Diary of a Player (16 page)

A
t Belmont, I wasn't trying to walk in anyone's footsteps yet—I was just trying to get my foot in the door. I took whatever courses were required and for once in my life, I actually paid some attention. The degree that I was there to get wasn't even technically in music; my degree was in music business—which
is actually a bachelor of business administration degree. So I actually put my college education straight to work for me and had it pay off right away. I still remember every word and statistic I learned in publishing class about the statutory royalty rates and how publishing can be split in different ways. I vividly remember hearing from one of my professors about what writing a number one song might possibly earn you. It was eye-opening, and almost every bit of it ended up being highly relevant to my life. I devoured it. I even went to the bookstore and bought the books for all my classes. A first for me.

My academic record, sadly, is not without one painful yet hilarious blemish. What I am about to tell you is not something that I'm proud of, but I believe that you good people reading this trash have a right to know. First, please take any small, impressionable, guitar-playing children safely out of the room.

I even went to the bookstore and bought the books for all my classes. A first for me.

Okay, I have a horrible confession to make here among friends.

I, Brad Paisley, future multiple winner of the
Guitar Player
magazine reader's poll for best country guitarist . . . got a D in guitar.

What the hell, right? Well, I can explain . . .

It was my first semester at Belmont and the class was taught by a great jazz player named Marty Crum who still plays around Nashville.

At the same time, I was pursuing several opportunities in town, including a number of internships and a few females, and so I may have skipped my guitar classes a few times that first semester. Okay, maybe I skipped a few times more than a few times. Stupidly, I figured that I could clearly play guitar, so how bad a grade could I get?

I found out about my grade when I went home to West Virginia, right in time for my parents to receive my first report card from Belmont—the one in which I got a D in guitar. My parents hit the ceiling. I still recall my father yelling at me—and he hardly ever yelled, unless I
really
deserved it. “Of all the
damned
things for you to fail at—a D in
guitar
! You pack up your things and move to Nashville, and the one thing you're there to do—the one thing you're actually good at—you bring home a D!?”

As usual, Dad had a point. So I called up Mr. Crum, over the holiday, and I said, “What can I do about this? I can't have this on my record.” And he told me, “What you can do is show up for class, Brad. This grade isn't about your playing. It's about you not even showing up or learning anything that I told you to learn.” He had a point too.

“This is going to ruin my academic record and break my parents' hearts. Is there anything that can I do to at least turn this D into a C? Anything. I'm begging you,” I said.

“If you come back to school, and learn these things and play them for me, and promise not to miss another class this year, I'll give you a B.” And he kept his word.

Now whenever I get a little too cocky—and that can happen—I think back to that D in guitar. And you know who's happiest in retrospect? My parents. They are actually sadistic about it. It is one of their go-to knock-me-down-apeg weapons. If I'd known how much they were going to love having it to hold over my head, I wouldn't have worked so hard to change it to a B.

O
ther than in jazz guitar that first semester, I worked diligently during my time at Belmont, especially in my internships. I knew enough to know that I needed to know more. I interned as many places as possible—ASCAP, Fitzgerald Hartley management, and Atlantic Records. I decided I would be discreet at my internships and not be too outspoken about my aspiration to be an artist. I realized that anybody hiring someone for a position, albeit a nonpaying one, didn't want to think the person they're hiring really wanted to be doing something else. I also had just enough sense to realize that just like in any business, I needed to meet the right people, and maybe a few of the wrong people too. I was most excited about that.

My first internship was my best. That was at ASCAP—the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, one of the leading performing rights organizations on earth. I found myself working with John Briggs, an important membership representative, and Connie Bradley, who was the head of ASCAP's Nashville office. There could not have been a better place for me to learn about music publishing and songwriting.

When I first started at ASCAP, I didn't tell anybody I played or wrote. I just absorbed everything going on around me. John Briggs had gone to Belmont himself and had been an intern too, so he knew what I felt like. Early on, John told me, “I'm going to take you
everywhere
.” And he did. He took me to every showcase and every board meeting. He had me go as his stenographer to some meetings, even introduced me as his assistant at others. That was the best education I could have ever received. I met people I still see now and who still remember me as John's intern.

Eventually at ASCAP, a few people figured out that I wrote songs—mostly because they started asking me, and I didn't want to lie. One day, Tom Long—another member's rep and great guy—asked me to play him one of my songs in his office, and I said, “That's not why I am here.”

Tom replied, “Don't be modest—play me a damn song!”

I said, “I don't—”

“Play me a song or you're fired,” he said jokingly. I reminded him I was working there for free. But in the end, how was I to refuse?

I played Tom a song called “Before I Heard Your Name.” It was kind of a schmaltzy love song but heartfelt.

