An evening with Brad Paisley we’ll never forget

Brad Paisley, my fellow native West Virginian, put on a spectacular show Saturday night at Dos Equis Pavilion in Dallas’ Fair Park, and Kay and I were fortunate enough to be among the thousands of fans in attendance. I won’t say I knew a ton of Brad’s songs going in, but I knew a few.

What I didn’t know — but my oldest birth family sibling Crys, a self-professed “guitar nerd” who has a collection of over 30 guitars, had told me — was what a seriously gifted guitarist Brad is. For a guy to sing lead vocals, play lead guitar and play as many riffs as he does during the course of every song is just plain remarkable.

To show you what a guitar aficionado Crys is, when he watched one of the videos I sent him from the concert, he texted back: “In that last video, he was playing his paisley Telecaster made by Crook Custom Guitars in WVa.” How could he know that? And he has such a great sense of humor — on another clip I sent him with some awesome guitar work by Brad, Crys replied: “Fantastic playing. I have a Fender Telecaster just like that, that has never been played like that.”

For someone like me who knows almost nothing about guitars (although our youngest, Alex has been taking lessons for about a year), Crys also explained why Brad was switching out guitars for practically every song: “It’s because each one is set to the volume, tone and/or tuning for a particular song. Even the string gauge can be different. Playing slide guitar requires heavier strings and different tuning from standard.”

The concert started out with a couple of acts we’d never heard of — Kameron Marlowe, who was just OK, and then a guy we thought was fantastic, Jimmie Allen. He’s a rare Black artist to find big success in country music and has had a couple of No. 1 songs, although we weren’t familiar with him. They also both came out and performed during Brad’s set, which lasted about 90 minutes.

Brad’s had a lot of huge hits, and here’s a couple from the concert — “Waitin’ On a Woman,” from 2005 (with the late, legendary Andy Griffith in the music video), and “I’m Gonna Miss Her,” from 2002. I only shot a handful of videos, and these two are missing the first part because I was too slow.