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 Brad
Paisley will be the first to tell you he's led a charmed life-that
everything just seems to fall into place for him. What he
doesn't say-although it gradually becomes evident-is that
his run of good fortune has been enhanced enormously by hard
work, astounding musical talent and a clear, unwavering vision
of where he wants to go.
If ever circumstances conspired to create an all-around country
entertainer, the result is surely Brad Paisley. Who Needs
Pictures, Paisley's debut album for Arista Records/Nashville,
is marked by a prodigy's freshness of sound and a veteran's
instinct for emotional truths. Paisley wrote or co-wrote every
song. He plays all the guitar parts as well. "If I had
to pick a phrase that embodies the whole album," he ventures;
it would be 'laughter through tears.' That's the feeling you
get when you hear these songs; there's a little wink of humor
along with the seriousness." Some of them may make you
laugh out loud-like "Me Neither" or "It Never
Woulda Worked Out Anyway." But there are others-like
"Who Needs Pictures" and "He Didn't Have To
Be"-that might bring you to tears.
Born October 28, 1972, in the tiny Ohio River town of Glen
Dale, West Virginia, Paisley seemed predestined for a life
of music. "My earliest memory," he says, "is
of running down the road to my grandfather's house. He was
a railroad worker who worked the night shift. So he'd be at
home all afternoon playing guitar. I'd go down there and spend
the day watching him play. He loved Chet Atkins and Merle
Travis and Les Paul. And he'd play everything from 'Under
The Double Eagle' to 'Wildwood Flower' to 'Shortenin' Bread.'"
When Paisley was eight, his grandfather gave him his first
guitar-a Sears Danelectro Silvertone with an amp in the case.
Although fascinated by his new instrument, Paisley admits
it wasn't exactly love at first sight. "As a little kid,
you're out playing baseball and running in the woods. There
are other things that are a little more fun than holding a
guitar. But a year or so into it, I found myself waking up
and thinking, 'Man, I love to do this.' Then I really got
serious about it. By the age of 10, I was playing well enough
to accompany myself." At that point, a family friend
suggested that Paisley perform in church. "I got up and
did a song," he recalls. "And, I realized then that
people seemed to take more to my singing than my guitar playing.
Once you sing in church, it's just a matter of time until
someone invites you to do the Lion's Club meeting! Or you
go and sing for the Fraternal Order of Elks. Pretty soon,
I was performing at every Christmas party and Mother's Day
event they'd come up with. The neat thing about a small town
is that when you want to be an artist, by golly, they'll make
you one."
 The
next step, of course, was to form a band. To help him do it,
young Paisley called on his guitar teacher and chief inspiration,
Clarence "Hank" Goddard. "Hank was great,"
says Paisley, "and not just by local standards. He could
play everything that Chet Atkins or Les Paul ever did."
Goddard, who was in his late-50s at the time, enlisted two
other equally seasoned pickers to help him play backup for
the rising young star. "We called ourselves Brad Paisley
& The C-Notes," Paisley says, "but some of my
friends jokingly referred to them as the C-Niles. The greatest
thing about Hank was that he would sit on stage and let me
as a little kid butcher solos and play out of tune and out
of time. I'd be doing a solo, and I'd be horrible. But Hank
would be yelling, 'Good job, Brad.' I owe him and those other
guys for a lot."
When he was 12, Paisley wrote his first song, "Born On
Christmas Day." Looking back, he still thinks it was
a pretty good effort. "I've written worse songs lately,"
he laughs. Paisley's junior high school principal heard the
song and asked him to do it at the next Rotary Club meeting.
In the audience that day was Tom Miller, Program Director
for WWVA, Wheeling's country radio powerhouse. Miller was
so impressed by the performance that he invited Paisley to
make a guest appearance on "Jamboree USA," the station's
legendary Saturday night show. Paisley was ecstatic: "I
ran through the house screaming, 'I'm going to play the Jamboree!'
My grandfather was just super-proud. All of a sudden, he was
seeing this guitar he'd given to me become my life."
Paisley's performance went over so well that he was asked
to become a Jamboree regular. During his eight years on the
show, he opened for such country luminaries-and personal favorites-as
Roy Clark, Jack Greene and Little Jimmy Dickens.
