Diary of a Player

by Brad Paisley

  Don Rich piled on top of James Burton’s revolutionary sound brilliantly and added his own thing too. Don understood the sort of twangy sound that suited Buck’s voice and his style of song perfectly. What Don played with Buck was so powerful and innovative that along with James, Don blazed a trail for all of the twangy Telecaster players who have followed—of which I’m proud to be one.

  Take a listen to the Carnegie Hall Concert album by Buck Owens and His Buckaroos from 1966—my favorite album of all time. Don is so fiery and so creative on this album and on everything he did that it still sounds fresh almost a half century later. Don was able to play anything from real country fiddle to great jazz guitar, and this gave him a real sense of adventurousness as a player. He took the guitar to some amazing and very entertaining places.

  But Don died too soon in 1974 in a motorcycle accident on his way from a recording session in Bakersfield to a family vacation. Buck told me many times that beyond being this amazing musician, Don was also the nicest man you could imagine. Buck spoke to me often about the impact of that loss—not only of his greatest musical partner in crime but also his best friend. I think he was never quite the same after Don’s death. I’m sure there was a feeling of closure on the era of music that they had so brilliantly created together. One of the true great duos in the history of music. I’ll be thankful until the day I die that I got to know Buck Owens so well in his lifetime, but I wish that I could have met Don Rich too. You can tell watching the old videos what kind of presence Don had—beyond being a monster guitar player, he was a sweet man with an easy smile.

  One of my guitar teachers, Roger Hoard in Wheeling, West Virginia—who was the lead guitar player on the Jamboree—did get to meet Don once. Roger told me about going to see Buck Owens and the Buckaroos when they came to West Virginia and played the Capitol Theatre. Roger was just a kid then, but he was already playing guitar. So Don Rich saw this boy waiting in the wings watching him and invited Roger to spend the day with him. He generously offered to listen to him play and gave him a few tips.

  Time and time again, I’ve noticed that the greats of country music don’t just have great skills but also great hearts.

  When I joined the Opry at the Ryman back in 2001, I asked if I could wear Buck’s yellow Carnegie Hall jacket. Buck sent Jerry Hufford with it on a plane to personally deliver it to me. There were many times when Buck would call me just to talk, and I could scarcely believe it. We’d talk about guitars, amps—and for me talking about amps with Buck Owens was about as much fun as I could ever have. I introduced him to my producer Frank Rogers, and Buck would call him too just to talk. We could not believe our good fortune. To the very end, Buck had an incredible passion for being a musician and for entertaining people.

  I will never forget the business advice he gave me over the years. He was so conscious of saving money and being frugal that I know he worried about me managing my income. He’d seen so many of his contemporaries snort their fortunes up their noses or go broke on bad business deals. He had no tolerance for frivolous spending or decadence when it came to running a business. When we moved from being crammed on one bus to having several, we used to hide them from view whenever we played Bakersfield. We would park mine by the Crystal Palace and the others on the far side of a hotel out of view. He’d walk in and say, “I see you still have one bus. Thatta boy!” And he was always absolutely against chartering private jets.

  On March 25, 2006, Buck played a Friday show at the Crystal Palace with the Buckaroos, had his favorite meal of chicken fried steak, and drove home. He then passed away in his sleep. I think that’s absolutely the way he would have wanted it.

  And in his honor, I cashed a free ticket voucher I’d gotten from Southwest Airlines and flew for free to sing at his funeral.

  I was also fortunate enough to be a young guitar player during a time when there was a whole new bumper crop of great singing, guitar-slinging players like Steve Wariner and Vince Gill.

  I first met Steve Wariner when I was about eleven years old. Brent Long—a good friend of my dad’s at the time who would later become my road manager—met Steve when he was traveling through our area. Brent worked at a sporting goods store and Steve is a huge basketball fan, so when Steve was in town, Brent would set Steve up with a basketball court to play on.

