A Week After College Graduation Nashville Was Already Paying Him To Write Songs
Just one week after graduating from Belmont Paisley signed a songwriting deal with EMI Music Publishing
Before Nashville ever heard them his grandfather had placed a quieter bet on the boy holding the guitar
Brad Paisley was eight when his grandfather gave him his first guitar and by 13 he was a regular on Jamboree USA
Brad Paisley grew up in Glen Dale West Virginia watching his maternal grandfather Warren Jarvis play the country guitar music he loved
On Christmas Day in 1980 when Brad was eight Jarvis gave him a Sears Danelectro Silvertone guitar
With lessons and encouragement Paisley progressed quickly and by ten he was performing and at 13 he wrote his first song and began appearing regularly on Jamboree USA of WWVA in Wheeling
That was more than a childhood novelty because Paisley would spend roughly eight years performing through the Jamboree world and getting comfortable in front of real country audiences while still in school
As a teenager he also opened shows for established artists including Roy Clark and Jack Greene and Little Jimmy Dickens along with other major country names who passed through the region
Belmont Put Him Inside The Machinery
After high school and two years at West Liberty State College Paisley received a fully funded ASCAP scholarship to Belmont University in Nashville where he studied music business
Belmont put him inside the machinery he had been watching from a distance and during an internship people around Paisley discovered that he was writing songs himself
Once they heard the material they began helping him make the right introductions and Paisley later said that by graduation it felt as though much of the path had already been laid out
Before he had a record contract of his own other singers began cutting his songs and David Kersh recorded Another You which became a Top 5 country hit and gave the newly graduated Paisley his first significant royalties as a professional songwriter
Cuts by David Ball and Tracy Byrd followed before Arista Nashville eventually signed Paisley as a recording artist
The Debut Album Showed What The Years Had Built
His debut album Who Needs Pictures arrived in 1999 and produced the No. 1 hits He Didnβt Have to Be and We Danced
But the first serious vote of confidence of Nashville had come several years earlier because before the record deal and the videos or the No. 1 singles somebody in Music Row had already decided that the songs of Brad Paisley were worth buying
Each step made the next one possible and by the time Paisley stood in front of country radio as a new artist he had already spent much of his life preparing for that room
And only a week earlier he had still been a college student and the story really begins not with fame or a No. 1 single but with an eight year old on Christmas morning holding a guitar from Sears while someone who loved country music believed the sound was worth passing on