LITTLE ROCK — It’s easy to understand how Brad Paisley recently won the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award after seeing him in concert Friday night at Verizon Arena in North Little Rock.
Sure, the country superstar plays a mean guitar and sings well and writes songs with great hooks and witty premises and presides over a talented band that provides flawless backup.
But Paisley put on a stunning multimedia show. Paisley flawlessly blended animation, graphics, video montages and technology and the usual lights and lasers to present a show that should be ranked alongside those of rock cult hero Peter Gabriel for tasteful, rock ’em, sock ’em inventiveness. And there were ample portions of humor in the whole show.
Sure, there were songs about drinking, trucks, drinking, mud, girls, fishing, drinking and other staples of country music, but Paisley’s original claim to fame was his skill as a guitarist, and there was ample proof of his prowess before a spellbound crowd of 9,688. Perhaps his upbringing in a small West Virginia town led him to country, but he could just as easily have become a guitar-slinging rock star on the same level as Eric Clapton or the late Duane Allman or Jimi Hendrix.
There were moments where one was torn between watching the real Paisley versus the giant screens or the band members. Paisley made sure to travel to the rear of the arenato do several songs for those in the “cheap seats.”
Paisley began his high-energy 90-minute show, appropriately enough, with “Water,” and the hits kept on coming; they included “American Saturday Night,” “Waitin’ on a Woman” (with a video bit that featured Andy Griffith), “I’m Gonna Miss Her (The Fishing Song),” “Mud on the Tires,” “She’s Everything,” “You Do the Math,” “Letter to Me,” “Ticks,” “Whiskey Lullaby” (with a video contribution from Alison Krauss) and “Alcohol.”
Opening act Darius Rucker bounded onto stage for his 49 minutes of music that owed more to rock than to country, and certainly rocked more than his previous gig as the lead singer in Hootie & the Blowfish. Rucker did powerful versions of three Hootie hits - “Only Want To Be With You,” “Let Her Cry” and “Hold My Hand” - along with his own takes on Hank Williams Jr.
’s“Family Tradition” and Prince’s “Purple Rain,” as well as his own current hit, “Come Back Song,” which, with “It Won’t Be Like This for Long” were the standout picks of his show.
Justin Moore, the show’s first opening act, and Arkansas’ newest musical star, noted that he has moved back to his Grant County hometown of Poyen, where he said, he could get up at 6 a.m. and go to the deer stand until 11 a.m., then head to the arena to do a show. In his half-hour set, he performed material from his self-titled debut album, including a No. 1 hit, “Small Town USA,” “That’s How I Got To Be This Way,” “Grandpa” and “Hank It,” his tribute to Hank Williams.
Arkansas, Pages 19 on 11/21/2010