  One day while I was trying on a pair of Saucony George Brett turf shoes, Brent said to me, “Do you know who Steve Wariner is?” I told him I did. Brent told me, “Well, you’ve got to come see Steve’s show at the Capitol this weekend. He and I have become good friends and I’ve told him about you.”

  This was around 1984. I wasn’t all that familiar with Steve, because after all, he was a popular modern artist, and at eleven, I, of course, was a product of complete senior-citizen influence. If it wasn’t considered classic country gold, I probably hadn’t had it force-fed to me. So when I went to the show, right from the start I stood there with my jaw on the floor. Here was this guy with a red Strat singing and playing great songs, talking to the crowd and entertaining them, all while playing the bulk of the lead guitar parts. This was the lightbulb moment for me—the exact second when I finally put it all together and understood that you really could do all that, and even do it all well. It was like I had been handed a mission.

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  I didn’t just set out to become a big Steve Wariner fan. I set out to become Steve Wariner.

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  I didn’t just set out to become a big Steve Wariner fan. I set out to become Steve Wariner.

  A year or two later, I somehow convinced my family to let me make a pilgrimage to the promised land, Nashville, Tennessee, with Brent, and we went to see Steve Wariner play at Twitty City, the theme park the great Conway Twitty had next to his home. Brent put together the whole trip. The car broke down on our way back through Kentucky, and then we got stuck in Mammoth Cave. I obviously learned nothing from this, because in the year 2000 Brent became my road manager and still is today. Anyway, the concert I went to see is one I’ll never forget—not just because Steve was great, but because of his opening act that day, a new guy named Vince Gill.

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  SOLO

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  It has always been an honor for me to have Brad list me as an influence on him as a young guitar player. I remember when I was a kid and the people I admired. If and when I got to meet them—and if they were nice to me—I have never forgotten it to this day. My greatest wish is that the first time I met Brad I was nice to him. PS: Now the whole world knows what a great guitar player Brad is!

  —VINCE GILL

  Right from the first time I heard Vince sing “Turn Me Loose,” I have been a fan. To me and countless other fans around the world, Vince can do no wrong, whether he’s singing, playing, or talking. While I loved country guitar, I didn’t know what I was going to do with it or who I was going to be. But Steve and Vince showed me the way and changed my life. They showed me you could be a lead guitarist and still be an entertainer. They were both unique and extraordinary talents, and they still are. Around the same time Ricky Skaggs, who had started to take over the electric guitar leads in his band, was on the radio as well. I had been given a clear-cut blueprint.

  In terms of their guitar playing, as I said before, Steve comes from the Chet Atkins school. Steve was a bass player and bandleader for Chet for a little while and sort of got adopted by Chet. Vince was also close to Chet, so in a sense, these were the guys anointed to carry on a great tradition.

  Both incorporate the finesse of the fingerpickers like Chet Atkins, add a little Les Paul–type jazz, and pepper it with hints of Albert Lee. The funny thing about a guy like Albert Lee is that he’s this Brit who shows up with the coolest twangy chicken-pickin’ technique anyone had ever seen. Of all the places to breed a blistering country honky-tonk hillbilly picker, the UK ought to b
e way down the list. But he has a well-earned reputation as a true guitar player’s guitar player. Albert is part of a great musical continuum: first, there was James Burton, Don Rich, and Roy Nichols; then in the seventies, along comes Albert Lee playing with a great artist like Emmylou Harris, and he’s playing faster than you have ever heard anybody play at this point. Listen to a song like “Luxury Liner” or his version of “Country Boy,” as I have a million times, and you’ll be in awe of Albert Lee just like I am. Another gem of a bloke, Albert is a great example of a humble virtuoso—a master—known for his finger precision and hybrid picking style. If there is a common thread running between all of these players that I am talking about, it’s humility. Guitar players really are for the most part a classy, pleasant bunch. Guys like James Burton, Steve, Vince, and Albert all have one thing in common—they are badasses. And yet they are modest about their abilities.

