Diary of a Player (12 page)

When I was growing up, our little part of West Virginia felt like a kind of musical crossroads. There was lots of country music on the radio—everything from the Judds to Dwight Yoakam—and there was a whole lot of classic rock. Of course, back then it was just rock. The “classic” hadn't officially been added to the name yet. I loved rock music. But I also loved country. Real country. Being a fan of country music made me happy, but it also made me a slightly odd young man. Frankly, most of the other kids at my high school seemed a lot more interested in listening to me play Van Halen licks in my living room than they did in hearing me play on the same stage as Vern Gosdin at the Wheeling Jamboree.

I loved the feeling of playing something on the guitar that would make my friends flip out.

I get it. Eddie Van Halen blew me away, too, and he still does. What I especially loved about Eddie Van Halen's high-flying style was that the guitar was so absolutely central to his band's sound. When you listened to Van Halen, you could tell the guitar player was at least as important as the lead singer in this group—maybe more so. Heck, Van Halen would go on to replace their lead singer a few times, but they could
never
replace Eddie Van Halen. I loved the idea of a guitarist being at the center of any band.

Back in the late eighties, the relatively wholesome nature of country music had a bit of a hard time competing with the more dangerous-sounding thrills of “Running with the Devil” in rock and roll. There were times when I felt like a country kid living in an MTV world. But in 1989, when I started high school, little did I know that our little musical world was about to change in a very big way. A seismic shift was about to take place in the musical landscape, and that change went by the name of Garth Brooks.

Along with Clint Black and a few other popular country artists, Garth Brooks came along and set the woods on fire with country music. Not just the woods actually, but the whole damn city too. Garth did a lot to make country instantly cool for a whole new generation of fans, including a
lot of young people who had never liked it before. Suddenly, wearing a cowboy hat was all the rage—even in towns where they didn't have any actual cows.

Thanks to my grandfather, I was already a devoted disciple of country music by this point. I didn't have to jump on any country music bandwagon because I was already firmly on board. Country music always has been—and always would be—cool with me. But Garth Brooks came along and broke down barriers. He became a kind of red-hot musical supernova seen by millions of new country music fans everywhere.

For a country star, he really rocked.

Beyond all that, Garth Brooks did something truly remarkable—specifically for me. Against all odds, Garth Brooks somehow managed to single-handedly make Brad Paisley much more popular in high school.

Here's how he did it: When Garth became the biggest star in music, all of a sudden the cooler kids at school who knew I played guitar started coming up to me and saying, “Hey, Paisley, can
you
play any of that Garth Brooks stuff?” Not being a complete idiot—despite what my report card at the time might have suggested—I quickly told them all, “Sure, I can.”

Of course, I already knew those songs. After all, like the
rest of the world, I was a Garth fan too. Before long, some of the songs on country radio were just as cool to these kids as “You Shook Me All Night Long” or “Hot for Teacher.”

In a flash, I became a man in demand at John Marshall High School. Lots of guys and even some actual living, breathing high school girls started taking a newfound interest in my weekend plans. They'd come up to me at school and say things like, “Brad, so why don't you bring your guitar to our party?” Or, “So, do you ever do anything besides sing and play on the weekends?” All of a sudden, I found myself with a social life. It was like something out of a Michael Cera movie.

Overnight, I went from being that nerdy Paisley kid playing with those old farts at the street fair to that cool Paisley guy with the guitar who could sing and play “Friends in Low Places” around the campfire.

You know, over the years Garth has gone out of his way to say some very nice things about yours truly, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for everything he's done for me. Without you, Garth Brooks, it's quite possible that I
still
would be wondering what it's like to kiss an actual girl. I thank you, and my children thank you.

Garth brought a rock and roll energy to the country music world, but at heart, the songs Garth sang in stadiums had us
all singing along because he understood instinctively what makes country music work on any scale. As he once put it, “True country music is honesty, sincerity, and real life to the hilt.” In the late eighties and nineties, Garth took real life to the hilt, and in the process, he made my real life a whole lot better too.

Here's yet another time in my life when I experienced perfect timing and what can only be described as a certain amount of pure dumb luck. Almost exactly at the precise moment when I was starting to discover the opposite sex, the opposite sex was discovering country music. Just by being a cowboy who owned a guitar, I somehow became popular by association.

It was obvious right away, even to me, that the simple act of holding a guitar made me a whole lot more interesting, even attractive, to girls. No, I still didn't have quite enough confidence or game, but now I could at least see my best hope for avoiding complete loneliness. After all, at that age, everybody is just trying to find some angle on life. I think everyone in high school feels like a nerdy, awkward teenager, but at least I was a nerdy, awkward teenager with one very effective, shiny crutch—the kind that came with six nickel strings attached.

S
ometimes I'll run into country music fans, and they ask me, “You know what I like about you?” I usually respond with “Hopefully more than just one thing, but go on.”

“I like that you can really play the guitar.”

