How Brad Paisley built a global following — one country at a time

At just under six feet tall with brown hair and brown eyes, a guitar, a cowboy hat and an accent, Brad Paisley fits right into American country music. He’s apple pie, a fishing pole, and a Chevrolet.

In Europe, he’s a Ferrari. 

“I think, over there, when I play, I’m exotic in the same way that Oasis or Coldplay feels a little exotic to us,” Paisley said. “In my case, here I stand in a cowboy hat in an arena in the middle of Norway, and I’m exotic. Over here, I’m prototypical.”

Paisley recently completed a sold-out eight-country arena tour across Europe. He traveled about 14,000 miles to bring his hits, including “Mud on the Tires” and “Whiskey Lullaby,” to Oslo, Norway; Copenhagen, Denmark; Stockholm, Sweden; Berlin, Germany; Tilburg, Netherlands; London, England; Dublin, Ireland and Basel, Switzerland.  He holds the attendance record for a headlining country artist in every venue he played.

“There is something so interesting about the idea that (country) music is so … America centric … we are not a vague, ethereal format of music where it’s open to interpretation all that often,” Paisley said.

“We talk about what we drink, what we eat, where we go, what we do in our free time. We don’t even speak the same way," he continued. "We call them bars; they call them pubs. The fact that I get to go over there and perform what I do and have them eat it up is really fun.”

BRAD PAISLEY ON TV:Brad Paisley points spotlight at Nashville in 'Brad Paisley Thinks He's Special'

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Paisley joins the likes of Shania Twain, Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks as one of the elite country artists who can sell-out arenas across Europe. Country music has flourished internationally for years, but country artists typically focus on one country or play Europe as part of a festival like C2C. With its multi-artist bill stacked with American arena headliners, C2C fills London’s O2 Arena, annually. Paisley accomplished the feat in multiple countries across the continent – selling 8,000-12,000 tickets per night- with just one opening act, up-and-comer Chris Lane.

“Brad Paisley’s visit to the O2, this time around, is currently the biggest headlining show by a contemporary U.S. country artist in 2019,” said Steve Homer, Co-Chief of AEG Presents U.K.. He added Paisley sold more tickets than Carrie Underwood, Kacey Musgraves, Thomas Rhett, Eric Church and Luke Combs.

Artists often wait to cross the pond solo until they’ve also crossed into pop-culture, which allows them to skip the pubs and walk into the continent’s largest venues. Paisley started in clubs and played his way to the top – in the beginning, at a financial loss.

Paisley’s success is, in part, the result of a well-laid plan that Rob Beckham and Bill Simmons – who now co-own The Artist Management Group (The AMG) – conceptualized a decade ago. Simmons has managed Paisley for most of his career, and Beckham served as Paisley’s agent.

Before Simmons and Beckham joined Paisley’s team, he headed to Europe to open for Reba McEntire in 2000. Paisley said fans loved McEntire but called his experience “brutal.”

“I remember saying to my manager at the time, ‘I have no business trying to do this yet,’” said Paisley, whose hour-long ABC special “Brad Paisley Thinks He’s Special” will air 7 p.m. (C.T.) Dec. 3. “Nobody knows who the Hell I am in America. Let’s do well (in the United States). And then someday, maybe I’ll come back.’”

It took almost 10 years for him to try again.

It was 2009, and Paisley walked off stage after headlining New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden on his American Saturday Night tour, got on the plane to fly home with Beckham and Simmons and floated the idea of a European tour. 

They tried to talk him out of it. At the time, the European touring market was hard to break into. Streaming didn’t exist. Apple didn’t make the same artists and songs available in each country. And European radio didn’t often include country songs. YouTube was among the prime methods of music discovery. Beckham and Simmons feared Paisley would go to Europe and play for empty rooms.

“I said, ‘I would love to do England,’” Paisley recalls. “I’m a really big fan of British music. Heck, some of the best country guitarists of all time, any guitarists of all time, are British. They said, ‘Well, there’s not really much of a market for that.’ I said, ‘I don’t care. I’ll do that. Hey, if there’s 25 guys that liked my guitar playing, that’ll be worth it.’”

A few months later, Paisley sold out Gillette Stadium near Boston to the tune of more than 50,000 tickets. The line-up also included a newbie named Jason Aldean, Darius Rucker and Sara Evans.

“All of a sudden, it was like, ‘Okay, now it’s time to take the bull by the horns,’” Beckham said.

Beckham reached out to Brian O’Connell, Live Nation’s President of Country Music Touring, to facilitate a relationship with Live Nation, an events promoter and venue operator, in Europe to help make Paisley’s dream of international touring a reality.

Although Paisley had just sold out a stadium near Boston, the best offer his team could nab in Europe was the opportunity to play the 2,000-seater Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London in June of 2010. Beckham was still afraid he couldn’t fill it.

Paisley tweeted the ticket on-sale information. Beckham woke up the next morning to find a slew of messages on his phone from Paisley declaring the London show had sold out. Beckham didn’t believe him – but it was true. Paisley added another show at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, tweeted the ticket information, and it sold out, too.

“Everybody was sort of shocked,” Paisley said. “Something was going on that nobody expected. I think nobody had really tried in country music to do this all that much, especially a young artist.  When that happened, we started to realize, ‘Oh, we were thinking the way we used to think, which was they don’t have your album, they don’t have radio, they can’t find your music.’”

When Paisley played Shepherd’s Bush Empire, the audience knew every word to every one of his songs. 

“They’re not sort of spoiled with having too many choices in terms of concerts to go to,” Paisley said. “So, they devour it and know every word. We never looked back. We just kept going.”

With every European tour, Paisley would play larger venues for bigger audiences in more countries.

When he went back to Europe in 2014, he played the O2 Arena for about 9,000 fans. 

“Brad is one of an elite few artists in the U.K. that hold a special place in the hearts of the audience,” Homer said. “A lot of this can be put down to coming back to the U.K. to keep his audience happy. Not all acts have put in the time and commitment to keeping the U.K. audience on (their) side. This is reflected in his increased popularity. Sales don’t lie.”

The singer further expanded his brand by doing European media and television shows. With every trip, he was selective with his opening acts, only choosing artists like Darius Rucker and Chris Young, who he thought would resonate with his crowds.

Over time, he added shows in Ireland, Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands and Germany. Paisley was initially worried the humor in his concert and some of his songs – like “You’re Gonna Miss Her” – wouldn’t translate to non-English speaking audiences.

But, when he stepped on stage, fans sang his songs back to him regardless of their native language.

“We just basically spent a decade or more working our way up to the venues that we play,” Simmons said. “I feel like Europeans are attracted to Brad because of his guitar skill. He wasn’t just the hillbilly hat act. He was a monster guitar player in the league of (Eric) Clapton and (Mark) Knopfler.”

Beckham added that while Paisley and his team didn’t make any money in Europe on his early tours, the singer was investing in his future. 

“Unlike America, when you start, when you build a hard ticket base in Europe, it’s forever,” Beckham said. “It’s not based on a song on the radio, not based on an album. You’ll have a solid fan base forever.”

How to watch Brad Paisley Thinks He's Special

When: Tuesday, Dec. 3 at 7 p.m. Central

Channel: ABC

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Reach Cindy Watts at 615-664-2227, ciwatts@tennessean.com or on Twitter @CindyNWatts.

Tune In: Brad Paisley's 'Brad Paisley Thinks He's Special' will air 7 p.m. Dec. 3 on ABC.