Diary of a Player

by Brad Paisley

  To all the younger artists out there, here’s what I’ve learned: Define yourself instead of allowing others to do that important job for you. Don’t let anybody paint you into a corner or tell you who you are. You tell them.

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  Hit songs are great, but now I felt like I’d opened up the lines of communication and could actually comment on life.

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  Something that always astounds me is the way a simple three-minute song, written in a matter of hours, can become a living breathing monster all its own. Songwriters are the ultimate Dr. Frankensteins. We put very little by way of electricity or sweat into actual songwriting, and the next thing you know, studios are booked, albums are being pressed, video locations are being prepped, and people are employed. I’ll never forget driving up to the set of the “Celebrity” video. Here’s Jason Alexander in the makeup chair, Little Jimmy Dickens has flown out to appear with the Bachelorette Trista Rehn, and William Shatner is pulling into the parking lot. This was a big deal to me because beyond being a lifelong music lover, I’m also a true American child of television. And you can imagine what it is like to see your song depicted by legendary screen actors. I was having more fun than anyone should ever be allowed to have.

  Mud on the Tires also marked the debut of the Kung Pao Buckaroos, an old-timey audio comedy troupe featuring three Country Music Hall of Famers and some of the funniest guys I know—Little Jimmy Dickens, “Whispering Bill” Anderson, and arguably the greatest country singer ever, George Jones. The Kung Pao Buckaroos appeared on a track called “Spaghetti Western Swing,” which also featured a musician who had in recent years become another of my favorite guitar players, Redd Volkaert. Redd made a name for himself playing pure honky-tonk swing in the clubs on Broadway in Nashville. The man’s an absolute monster player, and soon all the other players in town, like Brent Mason, Vince Gill, and I, would go check him out any chance we got. Eventually, Redd went on tour with Merle Haggard himself, then decided to move to Austin, Texas, where he could play live music to his heart’s content. He has shaped my playing in recent years more than any other player. I love what he does so much that when I had the chance to play talent booker instead of talent, I offered him a gig that I hoped would be a once-in-a-lifetime chance: playing my wedding reception.

  Kim and I got married out in California in the chapel at Pepperdine University overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Malibu. We got hitched in California because Kim was still filming According to Jim, and all of her friends were out there. And of course, her friends are more important than mine. Take note, future grooms.

  Kim and I pulled off a unique trick with our wedding. We invited our families and our close friends to the rehearsal dinner—about fifty people—and stressed that we really wanted to share that special time with them before the next day, when there would be a big reception with 250 people or so and a honky-tonk band complete with plenty of Telecaster twang. So there we all were, gathered together in the church, and the wedding planner started telling everybody, “Okay, here’s how it’s going to happen tomorrow. Brad, you spit out your gum and stand here, and Kim, you come on down the aisle.”

  Kim came down the aisle with a coat on and a veil over her face. Now all our families and friends are milling around and half paying attention when suddenly Kim takes off her coat and reveals that she’s wearing a wedding dress. In an instant, everybody’s eyes opened wide. Suddenly they knew why we’d insisted they be at rehearsal. This was no rehearsal—this was the main event.

  It was the greatest way imaginable for the two of us to get married. First of all, Kim was in one of the best wedding movies of all time, so how are you going to compete with that in your own life? Secondly, I personally am not a fan of the pomp and circumstance that surrounds most weddings. In fact I hate weddings more than almost any organized event, I really do. As a kid I was always booked singing at weddings and receptions. And perfectly sane people lose their minds, almost without fail, at these “blessed” occasions. “Stand here, wear this flower, no, this flower, did you learn the words? Can you change the words? Not too loud, wait on the cue when they release the doves, can you sing it in a higher key? Would you mind not eating at the reception? We’re running a little low on ravioli.” No, thank you. I’ll pass and send a gift.

  Clearly I have issues.

  The best part of surprising everyone with our day-early ceremony was it didn’t allow the usual suspects to get to full-blown meltdown mode. The next thing they knew, it was too late to get nervous or crazy. The deed had been done.

  Since we had this tent on a nice hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean—and a whole bunch of Hollywood people coming—I figured these Hollywood types needed a dose of hillbilly. I remember calling Redd Volkaert in Austin and inviting him and his band to fly in and play our wedding party. And since my own band and I had been on tour until about a week before the wedding, we were about to route everyone so that these guys I love could share our big day too. Everybody got up and played, and we had a massive Malibu wedding-day honky-tonk jam session in that tent. To me, our wedding was the perfect blend of our two separate lives coming together—Kim and all her great Hollywood friends dancing their hearts out to “Crazy Arms.”

  The next few years were a big, beautiful blur.

  More hit singles, and life went pretty well with one large exception: the death of my beloved aunt Rita. This woman was my mother’s sister, mom to my cousins Christy and Lisa, and like a second mom to me. She was my mother’s best friend, as well. She lost a long battle with cancer. Lost is the wrong word. I prefer to see even the end of her life as a victory. This was a woman who fought cancer for seven years when the outlook was nowhere near that optimistic.

