibly grateful just for the chance to tell his story. Brad Paisley is a household name, and to watch the project come together — “seeing how they talked to my family, how they intertwined this all together was amazing,” Simpkins said — was a touching experience.
“I really never thought that anyone ever cared. If you went down the road like I had, you tell yourself no one cares and you believe it. But to see someone like that — he’s an award-winning singer, there’s a whole lot of people who listen to him, who know him, and now they’ll hear this story from him — to see him care, well it makes you think,” Simpkins said. “I know people not just in West Virginia are going to see this, it’s people everywhere and I do think that all of this – the drugs, what the pharma companies did to us — it needs to be told. I hope maybe this can help someone understand.”
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