brad paisley
Country’s guitar king shows us his rig!
Stardom of this magnitude is hard to comprehend for guitar players in 2017. Precious few six-string slingers can hold a candle to their Instagram-generation teen-pop contemporaries, but Brad Paisley is different. Singer, songwriter, TV personality, household name in the USA, he has his own line of boots, clothes and accessories at the US retail giant Boot Barn, and he’s won so many country music awards they just decided it’d be easier for him to host the CMAs instead. A quick check of his recent single release, Today, returns a cool 31 million views on Facebook confirming, should you be in any doubt, that Brad Paisley is colossally famous. Not bad for a guitar picker from West Virginia.
Today he’s jetted in to London from Europe where he and his family were on a brief vacation. With his signature Santa Cruz and prototype signature Tele in tow, he’s showing us pictures of his kids at the Star Wars exhibit at London’s O2 as photographer Olly snaps frames. In a few hours he will play its gigantic Arena to a sold-out house for the Country To Country festival, during which time we get to chat and take a squizz around his European touring rig.
First up, 31 million views for the latest single’s video on Facebook? It wasn’t that long ago that no record company on Earth would give away the first single from an album… “Yep, you’re calling it,” agrees Paisley. “When I’d finished the song and it was about to be out for radio, I started showing a few of my friends the video I’d been working on. It was all videos that I’d compiled from the internet. I’d gone through and found people that were using my music, and said, ‘Can I use your video for this new song?’ I figured that would be a good place to start, because if they were using my music then they were probably going to be okay with it.
“So we rushed to get it out, didn’t monetise it or anything – just stuck it on the Facebook page and my record label, to their credit when they saw the video, said, ‘It’s just important that people see this.’ And that was awesome.” It’s been over three years since your last record – what can we expect from Love And War? (released 21 April 2017) “I’ve never had anything more than 18 or 24 months between albums before, and it’s because I’m a year late! It kept not being ready. It was a writing thing, but also a production thing… I’m not one of these people who tweaks to the detriment – the more time I have, the better it’ll get, so you have to have time. I think it’s my best album yet. Someone will disagree!” There are some new collaborations – Timbaland and Mick Jagger for starters… “Yeah and [John] Fogerty, too. And there’s a lot of guitar on this record. These are songs that mean a lot to me; some in what they say and others in just the chance to even get to do that! For example, to record and write with Mick [Jagger] and see how his mind works and yet come up with something that represents us both. You’ll hear the song and it’ll sound like me on my part and it’ll sound like him on his part.
“Same with Fogerty, writing wise. With guitar riffs he’s just a master at going BLAM! – here’s a guitar lick that any guitar player or bar band is going to want to learn. In fact, the Fogerty thing [Love And War] was an example of where I had the song idea. I knew exactly what it was and I thought, ‘If I don’t write this with John Fogerty, I’m crazy!’ My fear was that he didn’t want to say what I’m saying, but he did. The song is a statement. It’s something that I think everyone can agree on – it’s about the mistreatment of the veterans of war and who better to say it than Fogerty? When I say it, it’s ‘Well, bravo.’ When he says it, I think they’ll listen. We may actually make a difference with him saying it.” The classic Brad Paisley mix seems to draw together those serious and more reflective subjects – such as the latest single, Today – with the more tongue-in-cheek and fun songs. Presumably we can expect that side of you, too, on Love And War? “Yes. In fact, I’m going to do one tonight and I’m going to do it acoustically. It’ll be interesting to see if the crowd gets it. It’s
called selfie#theinternetisforever. It’s about a year old and I’ve played it in concert a little bit. It’s actually something I wrote for a stand-up comedy night, but it works as a country song.” And the blazing guitar instrumental? Or at least plenty of blazing guitar in general? “Oh yes! The thing with Mick [Jagger, Drive Of Shame], for example, that’s a rockin’ thing. I’m doing all the leads on that and he’s actually playing some Strat rhythm. He’d probably smack me for this, but when he plays rhythm he sounds a lot like Keef! He has a thing – I think it’s where they place the beat.
“Two of the things with Timbaland have some of the best guitar. There’s a thing called Grey Goose Chase that has a lot of fast stuff, and then there is a song called Contact High, which is a 6/8 blues jam and we had about a three-minute guitar solo at the end that we planned on fading after about 30 seconds… Instead, we left it all in, and it just ends when you hear me go, ‘Yeah…’ We left the entire thing.” The more established your career has become, presumably the easier it became to make decisions like that. How does that compare with the beginning where blazing guitar solos maybe weren’t so welcomed? “It was a big discussion with the record label at the beginning. My label was concerned that I wouldn’t be considered as a contender for superstardom because I was more of a musician. You know, ‘He’s a lead guitar player… He’ll have some hits, play lead and he’ll never be as big a star as George Strait,’ or whatever. So they hid that from radio with the first few singles and it wasn’t hard to do because they had no guitar solos!
