Brad Paisley & Friends - An Acoustic Evening with Brad Paisley, BBC, London, Britain, 11-6-2014

Here's something out of left field compared to my usual stuff, especially for a BBC album. When it comes to TV entertainment, I enjoy stand-up comedy. The other day, I was looking through Netflix options and saw "Brad Paisley's Comedy Rodeo." It's a comedy special from 2017, with country star Paisley as the host, plus a handful of comedians doing short stand-up sets. I have to admit I pay virtually no attention to modern country music at all. I have only a vague idea of who the biggest stars are. I'd heard of Brad Paisley, but I couldn't name a single song he did. I'm sure there's a lot of good music there, but I haven't had time to sort the wheat from the chaff.

However, after watching that show, I decided several things. 1) Paisley obviously has musical talent. (He was on stage for much of the special, and played comedic parody versions of some of his songs.) 2) A problem I have with modern country music is that it's so formulaic, but he seems to push the envelope with songs about topics you don't usually hear in that genre. 3) I knew Paisley almost always plays with a band, and he's known for his lead guitar playing. But for this special, he just played solo acoustic guitar. If you've followed this blog, you'll have noticed I have a special fondness for songs done in the solo acoustic format.

So, based on all that, I wasn't intrigued enough to check out much of his usual studio albums, but I thought it would be interesting to hear him do a solo acoustic concert. After a search, I found one such concert that stood out from all the others in terms of sound quality, and it's this show here. After watching it on YouTube, I decided it's good enough to convert to mp3s and share with you. 

As I'd expected, Paisley does do well playing solo acoustic. Not only are the songs here pretty good, they cover all sorts of unusual topics. For instance, he's got a song that mocks reality show celebrity culture ("Celebrity"), a song about living a more interesting alternate life on the Internet ("Online"), a positive song about Barack Obama being the first black US president ("Welcome to the Future"), and more. 

It turns out that while the vast majority of the songs on Paisley's albums are written by him, they're almost always co-written with a few professional songwriters. For this special, he had three of those collaborators on stage with him - Chris Dubois, Kelley Lovelace & Lee Thomas Miller. Paisley did the vast majority of the singing, but the others would sing bits of the lead vocals here and there, and sing back-up. The four of them also talked a lot between songs, sharing the ideas and inspirations behind the songs. I found all that entertaining, even for someone like me who didn't know Paisley or his songs from a hole in the ground.

I still haven't checked out any of Paisley's studio albums. Maybe I will eventually, but from the little I've heard, they have the generic slick modern country production sound that I'm not a fan of. That said, I dig this concert and I'm glad to have it in my music collection. I hope you'll feel the same, even if you're like me and you're not into modern country music in general. 

(And by the way, if you are a fan of that genre and know of any artists you think rise above the usual and would appeal to someone like me, please let me know.)

This concert is 59 minutes long. I suspect it was edited down to fit for an hour-long BBC TV show.

01 Southern Comfort Zone (Brad Paisley & Friends)
02 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
03 Put a Little Mud on the Tires (Brad Paisley & Friends)
04 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
05 The World (Brad Paisley & Friends)
06 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
07 Celebrity (Brad Paisley & Friends)
08 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
09 Online (Brad Paisley & Friends)
10 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
11 Online [Reprise] (Brad Paisley & Friends)
12 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
13 I'm Still a Guy (Brad Paisley & Friends)
14 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
15 Letter to Me (Brad Paisley & Friends)
16 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
17 This Is Country Music (Brad Paisley & Friends)
18 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
19 Harvey Bodine (Brad Paisley & Friends)
20 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
21 Welcome to the Future (Brad Paisley & Friends)
22 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
23 Perfect Storm (Brad Paisley & Friends)
24 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
25 Alcohol (Brad Paisley & Friends)
26 talk (Brad Paisley & Friends)
27 The Mona Lisa (Brad Paisley & Friends)

https://www17.zippyshare.com/v/KvXRNTjB/file.html

The cover art photo is a screenshot I took from the YouTube video. By the way, the title of the BBC show was actually "An Evening with Brad Paisley," but I added the "acoustic" to make that aspect clear.