Sonny James, George Strait, and Harold Bradley Make The Hall And Brad Paisley Pranked

• Heralded by Guitar Player as the most-recorded guitarist in the world, Bradley is the first musician to enter the Hall of Fame under the category of session player. He has played on such classics as “Crazy,” “Dang Me,” “For the Good Times” and “Stand by Your Man.”
• Known as the “Southern Gentlemen,” James, 78, had an as-yet-unbeaten string of 16 straight No. 1 country hits from 1967-1971. His calling card was the romantic ballad, none bigger than “Young Love,” a record that topped both the country and the pop charts in 1957.
• A sophisticated stylist who’s racked up more No. 1 hits than any singer in country music history, the night’s final honoree, neo-traditionalist Strait, was fêted by the legendary George Jones, one of the Texan’s biggest idols along with Bob Wills and Merle Haggard.

Rock and roll was like a religion, and it’s gone. Country has stayed the course, and country is America’s music now. We write the lyric that means something. We are America’s music.”

Between the big stage and the smaller ones it was possible to detect evidence of a continuing argument about the identity of country music. The small-stage acts generally went deep, emphasizing the genre’s history.

It would have been hard to choose which acts to see between the different stages. Judging from most of the articles, the majority of people just camped out in front of the main stage all day long.

I’ve been watching my back out here for the past couple of days. One of us is going to get pranked by Brad (”Us” being Jack Ingram, Kellie Pickler, and myself). Here’s why: We struck first. We’d had been planning it for a while, ever since I found these hilarious Tick costumes on the internet and ordered them. Then we made Jack this exterminator costume and got him a bug sprayer. Then, two nights ago, in the middle of his show– when Brad was playing his new song “Ticks”, Kellie and I ran out onstage in those ridiculous tick costumes ( we looked like Sumo wrestlers). We started dancing around Brad and running up and down the catwalks. Then Jack came out in his “Pest Control” costume and pretended to chase us around the stage, trying to spray us with fake insecticide. Then he eventually sprayed both of us and Kellie and I pretended to die onstage. I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe. Then I was laying there on the stage playing dead, and looked up at Brad, and he looked down at me and said “Nice work”. Yeah. I might as well have a target drawn on me.

Luckily YouTube has a video of the performance: