Brad Paisley: Making Contemporary Country Safe for Guitar Geeks


Brad Paisley is the most talented pop music star since Prince.

As a guitar player he’s as good or better than, say, Albert Collins, Richard Thompson, Danny Gatton, or any guitarists’ guitarist you can think of. Although he writes most of his songs in collaboration, he’s a great a songwriting collaborator, like Elton John, and as good at delivering a hooky clever pop novelty as anyone since Smokey Robinson. He sings with the most immaculate, clearly enunciated pop tenor since Billy Joel’s (but instead of Joel’s strident keening, Paisley owns a sly, back of the throat humor that allows him to make the ladies swoon and the guys snicker). He’s got dark, Clooneyesque boy next door good looks AND he’s one of the biggest hitmakers in America.

But, like Jeff Gordon or Jeff Foxworthy he could probably walk down 14th street in Manhattan without anyone recognizing him. Although I bet plenty of them have found themselves, bleary eyed, humming along with Paisley’s Alcohol at Appleby’s during a layover, hipper than thou New Yorkers will never give Paisley a shot because he makes radio-ready country music in Nashville. They write this kind of music off the way punks wrote off LA AOR in the 1970s. But Paisley’s fifth album (not including last year’s Christmas record), Fifth Gear, is great. Great like Rumors or Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Ignore it if you’re too cool. Your loss. (Wait till they find out Carrie Underwood sings on a track!)

Paisley, a 34-year-old West Virginian, is at his best with hooky, novelties like his 2002 breakthrough hit I’m Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin’ Song). And he delivers in spades on half a dozen songs destined to spend the summer atop the country charts (Ticks already made #1 on the country chart, also great are All I Wanted was a Car and I’m Still a Guy). Online–the album’s second single– is my favorite of the novelties, an impeccably observed Internet number.

I’m five foot three and overweight/I’m a sci-fi fanatic, mild asthmatic, never been to second base/But there’s a whole ‘nother me that you need to see/Go check out MySpace

Paisley is also one of those rare pop singers, like Stevie Wonder, who can deliver schmaltz like it’s Proust, and he’s at his Proustian best on Letter to Me. Wholly-penned by Paisley, its the songwriter’s letter to himself at 17. The song features the kind of visual, nostalgic writing that Nashville adores, but Paisley fill the song (and the performance) with real sentiment, not just sentimentality. Again, knowing, wry humor helps. (When you get a date with Bridgett make sure the tank is full/On second thought forget it that one turns out kinda cool.)

But what makes Fifth Gear Paisley’s best album to date is how fully he has integrated his machine gun rockabilly guitar pyrotechnics into the pop material. Paisley is the guitar geek’s country star, a regular feature subject for Guitar Player and Vintage Guitar magazines, a tonequester’s hero, endorser of drzamps (although he uses vintage Vox AC30s in the studio). Guitar heroics have been mostly ghettoized on Paisley’s previous albums–consigned to fire-breathing instrumental novelties (like Cornography, Paisley’s duet with Nashville guitar legend James Burton from 2005’s smash Time Well Wasted). Here, working closely with his road band, Paisley delivers mindblowing guitar every two bars! (Although the ubiquitous instrumental closes the record, this time it’s an anti-climax.) In fact, among albums aiming squarely for the top of the charts, this is the mostly audaciously contrived record of guitar heroics since Purple Rain.

Yeah, the record is over-produced. It’s not just that it’s polished, punchy, and densely but tightly arranged–those are great qualities and ones I value more highly than I do willful low-fi primitivism–the problems are the ubiquitous over-compression, and worse, the obvious use of digital pitch correction to make the background vocals sound stacked with architectural perfection and every melissma sound precision ground. Paisley can really sing. He doesn’t need the crutch. But that’s the sound that’s expected by country radio, and that’s the sound that producer Frank Rogers delivers. I’d like to hear Paisley do a stripped down, back to basics session–not unplugged, mind you, since Paisley is one of the best electric guitar players working today, but something without the gigantic, reverb-laden drums and the mechanical harmonies. Still, a lot of the more audacious arrangement touches–marching band here, cockeyed fairground glockenspiel there–work beautifully.

I know some people–my 15 year old daughter for example–will never be able to hear past the superficial sheen of Fifth Gear: the soaring choruses borne aloft on a timbral cloud perfectly tailored for the dressing room at the Gap in the Hamilton Place Mall in Chatanooga. Even I have my moments of doubt. If Love was a Plane is too corny for me and the duet with Underwood is the worst kind of lifeless, made for market dreck. But the otherwise awful With You, Without You is redeemed by the emotional extended guitar solo that ends it (a little reminiscent, in its eligiac tone, to Frank Zappa’s famous Watermelons in Easter Hay).