  I’ve attempted to praise Albert on many occasions, and he always deflects the compliment. I guess he really doesn’t realize the impact he has on guys like me. But boy, he has left a mark. The way a machine gun would leave a mark. Without Albert Lee, a lot of us might have gone in different directions, but he sent all us twangy country chicken-pickers down a way more interesting path. Albert is one of those building-block musicians who changed the way the instrument was played.

  My friend Linda Zandstra knows Albert really well. I was playing the Christmas party for the Academy of Country Music in one of my early years, and she called and said, “You know, Albert Lee is in town, and he’d love to come out and sit in with you if you want.”

  Before that sentence was even finished, I spit out, “Are you kidding? Of course!” And to my amazement, Albert did come sit in. I barely knew him. Keith Urban was brand-new, too, at the time, and he looked at me and said, “Are you kidding me? Albert Lee is sitting in with us?!” My biggest memory of the night was the two of us practicing guitar in the men’s room because it was the only place quiet enough to work out arrangements. Or maybe it was because we were afraid we would actually piss our pants if we tried to play for that audience unprepared. Either way, we had to look like idiots to anyone who actually had to take a leak. That night Keith Urban and I both stood there and played one song after another with the great Albert Lee for the first time. There were some trippy moments in the beginning of this ride, that’s for sure. Those early days in my career, when it felt like every note I played would build my reputation as a player, were thrilling to say the least. Especially when I was standing next to my heroes.

  I also was heavily influenced by the guitar players in the bands. Guys like Greg Jennings of Restless Heart with his studio chops and his incredibly tasteful approach to pop-country guitar parts really got my attention. For a while I was covering multiple Restless Heart songs in my shows and learning every lick on every track of their records. It was music that kids in my school were hearing on crossover/pop stations. I could play it on my car stereo, and they actually already knew it. It was also so sophisticated sounding, so slick. I think it was around that time that I got really serious about learning to play in the studio. I wanted to be the kind of player that the Restless Heart guys seemed to be: studio cats.

  Of course there were the guys in Alabama as well. Jeff Cook and Randy Owen really invented a sound. It’s something that’s hard to define in a book, but it was somewhere between Waylon Jennings and Lynyrd Skynyrd—all the while being based on country songs. In my days playing the gigs and clubs in the Ohio Valley, there was one surefire way to win a crowd over: play ’em some old Alabama. One of the highlights of my recording career is capturing that magic on the song “Old Alabama.” When Randy brought out that old Music Man guitar, Jeff put his signature parts down, and Teddy Gentry added his stamp. I was shocked at the time machine we had created. Of all my successful singles, this would be just about the most satisfying. There is nothing I love more than creativity, collaboration, and the feeling of something unique. Combine that with nostalgia as well, and it’s a once-in-a-lifetime musical moment. I really think we accomplished that together.

  Other major influences would be the West Coast country styles of the Eagles and Clarence White. I have always felt like the music that best exemplified my style was California country, be it Bakersfield or otherwise. I guess I could have packed my bags and headed there. But it was a long drive. That steel-guitar-soaked B-Bender music painted a picture of a desert almost better than Bob Ross on PBS could have. Bernie Leadon, Clarence, Joe Walsh, Don Felder, these guys were all smoking the same stuff. And that’s not just a metaphor.

  The guitar music of the Beatles, with its heavy rockabilly influence, also spoke to me. It would later be mostly their inventiveness in the studio and their tones and sounds that got me hooked.

  But if I had to pick just one player whose style hit me the hardest and shaped me the most, I’d say that it was John Jorgenson and his playing with the Desert Rose Band. (Speaking of California.) I mentioned this band earlier in the book, and I don’t even know how to describe how John’s guitar sound spoke to me. It was the eighties, and everyone was playing a whole refrigerator rack full of processed gear that sounded more like Toto than Roy Nichols. I love Toto, too, but back then in country everyone put delay and compression all over their guitar parts. It seemed to go against the simplicity and earthiness that country music was claiming to champion. People’d be singing about Kentucky, but it sounded like New York. And then along comes the Desert Rose Band out of California, and they’re using heavy pedal steel and a bluegrass rhythm style with Herb Pedersen and the singing of Chris Hillman, who was a key member of the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. They had all the balls of those old Emmylou Harris records. Wait, what? Anyway . . .

