Diary of a Player

by Brad Paisley

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?

  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.

  Sometimes 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.

  Either way, I wanted in badly. Come to think of it, I still do.

  Buck Owens was such a hero to me that many years later when I finished my first album, Who Needs Pictures, in 1999, I asked my record label, Arista Nashville, to send an early copy to Buck with a note attached from me explaining that he was a tremendous influence on me and that I hoped he’d be able to hear that in my music.

  I was just content that my hero would hear my album and hopefully notice somehow what he meant to me.

  Before long, Buck got in touch with me through Jerry Hufford, who worked for him and ran his famous club in Bakersfield, the Crystal Palace. Buck had heard my album, called Jerry, and said, “Did this guy really play all these guitars?”

  So Jerry called me up and told me, “Buck wants to know if you really played all those guitar parts.”

  I proudly said, “Yes.”

  And Jerry said, “Buck says, ‘Bullshit.’ ”

  I’ve never been more thrilled to hear that word. I assured Jerry that yes, I really did play all that stuff.

  Soon after that, Jerry called back and said, “Buck says, ‘Prove it,’” and wanted to know if I would come out to the Crystal Palace and sit in with the Buckaroos. Without missing a beat, I answered, “Say when.” Then I got on the next plane to Bakersfield to spend the weekend. I had never even been to Bakersfield before, and this was definitely the right way to go there—being personally summoned to the Palace by the king himself.

  Once I got there, I was immediately invited to sit in with Buck and play guitar at the Crystal Palace. I think Buck was floored to see for himself what a deep influence he and Don Rich had been on me. I have a picture of Buck pointing at me onstage saying, “Take it, kid,” much the same way Hank Goddard used to do. Our friendship started that day, and it became one of the most thrilling and meaningful of my entire career.

  Buck Owens turned out to be everything I dreamed he would be and more. Eccentric, loud, charming, larger than life, funny, and above all, generous.

  * * *

  I have a picture of Buck pointing at me onstage saying, “Take it, kid,” much the same way Hank Goddard used to do.

  * * *

  After that, whenever I found myself in California, I always tried to go up to Bakersfield and either sit in with the band or just have lunch with Buck. I remember days off between fairs and festivals on the early touring circuit when I would rush up there just to grab dinner, pick his brain, and hear his fantastic stories about playing with Don Rich and the guys.

  One year on December 27 or so, Nashville was in the middle of an incredible ice storm. A psycho girlfriend had just broken up with me, and so I desperately wanted to spend New Year’s Eve somewhere else, anywhere else. Preferably somewhere warm. I called up Jerry Hufford at the Crystal Palace and said, “What’s Buck doing for New Year’s?”

  “Just playing here,” he said.

  “Ask him if he wants me to
be his Don Rich for the evening.”

  Next thing I knew, I was on a plane for Bakersfield to sit in. I got to live out the fantasy of being the right-hand man in the best band ever assembled in country music, and I got to get that girl off my mind. Just like Papaw had predicted, that guitar of mine was getting me over things and into things.

  Over the years, Buck and I got to record some stuff together and we also had lots of time to just hang out. I played New Year’s Eve with him four different times. Here was a musical giant that the Beatles themselves covered, and he was willing to spend time with me. I treasured every second. Even though Buck was already a living legend by the time I got to know him, he still loved to talk guitar and music in general any time you wanted.

  Some people forget that Buck Owens was a guitar player first. Buck was actually a respected L.A. guitarist back in the fifties, and he played on sessions for everyone from Faron Young to Wanda Jackson. Then Buck ran across a sixteen-year-old Don Rich playing fiddle in a bar in Tacoma, Washington. Buck quickly realized that Don was better than he was as a guitar player, so Buck decided that his role was to be the band’s front man, strum rhythm guitar, and play the occasional lead part.

  Buck had the vision and the humility to basically turn the guitar spotlight over to this other amazing musician with his own signature sound.

  Don Rich was part of a very rare breed. A pioneer of the Fender Telecaster, along with James Burton, also a guitar legend who famously played with Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley, and later John Denver—just to name just a few.

  Back when he was a kid, James Burton grabbed a Tele-caster and decided to do some really unique string-bending with it that was unlike anything anyone had ever done before. He broke one pattern and started another. So much of that cool guitar sound that you might associate with rockabilly and country music really started with James Burton.