Don Henley’s in a version “Boys of Summer” on Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden, the country star Brad Paisley started his last and longest guitar solo of the night. He took long steps toward stage right, scurried down a ramp and ambled down an aisle on the arena floor, playing all the way.
During his victory walk — it was his first show at the Garden — he didn’t high-five anyone, though everyone within reaching distance seemed to move into position to do so. He bent his knees and dodged and mugged, lifting his Fender Telecaster up and away from his body when he bent notes. And his solo-to-end-all-solos flashed the same strategies that he had been using all night: fast runs, licks heavy on chicken-picking, a high-definition channeling of James Burton, Don Rich and
Mark Knopfler.
He made it to the middle of the arena, then returned to the microphone, still soloing. It was an achievement, but a cold one, no better or worse than any other solo he’d played.
Mr. Paisley is a guitar geek posing as a dry wit. His pose is terrific; it just doesn’t adequately conceal the geek. Lots of us put on a blithe and blasé front to hide our inner compulsions, and for a good reason: not because they’re embarrassing, but because they’re dull. Over two hours, Mr. Paisley’s guitar playing — fast, fluid and voluminous — lost its flavor completely. There was just so much of it (mostly on the Telecaster; Mr. Paisley’s style is a monument to that instrument’s lean, percussive sound and country-music tradition) that it stole power from the lyrics.
His lyrics are the opposite of the guitar solos: enlightened winks, usually counterintuitive, mixing base and noble instincts. In them, he’s figured how to put his masculinity in quotation marks while keeping country-music credibility. He’s a scientist about craft, and he’s fascinated and horrified by modern culture. It’s possible to imagine him writing a television sitcom.
On Wednesday, unabashed dudeness got its own trilogy: “I’m Still a Guy,” which proposes that he’s genetically disposed to like fishing; “Catch All the Fish,” which proposes that he voluntarily enjoys fishing; and “I’m Gonna Miss Her,” which proposes that fishing supersedes romance. And then Mr. Paisley wisely moved on. Soon he was playing an instrumental while a video screen showed a cartoon he’d crudely animated himself of a Paisley superhero rescuing other country singers from harm. (Earlier stars with art hobbies — Tony Bennett and Jerry Garcia, say — have known better than to force fans to look at their work.)
Mr. Paisley’s real art is in brinksmanship with an impending cliché, the more maudlin the better. “Welcome to the Future,” “Waiting on a Woman” and “Letter to Me”— all strong moments on Wednesday — are full of long-view naïveté, either look-how-far-we’ve-come or who-knows-where-we’re-going.
But the lonely insight and the self deprecating boast aren’t stadium moves. Running between four microphones spaced hundreds of yards apart, and playing thousand-noted solos: these are stadium moves. This tough reality poses a problem, though it’s hard to imagine Mr. Paisley seeing a problem as anything but an chance.
Katy Perry and Josh Groban are not dating, according to his rep.
