Brad Paisley unplugged, but animated, in return to Vegas

They say performing in front of an audience is no picnic. But that’s not entirely true for Brad Paisley.

“The earliest band gigs were, I’m a 12-year-old playing the church picnic, you know, on a Sunday afternoon,” Paisley said in a recent phone chat. “We’re lugging in guitar amps and a little drum kit and setting up in the corner of a picnic shelter.”

The days of competing with lemonade and potato salad are long past for Paisley. The country superstar is in a more ornate shelter this Friday and Saturday night at Encore Theater at Wynn Las Vegas. Paisley has opted for a storytelling-acoustic format, a concept that also hearkens to his youth.

“The biggest part of my experience as a kid was playing acoustically,” Paisley said. “I’d get like $100 to sing five songs at a Lions Club luncheon. That is how I learned to play for an audience.”

Since that chat, Paisley has offered a pair of tickets to Saturday’s show to Luis Pantoja and Mayra Ramirez, the 5 millionth couple to file for a marriage license in Clark County, on Feb. 20. Luis wore an official Brad Paisley concert T-shirt to pick up the license at the Clark County Marriage License Bureau, and also to the ceremony at Special Memory Wedding Chapel in downtown Las Vegas. Paisley saw a photo of Luis in the shirt, and offered the couple seats at Encore Theater.

More highlights from our time with the country star, who also performed two acoustic shows at Encore Theater in June:

Johnny Kats: We have all different kinds of shows, many are lavish productions, we have many small shows and a lot of in-between shows. Why did you go this route with with your show?

Brad Paisley: Last year, when they were reopening things, the Wynn reached out and said, “Do you want to help us kind of get back in the swing of things and reopen this theater, and do a show for folks?” The way they originally asked was just set up play with the band, which wasn’t an option with my band at that time. So I just said, “I’d like to do just me and a guitar for 90 minutes,” and they loved it.

How did it feel up there without your band?

At first it felt so strange, and so foreign, like I was just performing for me. I had been really active over the pandemic doing stuff virtually, we did a lot of Zooms with the band and no fans present and just streamed them. But I walked out there, and there’s this audience, and it’s just me and a guitar, and the only thing I had was a sheet of paper with a list of songs, so if I blanked, I could at least pick a song from the sheet (laughs). But it turned into the most magical two nights of the year for me.

What were the revelations after those shows?

I felt like I was getting something just as special as the audience was, which felt like a therapy session, because I talked about thoughts on just the emotions that we’ve all gone through, and then why songs changed their meanings for me in the last year and a half. There was just tons of humor, because it’s really a chance to sort of do stand-up for me, because you don’t have the band standing back there, waiting on the next song.

Bands are not always the best audience for stand-up, right?

Yeah, like I remember watching somebody like Jerry Reed or Roy Clark, these guys (did) that kind of stand-up, tell jokes, and the band is still sitting there. I remember Mel Tillis would go off on some overblown story and and be funny, but his band was sitting back there basically drinking coffee behind their music stands, waiting on when he breaks into his next song.

You use props in the comedy?

We had a whole bit this last time, where I talked about just the need to touch human beings again. Then I had my guitar tech come out with hand sanitizer instead of a guitar. That had become his job. I was just trying to make light out of everything we’ve been through.

What you’ve described are a lot of the elements in Garth Brooks’ show, also at Encore Theater. Did you ever see his show?

No, I didn’t get to. Not only that, but when they asked me to do this this last time, it was so last-minute. It was like a couple of weeks prior to doing it. I didn’t have anything on my schedule yet. So I was like, “Yeah, let’s do it!” I just kind of went in unprepared, and it was better that way.

You have so much range in a show like this, musically. Are you planning all Brad Paisley originals? Or mixing in covers, or snippets of other artists’ songs?

I think anything goes, honestly. I definitely think there’s a list of songs that I feel like people came to hear, and should get to hear, and I usually know what they are. I’ve got songs I can lean on, like “Mud on the Tires” and “Whiskey Lullabye.” But they will tell me what they want to hear, they are not shy (laughs), they’ll yell out that obscure album cut, and I’ll have to look up the lyric on my cell phone. But, yeah, if somebody wants another artist or songwriter, or the inspiration for a song, maybe a George Jones song, I can do it.

I’ve long felt that Las Vegas is almost an underappreciated or an unrealized center for country music. But we’re getting more and more top-line country headliners like yourself. I’m wondering if that’s been the case within the industry.

Yeah, that’s changing, for sure. I think it’s a massive country-music town. I think it’s tailor-made for it. I mean, it’s like every time I’m there people are looking for a honky-tonk. Maybe it has everything to do with the fact that the (National Finals) rodeo set up there, but it’s a country destination. There’s just so much demand across the country for country music, I believe country radio is the leading format. But in the early days, you would associate Vegas with Don Rickles, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin or whoever. Then eventually Elvis. It’s just continued to evolve, so when you say “Las Vegas,” I think of country music as much as anything.

We’ve gotten John Fogerty here, and he’s also at Encore Theater, and he plays the video of the song you two recorded, “Love and War,” in every show.

I had gotten to know him over the years, and I just said to him that I wanted to have some people come stay at the farm in Nashville and record and write a new album. We goofed around in the studio, and we had this idea to write a tribute to soldiers that come back from fighting and that we’re letting down. There was so much talk about the way they weren’t getting what they deserved, so we wrote that song, which was just right up his alley, obviously. He’s a guy who speaks truth to power.

You have a song on “Fifth Gear” called “All I Wanted Was a Car,” which I love. What was your first car, or the car that inspired the song?

My first car was a Chevy Cavalier that one of my best friends’ dad owned and had driven to and from the factory where he worked for years. It was like a 1987 Chevy Cavalier, good shape, had a couple thousand miles on it. I think I paid $3,000 for it. But my second car was where I actually got pickier.

OK, what was it?

I bought a Pontiac Firebird. It was used, also, and another guy had pampered it and it was from down the street. And that’s the car I drove to Nashville. That is a redneck way to get to Nashville, believe me (laughs).

What year was it?

It might have been an ’88, it was that light metallic blue. You could fit equipment in the trunk because it had this hatchback, and that’s how I would drive to the gig. That’s how I played Nashville in the first few years. I felt like Knight Rider, like, this is way too much fun.

When you’re Brad Paisley in Nashville, that’s how you roll.

Oh, yeah (laughs). That was livin’.

John Katsilometes’ column runs daily in the A section. His “PodKats!” podcast can be found at reviewjournal.com/podcasts. Contact him at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram.