Out of the Past Comes the Future of Country

Brad Paisley doesn’t know what the fuss is all about. Huddled with his engineer in a studio hidden away in a suburban garage, Paisley isn’t concerned that he’s working on what may be country music’s most highly anticipated sophomore album in years. He also doesn’t dwell on the fact that some people look at him as the very savior of traditional country music. Right now he’s just a guy with a tape that won’t play.

“I really wanted to hear that Buck Owens part,” he says, shaking his head. The legendary Owens has recorded a vocal for Paisley’s album, and Paisley can’t get the tape to work. He’ll have to wait a day, when the proper equipment can be obtained.

“Dadgum it,” he says, expressing disappointment in his characteristically G-rated way.

The tape snafu is one of the few snags Paisley has encountered in his charmed career. After two years and just one album, he’s gone from obscurity to chart-topping hits, awards and, most impressively, an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry--something that many artists much further along in their careers only dream about.

“I don’t pay much attention to that stuff,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t feel like I’m any different from other artists.”

But Paisley is having the kind of success few artists achieve. He wrote or co-wrote all the songs on his debut album, 1999’s “Who Needs Pictures,” whose four singles included the No. 1 country hits “He Didn’t Have to Be” and “We Danced.” His guitar wizardry has been compared with that of Vince Gill, his charisma and stage presence with George Strait’s, and his witty lyrics with those of Roger Miller. And last week he was nominated for a Grammy as best new artist.

Yet from appearances, you’d never know Paisley is so loudly and consistently lauded. Like many country boys, he holds a special place in his heart for bass boats. His understated, tranquil style makes everything he does look easy. Even his jeans are relaxed: Appropriately for someone who’s straddling country’s past and future, they fit somewhere between the tourniquet-tight styles of traditionalist predecessors like Strait and the boy-band baggy look common among guys his age.

The 28-year-old has a boyish face that makes him appear even younger, but he speaks with the quiet assurance of someone with many more years under his hat. Casually perched sideways on a sofa at the studio, he’s both soft-spoken and direct, and so at ease he offhandedly peels and eats an orange as he ponders questions.

When he listens, he never breaks eye contact, and there’s a mature seriousness and intensity in his dark, thickly lashed eyes. There’s something going on there, and it’s easy to believe the word around town that he has an uncanny knack for remembering names.

“I try,” he says. “It’s always nice if you can remember people’s names. I have my little tricks, but I miss one now and then.”

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At a time when Britney Spears rules the music world, 28 may not seem that youthful. But then, Spears doesn’t carry the weight of the survival of pop music on her shimmying shoulders. Why, for some folks, young Paisley may hold the very future of traditional country music in his hands.

In the ‘80s, “new traditionalists” such as Dwight Yoakam, Randy Travis and Strait shook country out of its slick, Urban Cowboy daze. But today, with the youth audience gone and sales bottomed out after the ‘90s boom, there are few beacons left for those who enjoy real pedal steel and fiddle, and songs written for and about adults.

The very real fear is that Strait and Alan Jackson and a few others may be the last of the breed, and that there’s no place on today’s country radio for young traditionalists. But Paisley’s success has changed the picture.

“This ‘traditional country torchbearer’ thing that people have started to label me? I don’t know about that,” Paisley says, shifting his eyes to the floor and shaking his head slightly. “I’m just making the records I want to make.”

He’s similarly humble about his upcoming Opry induction in February. Paisley plays the Opry regularly--nearly 40 times last year--and the cast of veterans loves him and the jolt of youth and energy he brings. But when actually asked to join the cast during a show last month, he bowed his head, speechless, and “lost it,” as he describes his tearful acceptance. He may finally have felt the weight of the expectations focused on him.

“To be an Opry member was my ultimate career goal,” he says. “In my opinion, I don’t deserve it yet. I guess my goal now would be to earn it.”

Why is Nashville convinced Paisley is the one to lead traditional country in the 21st century?

It starts with talent, industry pros will tell you.

“When I first heard his album, what was striking was that you had this guy who could really pick and really sing and really write. You start to make a list of how many people that applies to since Vince Gill came along, and it’s not many,” says Craig Havighurst, music critic for the Tennessean, Nashville’s daily newspaper.

“I’m not sure there is genius in [his first album], but there’s definitely promise in it, and there’s quality in it,” agrees Jay Orr, senior editor of Country.com, a leading country music Web site. “I think he is so understated that it’s easy to miss his gift.”

