Diary of a Player (11 page)

As an American musician, I hold this truth to be self-evident: a guitar makes a better friend than most human beings.

That's right: I was a teenage amp-head. Suddenly it dawned on me that as much as I loved guitars, the amp was often 75 percent of the equation. My grandfather had started me off small with a little Fender amp that was just fine for a while, but then I convinced my father that I needed to have a Fender Twin—and I needed it on wheels, too, because it weighed about a hundred and fifty pounds, and my father, who had to carry it most of the time, only weighed a
hundred and fifty pounds himself. But just when my father thought I would be satisfied with that, I decided unilaterally that I needed—that's
needed,
mind you, not wanted—a Mesa Boogie pre-amp and amp with two speakers and a big rack full of junk with blinking lights to go with it. I was a kid in a candy store playing at that Jamboree. I would see these guys come through with their fancy rigs and flashy guitars, and my saliva glands would activate. I had Fender amps, then Peavey amps, then pedal boards, then rack gear, then wireless units—you name it.

All of this high fidelity and high finance pales in comparison to what my father and I call the Great Vox Amp Crisis of 1987. That's the year when I came to Dad at age fifteen to explain to him in no uncertain terms that I now needed—again, not wanted, but
needed
—some very specific and hard-to-find Vox amps from England. My father had begun to realize that something was going on a little earlier when he noticed that his phone bill was suddenly full of long and expensive phone calls to Great Britain because I had done due diligence and discovered the numbers of some excellent music stores across the Atlantic.

These amps were the stuff of legend, first made famous by the Shadows and the Beatles, and they were rare and mythical
in late-eighties West Virginia. They looked as exotic as a Ferrari to me with their basket-weave tolex, diamond grill cloth, chicken-head tone knobs, and blue bulldog speakers. And like I was Veruca Salt in
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
they were my golden goose. I had to have them. “How much, Wonka? Won't take no for an answer. Come now, how much, I say? Now, now, everything is for sale . . .” And they were going to be mine.

My sudden and overwhelming interest in calling England first started when I opened up for my new favorite group, the Desert Rose Band, an incredibly innovative country band formed by Chris Hillman, formerly of the Byrds, and featuring the apex of my all-time guitar heroes, John Jorgenson, who would go on to play for years with Elton John and record or tour with everyone from Hank Williams Jr. to Luciano Pavarotti. As soon as I realized that the Desert Rose Band had Vox amps, I scammed someone into giving me John Jorgenson's phone number. So I just called John blind and said, “My name is Brad Paisley. I opened for you at the Jamboree in Wheeling, and I love your sound. Do you have a minute to talk about Vox amps?” Rather than just hang up on this punk, John was nice enough to explain that you could only get these amplifiers
in certain places and that I wanted the old ones, not the new ones. He told me there was a great music store in Louisville that would probably have them, but that they'd have a lot more to choose from in England at certain stores.

Despite the fact that I would avoid math homework at all costs, I gladly calculated the time difference between Glen Dale, West Virginia, and Doncaster, England, even though I failed to properly calculate the cost per minute. The first time I heard a British phone go
burr-burr
instead of
ring, ring,
I freaked out. Then someone with an actual British accent answered and I really got giddy. I pulled myself together and explained that I was interested in getting some Vox AC30s, and by any chance did he have any? This unimpressed guy with a thick British accent said, “Yes. We've got about
fifty
.”

With my heart pounding a mile a minute, I somehow worked out a deal to buy two. I think the cost for my dream amplifiers came to $2,500 total. Not including the exorbitant phone bills. But hey, some kids my age were calling those late-night 900 numbers to hear heavy breathing by then, so I figure my parents should have been happy.

Dad also claims that I never paid him back for this sonic adventure, so I guess an eventual free Corvette is not accepted
currency in these transactions. But by this point, I was earning $250 a pop playing solo for old ladies at a golf resort, so I did do a little of the math on that one.

After I made a deal in Doncaster, England, those Vox amps couldn't come in fast enough. In the end, it took them about two weeks to get to America, with me desperately tracking them all the way. I would lie awake at night and picture them crossing the Atlantic in the belly of a freighter, in their wooden shipping crates, like they were the lost ark and I was Indiana Jones about to intercept them. My new amps came through Pittsburgh to clear customs, and so my father and I decided to save a little money and drive there and get them ourselves in his Chevy Blazer. By now I was absolutely going out of my mind; I literally could not wait to get my hands on these amps. I had never really touched a Vox amp before—I had only seen them in concert and heard them on records—but I was already in love. No girl in school could be half as beautiful as these Vox amps were to me. Well, almost.