A year after Paisley joined the Jamboree, his grandfather
was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer. "He
basically had three or so months left," Paisley says.
"At about that time, I secured my first major headlining
gig, opening for The Judds. He was in bad shape, but he got
to come see me play. And I think he left this world knowing
that he had started something good for me." Paisley's
Jamboree membership also earned him the opportunity to perform
each year at the mammoth outdoor summer festival, Jamboree
in the Hills. The event routinely boasted dozens of top country
acts and drew crowds of 60,000 or more. But the weekly Jamboree
turned out to be Paisley's most valuable training ground.
On the weekends he didn't perform there, he would hang out
backstage. "I'd watch these artists-George Jones, Steve
Wariner or whoever-and try to absorb everything from them
that I could. It was an incredible learning experience."
Just as important as this front-line exposure, Paisley asserts,
was the unconditional support he got from his community: "Growing
up in the Ohio Valley, the neat thing for me was that I didn't
have to ask to play a single gig. They were always offered
to me. I've always felt very lucky-as if there's a hand of
fate guiding me toward this profession. I never had to wonder
if people would like what I do, because there were always
people there who did." After high school, Paisley began
his studies at nearby West Liberty College. But his college
adviser, Jim Watson-noting what he'd done and what he still
wanted to do-kept urging him to move to Nashville and enroll
in the Belmont University music business program. Initially,
Paisley resisted, preferring instead to remain close to home
with his 'serious girl friend' and his college and musical
buddies. But when he came to Nashville to attend a friend's
wedding, he stayed on long enough to check out Belmont. Excited
by what he saw there, he decided to transfer. To give Paisley
a leg up in his new surroundings, the president of his local
chapter of the musicians' union wrote a letter of introduction
to Nashville counterpart Harold Bradley, the famed session
guitarist. Within a day of his arrival, Paisley was in Bradley's
office. "We sat and talked guitars, and he spent an hour
or so with me," Paisley marvels. Later that day, he went
to Opryland to look up a friend who was working there. By
pure chance, he ran into Grand Ole Opry star Porter Wagoner,
who graciously took time out from schmoozing with tourists
to point Paisley toward his friend's office. "So I'm
thinking to myself," Paisley says, "It's my first
day in Nashville, and I've just chatted with Harold Bradley
and gotten directions from Porter Wagoner. I'm doing OK."
At Belmont, Paisley met Frank Rogers, a fellow student who
now serves as his producer; Kelley Lovelace, a frequent songwriting
partner; and many of the musicians who would later work in
his band and play on his first album. Paisley served his college
internship at ASCAP, the performing rights association. There
he met Chris DuBois, another of his co-writers.
His friends at ASCAP were sufficiently impressed by the songs
Paisley was writing and set up an appointment with the talent
scouts at EMI Music Publishing. A week after graduation, Paisley
signed a songwriting deal with the company. Like many up-and-coming
artists in Nashville, Paisley earned extra money by singing
and playing on demos. One of these attracted the attention
of Arista Records/Nashville's A&R Department; "they
liked both the voice and lyrics and asked to hear more."
This budding interest from Arista dovetailed neatly with Paisley's
own ambitions. "My goal when I moved to Nashville,"
he reveals, "was to be an Arista artist. I can remember
buying [Arista] albums from 1989 on-Alan Jackson, Diamond
Rio, Brooks & Dunn, Pam Tillis, BlackHawk-and the music
would always be great. Everything from the songs to the artwork
on the albums was a notch above the rest." After a series
of meetings and phone calls-during which each party proclaimed
its affection and esteem for the other-Paisley added his name
to the Arista roster.
The handsome singer/songwriter is overjoyed that most of the
talents involved in creating Who Needs Pictures are as new
to the record business as he is. The album is the first that
producer Frank Rogers has presided over totally. And it was
also new territory for most of the songwriters and musicians,
Paisley included. "In fact," he remarks, "there
isn't much on this record that was recorded or played by anyone
who has done a major project before. But somehow we figured
it out."
Bottom Photo: Brad Paisley performs at Country Thunder
at Shadow Hill Ranch in Twin Lakes, WI on July 21, 2006. (Phil
Bonyata)
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