  The night she died was a Sunday. I remember sitting down to eat and getting the call from my mom, who was with my aunt Rita when she passed. Kim and I had just recently moved onto our farm and had been sending pictures of it back for her to see. Aunt Rita had really hoped to visit someday if she got better. As I heard that she’d taken her last breath, I pictured her floating up and away, much like the accounts of people who’ve had near-death experiences. Higher and higher, away from her house and her town, free of the prison that a cancer-stricken body becomes. And then, I imagined, she must have headed south to Tennessee, to finally fly over our farm and see it once and for all. I lost it.

  In my moment of grief, I suddenly remembered a song my friend Rivers Rutherford had pitched to me that he’d written with George Teren—“When I Get Where I’m Going.” That song was exactly my wishes, my take on the departure and destination of my aunt’s soul. I tried to recite the words to Kim but couldn’t keep my composure. I had to cut it. No finer lyric has ever been written that so perfectly expresses my own wishes for what happens to us when we die. And I knew that song would be life-changing for a lot of people after they got a chance to soak in the message of it. That is the power of a great country song. To be your life in a song. Or in this case, even the end of your life. It also didn’t hurt the emotional impact of the song that I enlisted a “little ole” singer from East Tennessee named Dolly to harmonize with me on it. I am still so proud of that moment in my career and what it has meant to other people. Country music is important, sometimes, I think. Correction. I know it is.

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  That is the power of a great country song. To be your life in a song.

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  At Rita’s funeral, I got up to speak. I don’t know how I ever made an audible sound. I have never been that emotional—whether it be at an award show, wedding, or otherwise. But no one from our family felt like they could do it, so that left me. Mr. Get-up-in-front-of-people—I’m so glad I did. I think I discovered something in that moment.

  One thing I got to say that day, which has stuck with me, was about fear. Life is about conquering it. No doubt about it. I believe one thing we are all here to do is learn how to overcome our fears and doubts, whatever they may be. Learn how to beat the things that keep us d
own. My aunt did that. She fought cancer valiantly and without much scientific encouragement. She lasted seven years when she was not supposed to last three. In that time she saw her youngest daughter get married. She saw the birth of Emily, her first granddaughter. She watched her hair fall out, bought wigs, and went on. She got to go to my wedding. She faced fear, faced the knowledge that she was on borrowed time, and made the most of it. It doesn’t mean she didn’t feel fear; she just wasn’t at the mercy of it.

  At the funeral, about a thousand people showed up to say good-bye. They filed past, one by one, in the family greeting line. I remember looking at Kim, who had only been married to me for less than a year at that point, standing there gracefully greeting people, representing our family for the first time in grief. And I remember knowing I’d married the right woman and that all of us would never be the same after having experienced this. I for one was inspired, and I still am.

  My aunt Rita loved the rain. In the summertime, she would go for walks in it, and she always talked about how she loved a great downpour. Well, when I was recording the vocal for “When I Get Where I’m Going,” it was a cloudless day. Blue sky, as far as I could see, as I drove to the studio. No chance of rain. Well, what do you think happened as I started to sing—right out of the clear, blue sky?

  I thought, Hi, Aunt Rita. Hope you like the song.

  Some Native Americans thought dancing could make it rain. I don’t know about that. But boy, music sure can.

  I love looking back at the things that seem meant to be. Divinely guided. I have so many examples, musically speaking and otherwise. One of those miracles, which I’m so thankful for, was on its way via North Carolina.

  I’d always said there was only one actor who could perfectly bring to life the main character in the song this chapter is named after. So I asked Andy Griffith to star in the video for “Waitin’ on a Woman,” directed by Peter Tilden and Jim Shea. We were very lucky that Andy’s wife Cindi had heard the song and told Andy, “You’ve got to do that video.” There’s a lesson: start with the boss.

  As I expected, Andy was amazing in the video, and getting to know Andy Griffith turned out to be another one of those thrills where there were times when I had to pinch myself. Growing up as a small-town guy, The Andy Griffith Show was my absolute favorite. Since then, I’ve been honored to visit Andy many times at his house—and in 2010, I even surprised him and brought the whole band with me to play bluegrass for him in his living room. We gave Andy his own concert while he sang and played along with us. I knew Andy had always said that was his favorite part of the show, having all those amazing musicians, like the Dillards and Clarence White, as guest stars. He loves music more than anyone I know. And getting to be there for him in this way, to give him this gift of music, is as cool as it gets. That’s the thing about this guitar my grandfather wanted me to adopt. It really can change lives and brighten days. Even for one of the greatest living icons of our time. Andy created a place we all visit to get away from reality and enjoy the simpler things. And I got to do the same for him that afternoon. If only every small town had as much great music as Mayberry.

  William Huckleberry Paisley was born in Nashville, Tennessee. I remember standing at the nurses’ station, ballpoint pen in hand, filling out the name certificate. I was thinking, We really gonna name him this? I said, “Let the name Huck-leberry stand for the power of the pen, the spirit of a free-thinker, the adventure of a river winding toward the sea.” And soon it would also stand for waking up at two A.M. and four A.M. almost every night.

