Brad Paisley packs the house and his show with hits

The signs that the concert industry is in for another difficult summer were there for all to see Saturday during Brad Paisley's show at the Susquehanna Bank Center.

No, it wasn't Paisley's gate. The house was nearly full. It was the staffers walking around, wearing sandwich boards advertising $10 tickets for the Jonas Brothers show Aug. 27.

While some acts are playing to half-full houses or scrapping their tours altogether, Paisley - the guitar-slinging country star whose love of fishing and life's simple pleasures appeals to the guys, while the ladies seem to favor his more sentimental moments and his tight jeans - is packing them in because he's offering his fans a pretty sweet deal.

For a relatively reasonable ticket price ($30-$60 before TicketMaster's dreaded add-ons), fans at the Susquehanna Bank Center got nearly two hours of hits from Paisley, plus hit-filled sets from openers Justin Moore and Hootie and the Blowfish's Darius Rucker.

They also got lasers, high-production video sketches, and the chance to paw at Paisley as he took a lap through the crowd en route to the back of the pavilion for a solo acoustic segment.

Musically, Paisley pulls from a tried and true trick bag. Like most mainstream country of the last decade or so, Paisley's sound isn't so much traditional country (you won't ever confuse him with George Jones or Johnny Cash) as it is middle-of-the-road rock, delivered with a twang and a drawl and topped off with a Stetson.

Watching him work live, sometimes you get the feeling that Paisley is a frustrated Nashville session cat trapped inside a hit-making star. An exceptional guitar player, he capped off the trite "She's Everything" (basically a checklist of a particular woman's pluses and minuses) with an extended solo that gradually escalated from slow-burn to a full shred, lighting a fire under the ballad.

Not all songs needed a bailout from Paisley's Fender Telecaster heroics. "Online" married a clever premise - how schlubs become studs in cyberspace - with a breezy pop hook. And "Ticks," one of a handful of Paisley songs that straddles the line between bawdy and novelty, works because it joins a southern rock stomp with one of the more original come-on lines in the history of song: "I'd like to walk you through a field of wildflowers / And I'd like to check you for ticks."

Earlier in the night, Moore delivered 30 minutes of songs that also straddled the bawdy/novelty divide (see "Back That Thing Up"), while Rucker spent 40 minutes offering up several Hootie hits, solo numbers like "Alright," and two interesting covers: Prince's "Purple Rain" and Hank Williams Jr.'s "Family Tradition."