“My first single was Who Needs Pictures; the second single was He Didn’t Have To Be. I played all the electric and acoustic guitars on those tracks, but you wouldn’t wonder who that is because it’s just tasteful ballad guitar playing. He Didn’t Have To Be had a steel solo… But now I’d never stand for that [Brad is now laughing]. There would have to be a guitar solo in that son of a gun! By the third single, which was Me Neither, I was saying, ‘Can we please, now… let me cut loose a little bit?’” Can you talk us through the main guitars on the new record? “Pink is on there a little bit [Brad’s famous 1968 Pink Paisley Fender Telecaster]. There’s also a ’52 Tele that I use a lot. In fact, there are two of these where I replaced the pickguard with the black paisley – that’s the one on the single art [Today]. In fact, that’s the live one. The original one I had was killed in the Nashville flood, so Bill Crook – the boutique maker I work with a lot – he took the thing and had it for a year, dried it, got all of the guk out of it – I mean there was stuff growing in that guitar!
“It finally dried and he put it back together and fixed everything. We stuck a pickup in there, by a guy named Jim Rolph, which is really rare – he doesn’t make many of them. In fact, it’s a pickup he made for Keith Richards. But that guitar is probably 75 per cent of the record. There’s just something very special about it… it might be because it was in the flood and dried out and changed.”
There’s a prototype signature guitar we’ve spied in the rack… It must be the most overdue signature guitar ever from Fender! “You know what it took? Fender has become an amazing, heartfelt company. They feel like they’re no longer this big, cold… they aren’t that now. They are all about the guitar player from what I’ve seen.
“It’s coming out this summer – did you get to pick it up? [The body is] made out of paulownia and it’s super light. Weight is a big deal for me. You can find a good heavy guitar, but when you find a vintage Tele that weighs around seven pounds, oh man! My silver ’63 is 6.8lbs and it’s the one they based this new guitar on. That one has a rosewood ’board and the signature guitar has maple.
“They’re making some that will be Custom Shop and expensive, but most people can’t afford that. I thought, ‘What if we could do something amazing for an affordable price?’ $800 or near that is what it’s going to be. I paid more than that, comparably, for some of my first guitars back in the 80s.” And a new Dr Z amp, the DB4. How does it differ from the Z Wreck? “This new album is 90 per cent DB4: it’s insane! It’s thicker, it’s less stereotypical Vox, more black-panel, four-input AC30 in terms of character, but it’s way louder than one of those. It’s as loud as a Top Boost AC30 and it’s as clean, headroom wise, as a Top Boost, but it’s thicker. It doesn’t have that scoop. It’s a blistering smack!” Is that down to the new preamp tube, or something else? “Yes, it’s down to the preamp tube [a 5879]. It’s still a cathode-biased, four-EL84 output stage… the transformer may be different, I’m not sure about that. But it’s the most perfect amp I’ve ever plugged into for me, especially for a new amp. I mean, I have some great vintage amps that I’ve played and a couple of Trainwrecks that are perfect as well – but nobody is ever going to be able to buy one of those. This amp is something really special that you have to hear to believe, I think.” And the Plexis? We’re seeing Plexis on stage up there… “What I use a Plexi for – 100 watters, I don’t like 50s – is that if you think about being up on that stage in this arena, I use it like a sub. It’s not a sub, of course, but it’s really fun when you have the DB4 that’s grabbing your voice, and an old 60s or 70s Marshall paired up with it. They couple together really well. They’re actually much cleaner than you think – I mean 100 watts, they’re still clean past noon. So in a big room like this, you still feel the weight of it, and the weight of it is where it’s at, live.”
“‘Drive Of Shame’ [on ‘Love And War’], it’s a rocking thing. I do the leads and Mick Jagger does some Strat rhythm… He sounds like Keef!”
And are you still a big fan of Alnico speakers as well? “Yep. I’ve got Celestion Alnico Creams that I’m running the Plexi through, so in some ways it sounds like a big Vox! Like an AC100 or something, but they’re wild. I had one of those catch fire before and that’s not a good idea… The DB4 uses [Celestion] Blues. I like the Blues and the Golds in the Z Wreck because you can mic either one, but I like the Blues in the DB4. Creambacks are a little bit dark, which works because those Marshalls have plenty of high-end!”
And with that, our chat draws to a close. Tonight’s headliner is needed for the handshakes, meets and greets that go with the trappings of superstardom.
Just a short time later and Brad is stood in front of a sold-out O2 Arena crowd, rounding off the first night of the festival in spectacular style. And in what’s become a show regular after the first verse of This Is Country Music – tonight played on a Fender Paramount Series dreadnought – Paisley stops the song, takes the guitar off, signs it with a Sharpie and picks somebody in the first couple of rows. Tonight’s lucky recipient of the acoustic is a young girl and as he hands it down to her, he reminds her mother to make sure she practises so that she can be stood on this stage one day. Total class.
20,000 people end the night loving him just a bit more than they did three hours ago, us included.
Love And War, Brad Paisley’s 11th studio album, is available now on Arista Nashville www.bradpaisley.com