Tom heard me sing and play this little number, and he
flipped out. He said, “Play me another.” I did. He went and got John Briggs and said, “John, get in here. Have you heard your intern sing yet?” John admitted that he had not. He then proceeded to listen and quickly said he thought I had what it took. After that day, these great people at ASCAP began to unashamedly cultivate my writing ability. They set me up cowriting with some great writers, and they even put me in the coveted songwriter workshop they offered, where top writers like Gary Burr, Pat Alger, Mike Reid, and Tim DuBois would come in, speak, and critique. Looking back now, I know for a fact that the path I wound up taking was due to ASCAP. They would eventually send me to meetings, which led to my first publishing deal at EMI. They allowed me to actually observe the way business was done, as opposed to merely fetch coffee and make copies. And they accidentally introduced me to the most talented song guy I would ever meet—Chris DuBois.

Chris DuBois was roughly my age, had just graduated, and got hired as a new-membership rep at ASCAP about three months after I started my internship. Our similar sense of humor was obvious right away, and we really hit it off. When he found out I wrote songs, he wanted to hear them. So I would frequently go into his office and play him what I was working on. His advice was always amazing; he really had
a knack for knowing the best way to make a song better. One time, I went in with a half-done song, and he had a hundred suggestions on how to improve it. I said, “Why don't you just write it with me?” He said, “Hmm. All right. Maybe I could.” And just like that we sat down after work and began the first composition of what would be a hugely successful songwriting team. The amazing thing is, Chris had never even tried to write a song prior to that night. Years later he would win the ASCAP country songwriter of the year award.

Next I interned for Atlantic Records. I interned in record promotion and worked with a woman named Debbie Bellin, who was an excellent promoter. It was all part of my plan to try to cover every aspect of the business. The way I saw it, I couldn't believe they were going to let me walk into a record company like Atlantic Records every day (free of charge) and watch what a record company does. Why wouldn't you do that if you want to be in the music business?

I remember driving around these buildings on Music Row when I first arrived in Nashville and thinking,
What's going on in there? Is Alan Jackson inside there right now recording some hit song? Is Joe Galante planning the launch of the next big band?
I have a feeling that today people walk into record company
buildings asking, “Can I see Brad Paisley, please? Where do you keep him?”

Finally, there was my most bizarre internship—with the very successful management company Fitzgerald Hartley. This was my only bad experience as an intern. It just wasn't a good situation, and I didn't feel needed and didn't really learn anything. They had nothing for me to do, and I wasn't invited to any events—I didn't get any respect from the other interns who had been working there for years. I basically just moved paper from one folder to the next. I even quit two weeks early. I left that internship having learned only one thing—that these Fitzgerald Hartley people would never
ever
get to manage me.

Fast-forward to now. Bill, Larry, and Mark at Fitzgerald Hartley have been managing me since 2003. Oh well. Never mind.

I couldn't believe they were going to let me walk into a record company like Atlantic Records every day (free of charge) and watch what a record company does.

At Belmont, during those years, I was really known as a guitarist. I lived and breathed the instrument. I briefly worked at Corner Music in Nashville, stringing and selling guitars, and I played every session I could. I befriended some engineers and producers
at school, like Frank Rogers, who would later produce me, and a great kid named Doug Sadler, who was into learning studio engineering as much as I was studio guitar. I was fascinated by the process of getting guitar on tape. That magical cauldron that took these temporary vibrations out of thin air and captured them forever on a disc. From the Beatles to Buck Owens, I wanted to do that very thing. Make some sounds that would live on, be unique, and be me.

The great thing about school was the studio. Open to students between the hours of seven thirty A.M. and ten P.M. Well, in theory. If you're creative, and if I'm anything I'm creative, you could get away with much more.

Because Doug was a studio student adviser, he had the keys. So we would book the last session of the day, the evening. This meant that when a teacher came by at the end they would just see Doug and say, “Hey, lock up, will ya?”

“Sure thing,” Doug would say, “about done.” We weren't. We were just getting started.

We would work all night. We'd record guitar, bass, piano tracks; then we'd listen down and usually try it again. Over and over, trying to beat what we had and find some magic. I would have my old AC30s in a booth, trying tone settings, and Frank would bring in an acoustic, and we'd mess with
mics. By sunrise, when we could barely keep our eyes open any longer, we'd start packing up. We needed to be outta there before faculty came in.

I remember one day the dean, Bob Malloy, came around the corner of the storage room at seven A.M. or so as we were putting the last of the speakers away. We stopped dead in our tracks, one guy on each side of these amp cabinets, halfway through the door of the storage room, thinking,
Oh shit! We're caught.
But in a moment of brilliance, we started backing out with the cabinets like we were setting up for a session. Bob took one look and said, “You boys sure are off to an early start today. Good job! The early bird gets the worm, you know.”