Paisley proves his truck still works

The road is well-travelled and there isn’t much new music in the tank, but Brad Paisley’s live music machine is still trucking along. 

The Grammy-winning country music star and his Truck Still Works World Tour rolled through Winnipeg Friday night with a nostalgic concert full of fan favourites, silly interludes and shredding guitar solos.

The show at Canada Life Centre was one of several events taking place downtown in conjunction with the Grey Cup Festival and there were more than a few in the crowd seen sporting Blue Bombers, Saskatchewan Roughriders and Calgary Stampeders jerseys.

Following a slightly late start, Paisley, 53, strode onto the stage with his signature white cowboy hat and blue Telecaster, launching into the tour’s namesake single while vintage Chevrolet trucks flashed across a large screen.

Truck Still Works, released last fall, is a narrative sequel to Friday’s closing song, Mud On the Tires — a 22-year-old, chart-topping hit from Paisley’s third album which established the artist as an innovator of truck-based love songs.

Pickups and half-tons are ubiquitous in country music these days as status symbols and vehicles for relationship metaphors. Paisley’s beloved Chevy has long pulled double duty: offering a roadmap for the messiness of new love in Mud On the Tires, and an opportunity to rekindle said romance in Truck Still Works.

The latter was among the newest songs on the setlist.

Paisley hasn’t put out a new full-length country album since 2017 (Love and War) and has spent the last few years focused on philanthropy by way of The Store — a free community grocery store in Nashville founded with wife Kimberly Williams-Paisley — and bite-sized music projects.

Son Of The Mountains: The First Four Tracks was released in 2023 with the promise of more to come but remains in limbo as a four-track EP. And Song Still Sings arrived last fall as a 30-minute compilation of some of Paisley’s biggest past hits.

The self-described “Hallmark super fan” did, however, release a brand-new holiday record last week and Snow Globe Town is chock full of festive originals. Concertgoers got a taste of the Christmas spirit with a mid-show rendition of Silent Night, after which a young audience member named William was gifted one of Paisley’s guitars and instructed to “learn how to play it.”

The crowd was entirely unphased by the lack of new material. To underline the theme of the evening: if the truck still works, why scrap it?

Concerts are for celebrating the classics, after all, and Paisley delivered his cheeky, well-known catalogue with charm.

The stage production was simple but engaging, relying on a rainbow of strobing lights and videos — animated, stop-motion and live — projected on a large screen.

Supported by a seven-piece band, the singer-songwriter and renowned guitarist ripped through Old Alabama, Perfect Storm and The World, before settling into the fun, and deeply unsettling, song Ticks off his 2007 album, 5th Gear. (Paisley might be the only artist in history to associate the blood-sucking arachnids with a good time.)

Romantic nostalgia followed with She’s Everything, which included some very cute kiss cam moments, and Last Time for Everything.

Paisley is an entertainer with a sense of humour, at one point playing a game of keep away with his guitar tech and later stealing a fan’s phone and scrolling through her Instagram while she watched, mortified.

A medley of East Bound and Down/Mr. Policeman ended with Paisley surrounded by a crew of uniformed Winnipeg Police Service officers. There was a lookalike mascot with a giant head (and a giant cowboy hat) and, naturally, a video of a water-skiing squirrel.

It was a rollicking 90-minute show that ended with the regret-filled party anthem, Alcohol.

Meghan Patrick and her band kicked off the evening with a jammy set punctuated by tassels and tambourine. The Ontario-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter chatted with the audience between belting originals, including Both Can Be True. Patrick later returned to the stage for a duet of Whiskey Lullaby with Paisley.

Jackson Dean, another Nashville transplant, followed with his rich baritone. Dean delivered a mix of country power ballads, such as Fearless, alongside wistful diddies, like Train, which included some delightfully haunting penny whistling.

It was a slow, brooding start to the levity and energy of the main event.

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com