  With so much to celebrate in my life, I decided the time had come to just play. So I once again went to my record company and made what they could well have considered an indecent proposal—making a primarily instrumental album that would possibly confuse country radio and my fans, some of whom were still largely unaware that I played guitar. I was searching for a way to shake things up and live out one of my long-standing musical dreams. This was a labor of love that I had to try.

  Before he passed, Buck Owens told me that if I recorded an instrumental album, it could be a big hit. “Man, if you get hot enough, you could take an instrumental to number one,” Buck told me. I wasn’t so sure about that, but I still wanted to take the opportunity to try something new and have a ball.

  Recording the album that I called Play was probably the least pressure and most pure fun that I’ve ever had recording an album. I knew it wasn’t going to set any sales records, and that wasn’t the point. The whole process of making Play was free of all those normal expectations that can keep you second-guessing yourself if you let them. Instead, Play be-came a kind of wild guitar party, and I got to put anyone I wanted on the guest list, from James Burton, to Vince Gill, to Snoop Dogg.

  The album was full of instrumentals—like the opening, “Huckleberry Jam,” written for my new son, and “Kim,” which you might have guessed is for Huck’s mom. There were some vocals too. My buddy Keith Urban recorded the duet of “Start a Band” with me. We had a blast through the process, and it became a number one hit for us.

  I also flew to Las Vegas and cut “Let the Good Times Roll” with the legendary B. B. King, then just sat around and listened to some of the King of the Blues’s great stories. B. B. reminded me a bit of Jimmy Dickens; he’s a great man of music whom everybody loves to be around because he has seen it all and has an amazingly positive way of looking at life—especially for a bluesman. Snoop had asked me to play guitar on a song of his, and while I was doing that, I asked him to do a little rap introduction to one of my songs called “Kentucky Jelly.” We hit record and Snoop went at it for seven minutes. Rap was a form of music that I never fully appreciated, but then you see a guy like Snoop Dogg, who’s the real deal, spontaneously create his own musical monologue—and your appreciation grows. It was amazing—like watching a great jazz musician take a solo.

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  SOLO

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  Brad Paisley is a monsterguitar player. He is ridiculously good. We tend to pigeonhole people in music today, and Brad has become such a massive country star that to some people he’s just a guy in a cowboy hat who writes and sings all these great songs. But Brad is also an amazing musician who could hold his own in any town playing any kind of music. As I judge him, Brad Paisley is one world-class dawg.

  —RANDY JACKSON

  The album gave me a chance to tip the hat to some of the people whose inspiration has gotten me this far. For example, Play featured “More Than Just This Song,” the song that Steve Wariner and I had written and recorded for our beloved guitar teachers Chet Atkins and Hank Goddard. I also did something magical and once-in-a-lifetime by taking the demo of the song “Come on In”—something new that Buck Owens wrote and recorded in his office—and turning it into a duet for the two of us. Including Buck on the Play album also gave me one more chance to pay my respects to the legacy of Telecaster history that Buck almost single-handedly ushered in.

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  The album gave me a chance to tip the hat to some of the people whose inspiration has gotten me this far.

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  Finally, there is a little number called “Cluster Pluck” that in less than four minutes let me grow my very own twangy Telecaster family tree, which featured me playing with the likes of James Burton, Vince Gill, Albert Lee, John Jorgenson, Brent Mason, Redd Volkaert, and Steve Wariner. If you want to hear who I really am as a guitar player, you can add up all of those amazing musicians and see my roots showing.

  For that reason, it meant the world to me when “Cluster Pluck” won the Grammy for Best Country Instrumental in 2009. Whatever else I may do, I consider it to be one of my crowning achievements that I got to be part of the reason some of our finest guitar players ever—James Burton, John Jorgenson, Albert Lee, Brent Mason, and Redd Volkaert—could now call themselves Grammy winners.
On the other hand, Vince Gill and Steve Wariner were already Grammy winners, but hey, guys, you’re welcome.

  Guitar Tips from Brad

  LESSON # 8

  Don’t fret those frets. They are your friends.

  9

  THIS IS COUNTRY MUSIC

  It ain’t hip to sing about tractors, trucks, little towns, and mama, yeah that might be true.

  But this is country music and we do.

  —“This Is Country Music,” written by Brad Paisley and Chris DuBois

  Country music is many things to many people. At its best, country music gives us pictures of our lives as they develop before our eyes.

  More than any album I’ve ever made and maybe ever will make, American Saturday Night—released in June 2009—reflected what was going on in the world at that moment and what was happening in my own little world with my family. Our personal world was expanding too. I recorded American Saturday Night just as Kim and I were preparing to welcome our second child into this world—Jasper Warren, named in honor of my late grandfather. We took Jasper home, where his big brother Huck couldn’t wait to warmly welcome him. And soon enough fight with him as well.

  Becoming a parent changes the way you see yourself and the world. I’m not the first to say that, I know. I think it’s safe to say that you can see a lot of those changes all over the American Saturday Night album. Take the song “Welcome to the Future.” When I was writing this song with Chris DuBois, there were really three things I wanted that song to do all at once. The idea was to show you our world today not only through my eyes, but also through the eyes of my grandfather and my young sons—and to serve up a little multigenerational truth with a strong sense of hope and possibility.