WHEN I CAME OFF THE ROAD WITH LONESTAR IN 2004, I felt almost as if God was saying to me, I gave you this marvelous opportunity, and you squandered it away, so I’m going to put you on the shelf for a while to think about how you have handled what I’ve given you. Nearly five years later, when the call came for the Brad Paisley tour, I felt as though God was saying, Okay, I’m going to give you another shot. I knew I wasn’t perfect, and I still had a lot to learn, but by that time I was a different person with different attitudes. I had learned some hard lessons, and I was thankful for the new opportunity.
As I put together my band for the tour, one of my first calls was to Rob. We had played together in Fantasyche when we were seventeen, and while Rob had never given up hope of making it in the music business, it hadn’t happened for him, so he had taken a job with a roofing company. “Come play guitar for me,” I asked him. For either of us to get out of our small town and perform on a Brad Paisley tour was a miracle, and it was gratifying for me to share the opportunity with Rob.
I found Jake Clayton, a great young utility player, in a club in Illinois. Jake played keyboards, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, dobro, and just about anything else he put his mind to playing. Jake was incredibly talented. Studio drummer Johnny Richardson played drums, and Luis Espaillat played bass, and of course, I played guitar. We weren’t the greatest band ever assembled, but we worked hard, and the guys learned the songs exactly like the records, and that’s what the fans wanted to hear.
It didn’t take me long on tour to realize that my acoustic rendition of “Sara Smile” still had a special touch to it. I smiled to myself when I thought of how many industry insiders warned me away from performing the song. One pro told me point-blank, “If you ever want a career in Nashville, stop singing that song!” But I loved the song and did it anyhow, and it was constantly requested everywhere I went. I got to be known around town as the “the guy who sings ‘Sara Smile,’ ” which was okay with me. Besides helping me land my recording deal, the song was also instrumental in my meeting one of the most respected songwriters in Nashville.
I was participating in a writer’s night at the Bluebird Café, one of Nashville’s best known listening rooms, where songwriters gather to perform in the round in a “heroes behind the hits” sort of format, with each writer performing his or her own songs as well as accompanying the other writers on theirs. The Bluebird boasts that it was the venue where country stars, such as Kathy Mattea and Garth Brooks, were discovered, and it is still a place where great songwriters go to play and to listen.
After playing a few of my own songs, as I usually did, I said, “I didn’t write this song, but I like it,” and I played and sang “Sara Smile.” People loved it! Listening at the Bluebird that night was Pat Alger. Pat approached me afterward and said, “We need to write! I’ve only asked one other person to write together, but I’d like to write with you.”
The only other person of whom Pat had made that request was Garth Brooks.
Pat and I worked together on “Summer of ’85,” a poignant song describing one of the most chaotic periods in my life. One line in the song is especially meaningful to me: “The reason for the pain was to lead me to the cure.”
I performed “Summer of ’85” at an event in Nashville; also in the show that night was the renowned singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb, who had won Grammy Awards for songs such as “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman,” and “MacArthur Park.” His songs have been recorded by music superstars, including Glen Campbell, The Supremes, The Fifth Dimension, Art Garfunkel, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Carly Simon, and a virtual who’s who of contemporary artists.
After I had performed “Summer of ’85,” Jimmy Webb gave me one of the most meaningful compliments of my career to date. In front of the entire audience, Jimmy looked at me and said, “You’re in.”
NOW THAT I WAS ON TOUR WITH BRAD PAISLEY, PEOPLE still wanted to hear me perform “Sara Smile” all the more, so much so that Scott Borchetta was willing to recruit Dann Huff, one of Nashville’s top musicians and producers, to help me rerecord the song. Scott knew that we were leaving money behind every night because we didn’t have “Sara Smile” on CD, so he was willing to risk it.
As soon as I knew we were going into the studio—in mid-August—I called John Oates and told him. John seemed delighted; he’d heard me sing the song a number of times now, and he knew I always handled it with special care. Nevertheless, I was still a little nervous when I broached an outlandish idea to him. “Hey, John, what would you think about you and Daryl being on the song with me?”
“Oh, that’s going to be hard. I don’t know, Jimmy,” John replied. “I’d enjoy it, but you know Daryl doesn’t do much of that sort of thing.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of . . .”
“But you never know,” John said. “I’ll try. Let me mention it to him and see how he responds.”
A few days later John Oates called me back. “Who loves ya, baby? Who loves ya? We got Daryl to sing on the song.”
Although I had made several attempts now to record “Sara Smile,” Dann Huff caught it in a fresh way, and the song came out better than we could have imagined. Adding the background vocals of Hall and Oates, with a few vocal twists of my own, made for an incredibly special piece of music.
We titled the album Sara Smile and surrounded the title cut with some great songs, including “Just Knowing You Love Me” and “I’ll Never Leave You.” In my album notes, I addressed words of thanks first to God and then to Bea and Russell Costner.
ONE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF WORKING WITH BRAD PAISLEY was getting to know his dad, Doug Paisley, who was out on tour with us for every date. He was always there for everyone. It wasn’t just me; Doug Paisley was good to everyone on the tour. Before I joined the tour, during a show in Wichita, an arena worker collapsed one night with a heart attack. Doug performed CPR and saved the man’s life, keeping him alive until the paramedics arrived. When people started calling him a hero, Doug characteristically replied, “A lot of things came together. There’s nothing heroic about this. Heroic is when you’re standing on the front lines in Afghanistan or Iraq.” That was typical Doug.
Brad’s dad took a liking to me, and I enjoyed talking and interacting with him. He called me his “second son,” and I really appreciated that, especially since I never knew my real dad. Doug noticed that I carted a beat-up bicycle in the bay of the tour bus. When we rolled into town, I enjoyed riding around and seeing the sights, rather than merely hanging out in the bus all day. Doug bought me a brand-new bike as an early birthday present; it was a nice bike too. How cool was that? My own dad never bought me a birthday present of any kind in my entire life, but Brad Paisley’s dad bought me a bicycle.
Brad himself was straightlaced, quiet, and businesslike on tour. He allowed no groupies backstage or on our buses. Backstage was extremely controlled; no one was permitted to linger without a reason for being there. He’d joke around a bit, but it was usually one-sided.
Brad treated his team to the very best food backstage, all day long. We had steak, chicken, lasagna, lobster, salads, special desserts—an entire feast every day on the road. Everyone, from the musicians to the sound and light guys to the roadies, was welcome to the backstage banquet. Someone said that Brad spent nearly eleven thousand dollars a day on food for his team. Brad usually ate with us, and mealtime was always a good time. It’s a wonder we all didn’t put on twenty or thirty pounds during the tour.
Brad, of course, was in tip-top shape, partly because as soon as we rolled into town, his crew guys set up a small portable gym on a rolling cart. Brad was disciplined about working out, and that’s probably one of the reasons he is so successful as a performer.
Brad was a prankster, too, but it was hard to get him back. The closest I came was during the encore of his song, “Alcohol,” when Dierks Bentley and I joined him onstage. On more than a few nights, rather than singing “Alcohol,” I sang “Al Capone.” Of course, with the crowd going wild and Dierks and me traipsing all over the stage, Brad never noticed. Till now. Gotcha, Brad!
Working with Brad Paisley was an education in how to do things well in the music business. I learned so much from him and will always be indebted to Brad for helping me see what really matters. I enjoyed every single tour date with the Paisley team, but after five fabulous months on tour, culminating in the amazing night at Madison Square Garden, I was ready to get off the bus and get my feet back on the ground. I just had no idea, at the time, how many new steps I would take and how far I would go in seeing America from the ground up.