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Paisley has been honing that gift for years. The only child of a state highway department employee and a fourth-grade teacher, he grew up in the Ohio River town of Glen Dale, W. Va., population 1,600. His earliest memories are of watching his grandfather play standards such as “Wildwood Flower” on his guitar.

When Paisley was 8, his grandfather gave him his own guitar, and in a year he was performing in church. He wrote his first song, “Born on Christmas Day,” at 12.

The teenage Paisley eschewed drinking and partying and spent most Saturday nights as a regular on country radio WWVA’s “Jamboree USA” show in Wheeling, opening for such veterans as Roy Clark and Little Jimmy Dickens. By this time, his focus was clearly on music, much to his mother’s dismay.

“I was good in school, but I could’ve been better,” he says, cocking his head to reveal a knowing half-grin. “I learned everything I could about music. I never did my homework.”

After a couple of years at West Liberty State College near his hometown, Paisley transferred to Nashville’s Belmont University in pursuit of a music business degree. Trisha Yearwood also studied there.

“I learned a lot about what I’m doing now in the studio at Belmont,” he says. He also met fellow student Frank Rogers, who would later produce his albums.

One week after graduation in 1995, Paisley signed with EMI music publishing as a writer. Like many Nashville hopefuls, he earned extra money by singing and playing on demos. One of these attracted the attention of Arista Records Nashville’s Mike Dungan, who signed Paisley to the label.

Now president of Capitol Records Nashville, Dungan remembers Paisley for some of the very qualities that now have Music Row singing his praises.

“This is a guy who was very smart, even at that young age . . . I think he was 23 at the time,” says Dungan. “He knew who he was and what kind of artist he wanted to be, how he would look, what his music would sound like. He came to the table with not only solid ideas but great ideas.”

One of Paisley’s ideas was hiring his friend Rogers as a producer. “They had a pact that someday Brad was going to make a record and Frank was going to produce it,” says Dungan. “No one knew much about Frank Rogers, a young kid with no credentials, so of course we were really suspect of allowing these two to go into the studio with serious money. But we let them cut five or six songs as a trial, and right away we knew: These kids know exactly what they’re doing.”

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“Who Needs Pictures” has received critical praise for not sounding as if it came out of Nashville’s hit factory.

“It takes guts to not go with someone who has produced a lot of hit records,” says Mike Robertson, a veteran manager who has worked with such artists as Patty Loveless, Pam Tillis and Lee Roy Parnell. “But I think they got rewarded for that, because that record sounds fresher than other records that came out at that time. The production’s drier, it’s less affected, it’s kind of under-produced, which is what makes it such a charming record.”

“I remember the label had their ideas and I had mine, and luckily they weren’t that far apart,” Paisley says. “It didn’t take much compromise, and I wouldn’t compromise much. To their credit, they understood the importance of this feeling like art to me. It has to be what I envisioned to mean something to me.”

That dedication to artistry is another reason Nashville is so partial to Paisley.

“It’s the same kind of focus that Dwight Yoakam had when he first started, “ says Country.com’s Orr. “He knew how he wanted to look, how he wanted his music to sound, how it fit in with his roots and related to the Southern California culture that he found himself in. I think Brad’s the same way. When someone’s like that, it’s hard to shake them, to derail that momentum.”

But perhaps what has earned Paisley the most respect is that at a time when young artists were being groomed not to look or sound too country, and when established country acts were recording Aerosmith songs and “Livin’ la Vida Loca,” Paisley made it clear that his twang was here to stay.

“The guy has incredible reverence for traditional country music and respect for the past,” says Dungan. “When he writes, it’s not your dad’s country music, but it definitely pays homage to Dad’s country music.”

That may be Paisley’s most impressive trick: building a bridge between modern sensibilities and the music of the past without losing country’s identity. Like the Dixie Chicks, he embraces traditional instruments. He hasn’t abandoned the country sound, he’s infused it with new energy. But where the Dixie Chicks turbocharged country, he fine-tuned it with modern tools until it feels as effortless and smooth as gliding along in a brand-new bass boat--and twice as fun.

Paisley’s next album, “Part 2,” is scheduled for release in May. The fact that such country legends as Owens, George Jones and Bill Anderson all contributed to the project gives it an early seal of approval among traditionalists. But Paisley balks at the notion that it’s one more step in his journey to becoming an influential artist.

“I hope to have an influence; that’s everybody’s dream,” he says. “But that’s something that’s a hindsight issue. Nashville’s very quick to use foresight, and I don’t know how often they’re right. I hope they’re fairly right in this case, but I don’t know.”