Taking a cue from the Van Halen playbook, the guitar is the center of my band. It's really the center of my music in general. It is such a huge part of the thought process behind my records. To this day, when I take a solo in a song, I like to include something that's unique. Sometimes it may not sound too hard, but I always love it when I meet a guitar player and he or she says something like, “I have
never
been able to figure out how you do that part in ‘Water'” or “. . . in ‘Ticks.'” I love those conversations, and I love being able to discuss tricks of the trade with kindred souls. I also enjoy the look that comes over their faces when that lightbulb goes off and they look like they can't wait to get home and play that lick for themselves after having talked. It's an empowering moment. There is nothing like the feeling that your music has been an inspiration for another musician.

I spend some of my time in Santa Barbara, California, these days, and I'll never forget the first time I went into the
store Instrumental Music there. I walked in, and a teenager and his dad started staring. Here was a kid looking a lot like I used to look: rock and roll T-shirt, 108 pounds, clean-cut, Dad in tow. It really was some sort of déjà vu seeing this kid with his old-man chauffeur just starting out. I walked over and said, “Hi.” The dad laughed and said, “Well, you're not going to believe this, but he's here for his guitar lesson, and he's learning ‘Old Alabama' today. He learned ‘This Is Country Music' last week. We've seen you in concert five times. What in the world are you doing here?” I told them that I live there part of the time. Oh, and that “Old Alabama” is in the key of G. The son then asked if I would meet his instructor, so I said sure.

I had a great little conversation about my playing with the instructor, who was responsible for deciphering the ridiculous things I come up with in the studio for his student. I know what it's like to try to learn my licks; I have to do it every time I finish an album. That teacher had a lot of respect for me, but I wasn't sure if he wanted to hug me or hit me.

The guitar is the center of my band. It's really the center of my music in general.

I love being a popular guitar player.

By the same token, I also love it when I put a guitar part in a song that gets popular. Then I know that any band that
tries to play that song at Robert's Western World on Broadway in Nashville cannot leave it out of their rendition. Like in “Old Alabama”; I dare anyone to try to play that song without my, Randy Owen's, and Jeff Cook's guitar parts. To me those guitar parts are part of the DNA of the song, a living breathing thing. Somewhere tonight, someone else is playing them. And those notes will forever have a life of their own.

I
think my focus on the importance of the guitar parts in my records and in my band comes from Buck Owens.

In my grandfather's home, Buck Owens was definitely not simply that loveable character on
Hee Haw
but a towering figure in American music. In fact, come to think about it, Roy Clark, another world-class player in country and a great classical guitarist to boot, also hosted
Hee Haw,
and I partly learned guitar by studying one of Roy's books that taught his guitar method.

Say what you will about
Hee Haw,
but there sure was a whole lot of guitar talent in Kornfield Kounty. In our house, we watched
Hee Haw
every week, and I think it was such a fantastic showcase for music. There may have been some downside
for both Buck and Roy—
Hee Haw
painted both of them as jocular TV hosts as opposed to serious musicians, which they most assuredly were by any standard. On any given week, we all got to see their obvious musical genius, but of course, we also got to see them dressed in overalls, with a piece of straw in their mouths, looking like complete hillbillies—which I personally
loved
. In retrospect, I can understand that it may not have been the best idea for these musicians in terms of creating mystique. But in the end, I know this:
Hee Haw
made millions of people across the country happy—including everyone in my family—and it exposed people in towns large and small to
tons
of great music. It taught me something wonderful about how fantastic the combination of country music and comedy could be.

More than just about anything else, falling in love with the music of Buck Owens and the Buckaroos widened my understanding of music by introducing me to the very aggressive, really twangy Telecaster sound that Buck championed along with Don Rich, the resident guitar god in his ground-breaking band. Listening to Buck Owens and the Buckaroos was my unforgettable introduction to the whole Bakersfield sound that also included another one of my heroes, Merle Haggard, and his band the Strangers, featuring the great Roy
Nichols on guitar. I gravitated toward that honky-tonk Tele-caster sound immediately. Little did I know then that someday I would be able to call Buck Owens a friend and mentor, and that I would get to stand with Vince Gill and honor Merle Haggard in front of an American president at the Kennedy Center Honors.

Beyond being one of my greatest musical heroes, Buck Owens was a truly incredible friend, and, for me, was a larger-than-life presence. One of my earliest musical memories is listening to “Tiger by the Tail” on the turntable with my grandfather and running around in circles whenever that song would play. Something about Buck's records drove me crazy in the best possible way. Buck's sound was always so infectious and his two-part harmony that he did with Don Rich was stunning and powerful. The music of Buck Owens and the Buckaroos was everything that I love: here was great, vivid, lived-in country music without any saccharine, without being watered down. This music was unashamed country with a lot of attitude—honky-tonk twang and proud of it. His music even sounded like a bar somehow. It sounded like beer. It sounded like cigarette smoke. It sounded like grownups having a really good time in ways that I could barely even imagine—though I confess I tried my best. Buck Owens and
the Buckaroos' music sounded like heaven to my ears, and maybe a little bit of hell too.