  To top it all off, on lead guitar there’s John Jorgensen, and he’s one of the most insanely talented guitar players we’ve ever had in country music.

  When the Desert Rose Band came through the Wheeling Jamboree, they blew my mind, and in a way I’m still not over it. I can remember watching John plug a Telecaster-style guitar right into a delay pedal and into an old Vox AC30, which had never previously been used in country music. That was the kind of amp used for Beatles records, Led Zeppelin, etc. So John Jorgenson took what Don Rich did and added this British Invasion thing and his own meaty, melodic, nimble style. Instantly, as if given a mission from God, I thought, I’m getting one of those amps and I’m learning to play as close to this guy as I possibly, humanly can. Because the way John plays is otherworldly good.

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  If I had to pick just one player whose style hit me the hardest and shaped me the most, I’d say that it was John Jorgenson and his playing with the Desert Rose Band.

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  This was one of those many moments when being a part of the Wheeling Jamboree became my fantasy camp. Not only do I see John Jorgenson play at a young age, I get to open for him, to meet him, and even to have a man-to-boy talk about amplifiers. That’s the conversation that got me to make what was the biggest investment of my young life (which I wrote about earlier) and also learn about the premium cost of international phone calls.

  After the Desert Rose Band, John went on to play with Elton John and to form an amazingly brilliant group called the Hellecasters. When he left the Desert Rose Band, the guys got back together to play for Buck Owens’s seventieth birthday party around the year 2000. John was not able to attend, so they were going to just do it without lead guitar until this new artist with a paisley Tele-caster walked up and said, “Hey, I know these songs. I’ll play.” You should have seen Chris Hillman’s face when the solo in “Hello Trouble” came around and I nailed it. He shot me a look that was both flattered by my devotion and sad for my obvious lack of social life during the eighties. Again recently, I lived out one of my dreams when I got to sit in with the Desert Rose Band for a reunion show they did in Nashville. I played on “Hello Trouble” again, but this time with John and I each trading solos and then doing harmony parts. And fantasy c
amp continues.

  I actually got to play with Chris Hillman a few more times, one of them when we came together to honor Buck Owens. Shortly after Buck died in 2006, I was invited to participate in a tribute to Buck at the Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas. The band for our tribute that night featured Dwight Yoakam, Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top, original Buckaroos steel guitarist Tom Brumley, Buck and Bonnie Owens’s son Buddy Alan Owens, and Travis Barker of Blink-182 on drums.

  I’ll never forget that afterward, Chris Hillman took me aside and said, “I want to tell you something. When I was in your shoes, I was an asshole. Brad, I’ve been watching you closely these past few days, and I am happy to say, you are so far from an asshole. I am so proud of you. Keep your head on your shoulders, and don’t mess it up.”

  This was honestly one of the nicest things that anyone had ever said to me, especially while using the word “asshole.”

  Guitar Tips from Brad

  LESSON # 5

  Play what you know. Or at least what you should know.

  6

  THE WORLD

  You think you’re one of millions

  But you’re one in a million to me.

  —“The World,” written by Brad Paisley, Kelley Lovelace, and Lee Thomas Miller

  I think back to that kid soaking up every note in Wheeling, West Virginia. What a rich foundation playing live radio on the Jamboree had given me. I could play a show on a major stage on Saturday night, record it, go home, and listen to it, and I could hear where I’d nailed it and where I’d blown it. I certainly had a leg up on anyone living in a music-starved town. But now, I was growing up. The days of being the cute teenager who played for old folks were coming to an end. So much was waiting down the road. A bold new world beckoned. I wanted to see what I could achieve, go for it all, give it everything I had. There’s a time and a place for everything. It’s called college.