Free Diary of a Player by Brad Paisley Page A

everyone from Hank Williams Jr. to Luciano Pavarotti. As soon as I realized that the Desert Rose Band had Vox amps, I scammed someone into giving me John Jorgenson’s phone number. So I just called John blind and said, “My name is Brad Paisley. I opened for you at the Jamboree in Wheeling, and I love your sound. Do you have a minute to talk about Vox amps?” Rather than just hang up on this punk, John was nice enough to explain that you could only get these amplifiersin certain places and that I wanted the old ones, not the new ones. He told me there was a great music store in Louisville that would probably have them, but that they’d have a lot more to choose from in England at certain stores.
    Despite the fact that I would avoid math homework at all costs, I gladly calculated the time difference between Glen Dale, West Virginia, and Doncaster, England, even though I failed to properly calculate the cost per minute. The first time I heard a British phone go
burr-burr
instead of
ring, ring,
I freaked out. Then someone with an actual British accent answered and I really got giddy. I pulled myself together and explained that I was interested in getting some Vox AC30s, and by any chance did he have any? This unimpressed guy with a thick British accent said, “Yes. We’ve got about
fifty
.”
    With my heart pounding a mile a minute, I somehow worked out a deal to buy two. I think the cost for my dream amplifiers came to $2,500 total. Not including the exorbitant phone bills. But hey, some kids my age were calling those late-night 900 numbers to hear heavy breathing by then, so I figure my parents should have been happy.
    Dad also claims that I never paid him back for this sonic adventure, so I guess an eventual free Corvette is not acceptedcurrency in these transactions. But by this point, I was earning $250 a pop playing solo for old ladies at a golf resort, so I did do a little of the math on that one.
    After I made a deal in Doncaster, England, those Vox amps couldn’t come in fast enough. In the end, it took them about two weeks to get to America, with me desperately tracking them all the way. I would lie awake at night and picture them crossing the Atlantic in the belly of a freighter, in their wooden shipping crates, like they were the lost ark and I was Indiana Jones about to intercept them. My new amps came through Pittsburgh to clear customs, and so my father and I decided to save a little money and drive there and get them ourselves in his Chevy Blazer. By now I was absolutely going out of my mind; I literally could not wait to get my hands on these amps. I had never really touched a Vox amp before—I had only seen them in concert and heard them on records—but I was already in love. No girl in school could be half as beautiful as these Vox amps were to me. Well, almost.
    Finally we got to Pittsburgh and claimed my new musical treasure. I could not believe that I was now the proud owner of not one but two AC30s. By this point, customs had already torn the boxes apart looking for drugs or other contraband—unaware, perhaps, that these amplifiers
were
my drugs. ThenI furiously continued their work and ripped open the box to see the head control plate and know for sure that I had actually gotten what I (or rather, my dad) had paid for—and blissfully discovered that I had.
    Dad and I loaded the amp boxes into his car, and we drove all the way home through the snow in the frigid air. Then right as we arrived in Glen Dale, my father—who’s a volunteer fireman in our little town—decided we had to stop by the firehouse and wash the salt from the highway off the Chevy. By this point, I was just dying because I was literally one half mile away from my house—and from my dream of playing my first Vox AC30s. And they were right there in the boot. (That’s British for “trunk.” Pip pip. Read on.) It was around seven thirty P.M. and getting very dark. In