Brad Paisley with Jewel

Better Than: Brad Paisley without Jewel, surprisingly enough

By ALAN SCHERSTUHL

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Ninety seconds after storming the stage, current pop country king Brad Paisley was already on his second guitar. Or maybe it was his first. Reality gets tricky during the Paisley Party Tour, a four artist, three-and-a-half hour, Hersheys-sponsored crash-course in just how weird-- and sometimes wonderful-- life is at the crossover point between pop and country. By the time Paisley finally emerges, with the energy and authority you'd expect from someone sitting on a string of seven number one singles, it wasn't even really him. Projected life-size at the top of his two-story stage set, a video image of Paisley picked out the opening verse of “Mud on the Tires” on an acoustic guitar. Then the song kicks in, and the real Paisley trots down the staircase, and I swear to shit a roadie sprints in to hand him his signature guitar, a gorgeous, paislied, baby blue Telecaster that he then wielded way out in front of him like the space marines in Aliens do their giant space guns.

More after the jump.

So, was that real-time Paisley playing the intro? Or was that him pre-recorded, like the Sinatra that hangs with Celine, or the B.B. King and Alison Krauss who would later that night “duet” with Paisley? This is what it's come to. Not only can you not be sure whether musicians these days are actually playing live-- sometimes, you can't even tell if they're really there at all.

Most of the time, there was no mistaking that it was Paisley's fingers flying over the Telecasters. Hot damn, he was playing, taking a serious solo in all but one song, trading lead lines with the excellent Gary Hooker, sometimes jogging and singing and picking all at once. Early on, he dashed down the middle of three catwalks extending into the crowd and worked a wah-wah peddle the size of a hobbit's teeter-totter.

An aside for those unfamiliar with virtuoso country guitar picking: think electric bluegrass with jazz bounce and rock bite. Or 70's car-chase scenes. Or that burhn-nuh-burnh-nuh-burnh-nuh-nurh-nurh opening to Footloose multiplied by eleventy thousand and with all the suck replaced by blazing ass-kick.

Or click here and gape.

I'm not saying he's the best guitar player in Nashville. But other than Keith Urban, he's the only one you ever get to hear-- most are restricted to chiming in for a couple tasteful measures at a time-- and he's thank-God more influenced by the likes of Redd Volkaert and John Jorgenson than he is by the flat, 70s rock riffing all over country radio. As he's gained record industry clout, he's featured more (and more inventive) guitar on each of his discs. Paisley Telecasted much of the night, and this, even more than his big ol' bucket of comic and sentimental hits, is what made his 100 minute set a rarity: a show made almost entirely of highlights.

Of course, the serious country fans are less interested in ace musicianship than they are in narrative songs that reinforce what they already think about life. During some of the hotdogging, folks around me sat down, waiting out the next familiar chorus.

Wry-faced and compact, he looks a bit like a scaled-down Bob Saget, but Paisley's a hell of a lot funnier. He's also an inspired songwriter. His self-penned hit “Alcohol” expounds a famous Homer Simpsonism (“To alcohol-- the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems!”) in a witty, four-minute essay from the point-of-view of alcohol itself: “You had some of the best times you'll never remember with me-- alcohol.” It's also the best giant country sing along of the 2000s, one guaranteed to keep crowds arm-in-arm and hollering long after Paisley's not cute, anymore. Other hits like “Ticks,” “Online,” “Wrapped Around,” and “The World” inspired similar excitement, both because they're friendly and funny and because Paisley's band is as good as any in the business. Fiddler Justin Williamson and lively bassman Kenny Lewis don't showboat like their boss, but they cut loose just as well.

Before the main event, we suffered some. Opening for the opener, the sweetly eager Julianne Hough and the blandly masculine Chuck Wicks came off so cheaply canned they could have been shipped straight from the Nashville Aldi. Both sang an upbeat opener, a big ballad, their hit, and a clap-along finale. Both stalked the catwalks, gladhanding the crowd like council candidates at a meet-and-greet. Both thanked us, thanked country radio, and thank God got off after five songs. Both, we were told, would be signing autographs in the main concourse, later, which again calls candidates to mind: country stardrom isn't something that just happens to you. It's something you run for.

