Brad Paisley H2O World Tour Hits Valley

Brad Paisley’s H2O World Tour brings the performer’s modern-day country music to State Farm Arena in Hidalgo next week.
Paisley first announced the tour on World Water Day, a day to draw attention to the one out of five people around the world who lack access to safe drinking water. The performer is partnering with Hope Through Healing Hands, and donations made to the campaign at each tour stop will go toward digging wells and purifying water in American and around the world.
The H2O World Tour takes the stage at the arena Thursday, Aug. 5, with the show starting at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $75.
Paisley is a walking testament to modern-day country’s possibilities, according to his website. His albums are cornucopias of words and music that provide alternately poignant and hilarious journeys across the human landscape. A triple threat recognized as one of the finest singers, songwriters, and guitar slingers of his generation, he brings a wide spectrum of subjects and styles to records as diverse and accomplished as anything being done today, and he manages it all with true wit and distinctive style.
   
With the release of his eighth album, “American Saturday Night,” Brad proved once again that he remains a master of his craft – or, more accurately, his crafts. To date, the album has launched three number one singles with “Then,” “Welcome to the Future,” and the title track, which became the 16th number one hit of his career.
Instrumentally, Brad again displays the skills that made his celebration of the guitar on his album “Play” such a welcome part of the Paisley canon, on songs like “Catch All the Fish,” a flat-out picking extravaganza that Brad says lyrically bookends his girlfriend-versus-fish favorite, “I’m Gonna Miss Her.” Other guitar highlights include such tracks as “Oh Yeah, You’re Gone,” a songwriting and guitar-playing partnership with blues great Robben Ford, and “She’s Her Own Woman,” a bluesy celebration of a strong partner.  
 As for his songwriting, Brad co-wrote everything on the album and admits he’s never drawn more deeply on his own life than he has in songs like “I Hope That’s Me” (“This song is me,” he says) and “Anything Like Me,” a sweet, toe-tapping musing on fatherhood that features a vocal cameo from two-year-old William Huckleberry Paisley.
If there is a song of which he is particularly proud, though, it is “Welcome to the Future,” which is as deep as it is wide in scope.
“This is my favorite thing I’ve ever written,” he says simply. A song detailing the twists and turns of life on the smallest and largest human scales, it is Brad’s take on a world where change and fear can lead to change and progress, a world he urges all of us to embrace and celebrate. It’s a song that touches on painful moments from our past, but acknowledges them with a genuinely real spirit of hope in the recognition of how we’ve overcome, “and with an eye on the future even though we’re talking about how we’re already there.”
The album’s title is Brad’s nod to “the one night of the week everybody is willing to be entertained, to let loose and forget about what’s going on during the rest of the week. I want every night of this year’s tour to feel like Saturday night for people, and this album is filled with that feeling of weekend camaraderie – even in the more serious ones. It’s about all of us celebrating life in 2009.”
His lifelong musical journey began at age 8 in Glen Dale, West Virginia, when his grandfather, a fan of Chet Atkins, Les Paul, and Merle Travis, gave him a guitar and taught him to play. He was accompanying himself at local events at 10, and he was in his first band, the C-Notes (“You could get us for a hundred bucks”), at 12 with his guitar teacher and mentor Hank Goddard. He followed his father’s advice to strive for excellence and began his long apprenticeship at the Jamboree, playing for six years at the annual Jamboree in the Hills in Wheeling, as well. He cites the community’s support for his early career as invaluable in his development.
Early in his career, Brad was quickly acknowledged as one of country music’s most original and multi-talented artists, and his work has attracted collaborators both on record (Alison Krauss, Dolly Parton, George Jones, Bill Anderson) and in his videos, many graced by an extraordinary cast of characters, including Little Jimmy Dickens, Jason Alexander, William Shatner, Jerry Springer, Kellie Pickler, Taylor Swift, Jim Belushi, and Andy Griffith, as well as Brad’s wife, Kim.