Why I Suck... Series 4, Episode 5 - Brad Paisley

 I'm going to come right out and say this, I genuinely love country music. There's something about wide open chords, perfect 5^th harmonies and the twang and cluck of Telecaster through a Fender amp that just does it for me.. along with the lyrics, of course. Just like the blues, these are chock full of tragedy and humour, depending on the song (“Since the moment I left Milwaukee, Lynchburg, Bordeaux France, I've been making the bars lots of big money, and making white people dance” - “Alcohol”) – and then, of course, are those dazzling, gravity-defying Nashville licks. And this month we're looking at one of the finest purveyors of said hot country guitar licks – Brad Paisley!

I first became aware of him learning “Nervous Breakdown” for an RGT performance exam around 2010 – and one of the results of this past month is that I discovered the tab I learnt it from was wrong in several places, the moral of the story being USE YOUR EARS – and then plain forgot about him for a while until coming up with my 2023 list! So as is by now tradition, a brief potted history of Mr Paisley and then we'll pull apart some licks.

Born on October 28 1972 in Glendale, West Virginia, Brad first encountered the guitar aged 8 being given a Sears Danelectro Silvertone by his grandfather, and immediately showed great aptitude and promise, performing at school functions and forming his first band aged 13 – Brad Paisley and the C-Notes -with his then guitar teacher, Clarence “Hank” Goddard, and writing his first song “Born On Christmas Day” (which would resurface on a 2006 album, “A Brad Paisley Christmas”). This song would see him propelled forward further after the band played a local Rotary Club function attended by one of the directors of Jamboree USA, a long running country music radio series with a huge following, and after graduating with a degree in music business he was snapped up as a singer by label Arista Nashville, also signing a songwriting deal with EMI.

From that point the hits came thick and fast - “He Didn't Have To Be” from his first album “Who Needs Pictures” made number 1 in 2000, followed by “Me Neither” and “We Danced” from the same album. In 2002 he had another smash with “I'm Gonna Miss Her (The Fishing Song)” and in 2003 “Celebrity” - from there he's gone on to be one of the most consistently successful country performers, and is still at it, releasing the song “Same Here” February 24^th of this year (2023) which features contributions from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and with proceeds going to UNITED24 to help rebuild Ukraine you can get hold of that here: https://open.spotify.com/track/7cOqcCReryIN1M0WVN2msv

Right, so with the potted history out of the way, let's get to some licks! The first example is the blistering riff – that's RIFF, mind you, not lick, this thing propels the entire track – that underpins “The Nervous Breakdown”, the instrumental track from “Who Needs Pictures”. This uses largely the G minor pentatonic (R b3 4 5 b7) and is based around shape 5, with the addition of B and E open string passing notes providing a bit of colour in the shape of the major 3^rd (B) and major 6^th (E), powered out using a consistent 16^th note rhythm. Notice the use of b7 intervals and the call-response-call-conclusion riff structure – something that underpins all manner of great riffs, all the way from Smoke On The Water! You can flatpick this but you'll probably find it easier to use hybrid picking, at least on those wider intervals, and it will help with the all important “twang factor”.

Staying with “The Nervous Breakdown” for the second excerpt, this is a long flowing line mixing up the G major blues scale (R 2 b3 3 4 5 6 – G A Bb B C D E) dialing in some b7 tanginess from the F And even an Eb grabbed in passing, but these notes really aren't held for long enough than to do anything but to provide some “sour to the sweet” given the effect of the overall run – again, we're pumping out the 16^ths absolutely remorselessly, with Brad basing the run around a “sequenced 4s” idea mixing picked and legato notes with heavy use of that characteristic open string twang.

It's not all just about that twang, though - “She's Her Own Woman” has a bluesy chord sequenced in G that features a variety of interesting twists, including a C# diminished 7 (see? They DO get used in the real world!) chord – with an arpeggio spelt out as R b3 b5 bb5, C# E G Bb in this key. Brad negotiates this with first a G blues scale lick, before a twisting, jazzy C#dim7 arpeggio which resolves back to a G major pentatonic line. The key to undertanidng this is that the tonic note G, is present all though this, and the results are similar to a twangier, down home take on the Joe Satriani Pitch Axis theory.

We'll end with the very end cadenza of “She's Her Own Woman” - I did do more than just these two, but if I were to try and list everything cool I learned this month we'd still be here come Christmas – as this a wonderfully quirky Nashville take on a very SRV-esque blues scale phrase (again, in G) – sowing, once again, that most of the time the real differences between so many styles of music lie more in the marketing than anything else. Brad comes of the end chorus on a Cmaj7 and adds in a wide interval doublestop, milking the dissonant b5 of the blues scale against the high root note before hyrbid picking his way down the scale and finishing with that most country of notes, an open G!

Another month and we've scratched the surface of another amazing player – do go check out his work, I really do recommend it. Join me next month for SRV – will I manage to get “Couldn't Stand The Weather” finished? Let's find out!