Brad Paisley Remembers Buck Owens

March 29, 2006 — Brad Paisley remembers it was a radio programmer working for Buck Owens' station in Bakersfield, along with Buck's road manager, Jerry, who took particular interest in Brad's debut album, Who Needs Pictures, and that led to his first meeting with his childhood idol. "They said, 'Man, you know, we really think Buck would like what you do. Send us an album and we'll give it to him,'" Brad tells X Radio. "So I thought, 'Well that's great. Buck Owens is gonna listen to my record.' That would have been enough for me. But he got the album and Buck being someone who kinda bucked the system himself in the '60s and used his own band when no one else was, and used his own recording engineers, and is very much someone who is a maverick when it comes to that kind of stuff, put it in and...what was a great compliment for me and Frank Rogers, the guy who produced the record also, was that he noticed right away that Frank had done a different record here.

"And that I had done a different record as far as the players go," continues Brad. "He heard this record and he said, 'These aren't the same guys that play on Nashville sessions, I can tell you that right now.' So Buck has just a very, very highly tuned ear, I guess, and he heard that and right away knew that it was different guys and he told his road manager, he said, 'Find out who played guitar on this.' And Jerry told him, 'I think it was Brad. He told me it was him.' And Buck called him a liar. He said, 'No, no, he didn't play guitars on this. This is somebody else. I don't know who it is but find out who played this. There's no way an artist played these guitar parts.' And Jerry called me at home and said, 'Buck wants to know who played guitar on this.' And I said, 'I told you Jerry, I did.' And he said, 'I told him that, he didn't believe me.' So then Jerry called me back a few days later and said, 'Buck wants to have you out. He'd love to hear you play and sing and come out and sit in with him one of these nights.'"

"So the next thing you know, we flew out to California and on a Saturday night when he was headlining the show, I got up with him and sang 'Tiger By The Tail,' and played the lead and basically played Don Rich's part for part of the night. I mean honestly, it was the most exhilarating experience I have ever had. My grandfather, who's not with us anymore, was a huge Buck Owens fan. And as a little kid, I used to run around in circles when they would play 'Tiger By The Tail' until I fell over [laughs], and then I'd cry when they stopped it. And they'd do it again and I'd run around in circles."