Stopped at a light, windows down blasting Mr. Policeman–a rave-up featuring a duel between Paisley’s Telecaster and Randall Currie’s pedal steel–I caught myself reaching for the volume knob, thinking I’d better turn down such unabashed pop country. But I’m not claiming Brad Paisley as a guilty pleasure anymore. His music is just pure pleasure. Ignore it at your peril.

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June 20th, 2007
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Viewing 11 Comments

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    My sister gave me Mud On the Tires and I have a friend who has recommended Paisley often -- but I still haven't listened to him much. I guess it's time to go back and do so.

    (BTW, those who write off country music, even slick country music, need to get over it.)
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    I've been trying to ease my NYC buds into embracing SOME of the latest country/pop guys for the last couple of years with mixed results. I think they're convinced that they're all Toby Keith. A year or so ago I took a good friend who happened to be in town to a fest here in town and Keith Urban was rocking the house on one of the stages. I will agree with him and you that the schmaltz is hard to take at times, but over all the country guys are KICKING the rockers asses when it comes to guitar wailage. It's funny, Bob Lefsetz has just recently "discovered" this genre and has fallen in love with the honesty of it all. I gotta say he's on the mark. While they records do seem to borrow production elements from the hair band era, it's still far more rock and roll than what's on the charts in my mind. It's more like guitar driven rock with a little fiddle flavor.

    P.S. Tom, I tried clicking Fifth Gear link to buy this from Amazon and it farted out. I'll wait a bit and try again if you want to fix it.
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    TA- I dunno about honesty....it's all made to market craftsmanship, but that's the stuff that made Nashville justifably famous. No one holds professionalism against Cole Porter or Willie Nelson.

    I've been in awe of Brad Paisley since his second record. He was a child prodigy, started professionally at 12. He's a triple threat--like Faron Young, Harlan Howard and James Burton rolled into one. And he just keeps getting better. You'll love the gear section of his Website.

    Kevin, if one more person gives Paisley a serious listen then I'm very happy!
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    I agree Brad Paisley is the most talented pop musicians curretly. He is my favorite pop musicians. But I have search that he is now a pipular country musicians making the best and hottest hits wordlwide. it's that true? You are focusing to pip music. I thought your review will contain ballad musicians also as you mention Elton John.
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    Interesting post, and a good point about snobbery and blind spots.

    But.....as good or better than Danny Gatton? I don't believe it.

    I am a refugee from a long stint in DC, a telecaster town, and I don't buy it.

    That being said, I've outgrown guitarslinger worship since high school, when I learned to ppreciate serving the song, space, melody, and all elements that made, say, George Harrison's non-heroic guitar contribution to the Beatles a mighty more than the some of parts.

    But Danny Gatton was something else. I don't think anyone could touch him, a one-off combination of pyrotechnics and soul. Most guitarists trade more in one than the other. He had towering heaps of both, and must have been seen to be believed.
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    Christian-

    Oh yeah, better than Danny Gatton. I saw Gatton a coupla times w/ Robert Gordon's band. Great guitarist. But I think Paisley is spectacular.

    You're right, of course, about guitar pyrotechnics for their own sake, although sometimes that's good too--like Gatton's classic duel w/ pedal steel plyaer Buddy Emmons, "Redneck Jazz." What I get from listening to Paisley tearing into the axe is the sheer joy of playing and playing great. Never sounds like too much to me. In fact, I want more! more! more! Same kinda reaction I have listening to Sonny Rollins.

    And anyway, I love the songs too. What can I say, I adore and am continually amazed by Paisley. And I think this new record is far and away his best yet.
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    ok, your ethusiasm is convincing me to check him out, I know your ears are reliable from your old podcast, lol.

    Have you seem Brad live? Its his guitar all over the record, and not studio guys? Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm a huge fan of underacknowledged sidemen like James Burton, etc.

    As for Danny Gatton, he was a soulful tele player, and for some reason DC has produced a string of them, from Roy Buchanan through to Bill Kirchen, who tears it up on his own and for Nick Lowe.
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    I haven't seen Paisley...never plays in the greater NYC area like most country stars

    The new album is the one to start w/, it feature more uptempo novelties and lot of gtr. It's him on gtr, and his pedal steel player, Randall Currie, is equally awesome and they play a duel on the new album, "Mr. Policeman," that's fabulous.

    There's a good number Paisley cut w/ Burton on his third album, I think, if you're a Burton fan.
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    I saw him live in NYC for Good Morning America in Bryant Park!!!!! He is even more amazing in concert! And there was hardly anyone there so I got close to the front! The guitar is all him. Video of "Ticks" performed live at a concert will prove it though:
    http://music.aol.com/video/ticks/brad-paisley/1...
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    Interesting...
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    Oh, I like this guy so much..
 

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