Jewel's mounting a country campaign of her own, playing a 40 minute support set for a headliner many of her fans have never heard of. Like any politician, she's slapping hands, working the thank-yous, and speaking passionately about her support for the troops, but her own Alaskan eccentricities keep cropping up, confusing the country faithful and – in my section, at least – winning over the open-minded. Following the air-brushed Hough and Wicks, she seems less a desperate carpetbagger than a model of DIY integrity. She has a commanding voice and presence, a band playing richly textured guitar rock, and-- because rock people who love country worry about country authenticity in ways unimaginable to authentic country people-- the first pedal steel of the night. After the memorable “I Do” and a couple other sturdy numbers from her kinda/sorta country debut Perfectly Clear, Jewel got down to the obligatory: “Foolish Games,” “You Were Meant For Me,” and “Who Will Save Your Soul”-- which, come to find out, all these years later, has always included an homage to Merle Haggard's “Big City." So, eat that, naysayers-- she was country when country wasn't expedient.

Unlike much of the crowd, I found her new songs more engaging than the chestnuts, with the exception of “Who Will Save Your Soul.” That she cut loose on in ways that thrilled some and set others scratching their heads. Jewel scat sings, Jewel voice-duels with a guitar, Jewel spews and fireworks and destroys the familiar song structure, and then, alone, out on the catwalk, surrounded by 12,000 people, Jewel yodeled like a motherfucker.

Observations:

- By the Hershey booth outside, where Hershey girls gave away S'mores and a long-suffering karaoke host pestered fans with Hershey trivia, I had my photo taken with a cut-out of Paisley. Then, I was given a Web site address and an access code to view the picture. I encourage angry Chuck Wicks and Julianne Hough fans to visit this website, enter the code 374-9375577, and discover that I'm so much man you don't even want to think about fucking with me.

- During “Nervous Breakdown,” the night's best guitar orgy, Paisley actually blasted computer-animated super villains with his real-life guitar.

- Those computer-animated super villains, along with several minutes of South Park-style cartoon mayhem, were actually animated by Paisley himself.

- During “Celebrity,” a weak-sauce novelty hit from a couple years back, a video showed legendary guitarists Little Jimmy Dickens and Whispering Bill Anderson playing along on Guitar Hero.

- Jamming at near-Shwagstock length on “Let the Good times Roll” with a giant video image of B.B. King-- who actually shouted “It's the B.B with the B.P.!”-- left much of the crowd bewildered.

- Between sets, an announcer encouraged fans to write to Paisley's text-message fan-club, promising that one correspondent would enjoy the bump to front row seats. Fan messages were then broadcast on a video monitor:

“bishop miege girls love brad <3”

“i am pregnant and servinng with the marines and I love you.”

“my wife thinks your pretty cool.”

“your music helped me deal with my parents divorce and my moms alcoholism.”

I texted “I love Brad and Obama.” This did not make the monitor.

- During a two-song solo set, Paisley's ballad “When I Get Where I'm Going” was upstaged by a black-and-white video collage that included Johnny Cash, James Brown, Waylon Jennings, Paisley's grandpa, Chet Atkins, Dale Earnhardt, Ronald Reagan, JFK, Jimi Hendrix, John Ritter, the space shuttle Challenger, Christa McAuliffe, the World Trade Center, Hank Williams, Sr., Don Knotts, Porter Wagoner, and Heath Ledger. Ledger got much more love than James Brown.

Setlist

Mud on the Tires

Better Than This

The World

Wrapped Around

She's Everything

Celebrity

Mr. Policeman/Eastbound and Down

Country Boy Can Survive/I'm Still a Guy

Letter to Me

I'm Going to Miss Her

Nervous Breakdown

Whiskey Lullaby (with video projection of Alison Krauss)

That's the Way Love Goes (with Jewel)

When I Get Where I'm Going

Online

Alcohol

Encore

Ticks

Let the Good Times Roll (with video projection of B.B. King)

Critic's Notebook

Personal Bias: Although it's often glib, sometimes mawkish, and just a hair less over-produced than most modern Nashville hits, Paisley's hot-guitar pop-country stomps the living shit out of everything else on the radio.

Random Detail: Towards the end of the climactic sing-along “Alcohol,” the Paisley video crew attempted to launch into crowd-pleasing overdrive: flashing shots of hometown bars on the giant video screen behind the band. Unfortunately, the bars they chose were Willie's and Raglan Road, which nobody recognized. When the video crew finally showed a P&L sign with the words “Kansas City” on it, the Sprint Center dutifully exploded.

By the way: After the show, Brad's text-message club wrote to me, “Brad says: Thanks for coming out and getting some MUD on your tires with us. Don't forget 5th Gear is in stores now!!!”