Finally we got to Pittsburgh and claimed my new musical treasure. I could not believe that I was now the proud owner of not one but two AC30s. By this point, customs had already torn the boxes apart looking for drugs or other contraband—unaware, perhaps, that these amplifiers
were
my drugs. Then
I furiously continued their work and ripped open the box to see the head control plate and know for sure that I had actually gotten what I (or rather, my dad) had paid for—and blissfully discovered that I had.

Dad and I loaded the amp boxes into his car, and we drove all the way home through the snow in the frigid air. Then right as we arrived in Glen Dale, my father—who's a volunteer fireman in our little town—decided we had to stop by the firehouse and wash the salt from the highway off the Chevy. By this point, I was just dying because I was literally one half mile away from my house—and from my dream of playing my first Vox AC30s. And they were right there in the boot. (That's British for “trunk.” Pip pip. Read on.) It was around seven thirty P.M. and getting very dark. In just an hour or so, it would be too late to play for fear of waking up the neighbors. Anyway, I was losing my mind. My father, on the other hand, was enjoying every minute of seeing me in agony as he carefully cleaned his vehicle. Payback can take many forms other than money.

At long last, we got back to our house around nine. I was flipping out because this was my ultimate dream coming true. It was like a Christmas morning moment for me. I tore apart those boxes and rushed to plug a guitar into one of my new
Voxes because I had never even heard one up close. And then came a moment of pure horror—despite all my research and calculations and conversions, it was not until that exact second that I made a horrible realization: British amps came with . . . British electrical plugs!

Try as I might, I couldn't plug either of my new amps in. So we ran down to the hardware store to try to get some kind of adapter. By the time we got back and got the right AC cords attached, it was so late that I could barely turn the amps up because of old Mr. and Mrs. Cerra next door, but at least I was touching my amp and it was powered up and I could sneak off a few notes. I played three chords, they rang out like the sounds I imagine Saint Peter will greet us all with when we reach the pearly gates, and it was just too much. I blew a fuse. No, seriously, I blew a fuse in the amp. As it turned out, the next trip to the hardware store would be for fuses. We got to know the chap at True Value well over the next few days. Anyway, I had discovered my sound. My tone. It had arrived here by boat, from the United Kingdom, much like my own ancestors centuries before.

As I prepared to graduate from John Marshall High School and think about my future, there could be no doubt that, musically speaking, my fuse was now already lit.

E
verything I ever really needed to know about playing guitar I learned before I graduated from high school. All those days and nights when I was so busy not doing my homework and not going on hot dates, I was actually doing something very important. In retrospect, I was growing the deep musical roots that have put me where I am today—wherever that might be.

Back in junior high, most other kids weren't all that impressed by this little odd kid with big ears and an even bigger guitar who had somehow developed the bizarre ability to “chicken pick.” It was pretty hard to excite my peer group by playing a jazz standard like “Cherokee” or maybe some blue-grass classic like “Salty Dog” that they didn't know.

My musical repertoire back then was decidedly too old-fashioned for their young ears and more likely to thrill my
teachers, my parents, and even my grandparents than it was to charm my classmates. I was a young man out of time and out of fashion. So as high school rolled around, I began to expand my horizons. I had to come up with some way to impress my classmates, especially the female ones. And it wasn't going to be with “Wildwood Flower.”

So like all kids will do, I started to discover popular music. But I could tell right away what I liked and didn't like. I was instantly attracted to any song with a great guitar part. That would remain true to this day. Conversely, if there wasn't much by way of “pickin'” in a pop song, my attention went out the door. Luckily, this was the late eighties. There was a plethora of pickin'.
Every
rock band had its virtuoso lead player. Van Halen had Eddie, Bon Jovi had Richie, AC/DC had Angus, ZZ Top had Billy, Toto had Luke, Spinal Tap had Nigel, and Eric Clapton had it all. I devoured this stuff. I found that with the background I'd been given learning jazz runs alongside Hank every night and a distortion pedal patched in front of the amp, I was not far off. I might have even been slightly ahead of the curve. When my friends would come over, they would beg me to break into “Layla” or “Eruption” or “La Grange.” I could play something as complicated as Jerry Reed's “The Claw,” and they would sit there unimpressed. But something
as brainless and simple as the riff from “Smoke on the Water,” and they would absolutely lose their minds. I loved the feeling of playing something on the guitar that would make my friends flip out. The only problem was that when I would sing, it didn't much sound like Kiss or Van Halen or Eric Clapton or even Spinal Tap. Well, maybe Spinal Tap. So here I was, a burgeoning rock guitarist trapped in a country singer's body. What to do?