Young gets the chance to ride solo at DDC gig

Don’t tell Brad Paisley, but country singer Chris Young has been taking notes.

After seven months on the road with Paisley’s “Beat This Summer Tour” and heading out this month for the Nashville superstar’s “Beat This Winter Tour,” Young has learned a thing or two.

“It’s really just stealing ideas for what I want to do on my tour. There are just so many things — lights, staging, how he runs his set each night,” Young said Friday morning from a tour bus heading to Pikeville, Ky., for a Paisley show.

Young, with four studio records under his belt and eight years as a national touring country singer, took baby steps toward his own headlining tour last year. It was 10 dates, just enough to get the feel of owning the top of the marquee and not being listed under “also featuring.”

The experience convinced him that he is almost ready to strike out on his own — if only he could find the time.

He is sneaking a few solo shows, including Saturday at Desert Diamond Casino, into a head-spinning itinerary that features a string of European dates with Paisley in March and with George Strait in April and late May.

“Our summer is pretty much full up to the end of September, October. It’s trying to find a place to put it right now, which is a good problem to have.”

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Young said he loves his one-off solo shows, which gives the 28-year-old Murfreesboro, Tenn., native a chance to flex his creativity.

“It’s a lot of fun having complete control over everything,” he said. “The setlist, you can do whatever you want to with it. You don’t have a time you have to be on, you have to be off. It’s going to be a lot of fun getting out and just being able to play some shows that are mine.”

Young, whose career took off after he won the 2006 “Nashville Star” talent competition, is coming off a string of hit singles, including his latest Top 5 hit, “Aw Naw,” the first radio cut off his months-old fourth studio album, “A.M.” The single has sold more than 500,000 copies, and was certified gold.

The second cut, the love song “Who I Am With You,” hits radio this month.

“There’s more up-tempo songs on this record from start to finish than really any of the other records I made,” Young said.

He said, for him, one of 2014’s biggest highlights will come when he joins Strait’s “Cowboy Rides Away” tour. “I’ve never gotten to open for him, and this is his last tour,” Young said. “When you say, ‘I want a career like,’ he is one of the three names that pop up all of the time.”