"Here's the fine staff and myself in the ER of M U S C hospital," says Brad Paisley on his Twitter page after taking a fall during his Charleston, SC show on Saturday, March 6, 2010. Photo courtesy of twitter.com/paisleyofficial.

Brad Paisley’s onstage pratfall earlier this month put a strange coda on his American Saturday Night Tour and left him with an uncomfortable memento.

You likely saw the footage: Brad tripped during the final song (“Alcohol”) on the last tour stop — March 6 in Charleston, S.C. — and he ended up in the hospital, tweeting fans about the accident and asking anyone who had footage to upload it online. He’s healing, but the process isn’t pretty.

“There’s this lump,” he said just before Monday’s No. 1 party for “Welcome To The Future” and “American Saturday Night.” “It’s weird. I’ve never had that kind of bruise. It happened right on the bone, but there’s this lump of something… under the skin that feels like bone, it’s so hard. It moves around, but I’m sure it’s clotted blood probably.”

When Brad fell, he instinctively pulled his guitar up as his body was going down. It was less to protect the instrument than it was to protect his arms. He still has a hint of scabbing on his left elbow. As for the big lump on his hip, it’s taking its time dissipating. But Brad will take a bruise over a break any day.

“They tell me I’m OK,” he noted. “I’ve never hit that hard. I thought I broke my hip. I didn’t, thankfully. I didn’t hurt any organs or anything like that. I hit a lot harder than it looks… It all hit, right there on that [hip] bone, right on stage. Had it been a concrete stage, they would have wheeled me in today.”

There’ll likely be no visible remnants of the injury by the time Brad hits the road again with this summer’s H2O World Tour. That launches May 21 in Virginia Beach with a bevy of support acts, including Darius Rucker, Justin Moore, Steel Magnolia, Easton Corbin and Josh Thompson.

Meanwhile, Brad’s sporting a healthy sense of humor about his accident.

“A lot of people laughed,” he observed. “Whatever it takes to entertain people, I’ll do!”

ShareThis