Ellis Paul (cont.)
Tell us about the producer of your new
record.
Jerry Marotta had done Kristen Hall's
record - which I loved. I love her music and I thought he did a great job on it. Ralph
bumped into him at a bar. We were looking around for a producer at that point. We had
heard he was doing a friend of ours. Barb Kessler. Ralph told him that we were interested
in maybe using him. Jerry came out to see me play a show and loved it. Then we hooked up
and did the record in January this year.
Where did you record the album.
We recorded it at Apple Head Studios in Woodstock, New York where Jerry lives, and mixed
it at Blue Jay where we had done the previous record. By doing it out there, we had a
little more access to people like bassman, Tony Levin. Tony lives there. And also Jerry's
circle of players. I really wanted to get out of the Boston scene, because everyone is
using the same players. We got Duke [Levine] on it again. We had a guy named Bill Dillon
playing guitar. He flew in from New Orleans and spent the entire session with us. He
worked with Joni Mitchell on her last record -
and Sarah McLachlan and Counting Crows. There was my acoustic guitar and
Jerry on drums - we had Patty
Griffin came in for back-up vocals, because she's my big choice of backing vocals.
How many songs are on the new album.
There are eleven. I wrote nine of them in the
month of January. We were recording by the end of that month.
Didn't you have a back catalogue of
songs for the new album.
I did - but it's hard to write on the road. I was writing these songs on the road. I
realised as the album was approaching, that I only had two that I would be really
confident and comfortable with putting on the record. The subject matter of the songs I
already had, weren't intriguing enough for me to re-edit them. I still play them
occasionally, but they are sort of like set fillers - when you need a lighter side of
things, I might pull one out. The new songs are good. I'm proud of them and certainly it's
a better record than I would have put out, if I'd stuck with the older songs I had.
What are the song titles.
The album is called "Carnival of Voices." Again, I was trying
to set up something chromatically. I had this concept, of a records of character sketches
- a bunch of different people in different towns. That sort of ties in with the carnival
mentality of traveling. I have a song called "Midnight Strikes Too Soon" which
is about a friend of mine in New York City. The second song is called "Paris in a
Day" which is about my wife and I on our honeymoon.
So the record isn't confined to North America.
Well, that's the only song that mentions a place outside America. The third song is about
traveling in a blizzard aboard a subway car in Boston [NOTE. The song is titled
"Trolley Car"]. The fourth song is called "Deliver Me" which is going
to be the single. It's a roots rock thing, acoustic based, but it's kind of a love song.
The fifth song is about New Years Eve in New Orleans. There's different pictures of people
who kind of are having a miserable time.
Have you ever spent New Years Eve in New Orleans.
No. I actually based it on my New Years Eve experience, this past year, in Boston. I've
spent a lot of time in New Orleans, so I was trying to capture the mood of what happens
there around that time. I compared Mardi Gras to New Years Eve, and tried to picture New
Orleans. Then I've got a song called "All My Heroes Were Junkies" which is a
character sketch of a person I'm good friends with, who runs a coffeehouse in Martha's
Vineyard. He's a recovering addict and got to party with a lot of famous people in his
time. He has great stories and a great sense of humour about his past. There's a song
called "Weightless" about a woman who runs a bed and breakfast for songwriters
in Nashville. She's actually camped over here. It's a song about faith and how it
physically changed her appearance.
Does she know you wrote the song about her.
Oh yeah. They all do. I write songs about real people - I tend not to - the "King of
Seventh Avenue" is a rare example of a purely fictional character. I don't speak from
character on this record - I'm actually in the songs themselves, having dialogue with the
people who the songs are about. I did that because I think people wanted to see me more in
the songs. And have me write about myself. I'm not like the "touchy feely, Joni
Mitchell, James Taylor type of writer" - that "this is my life
struggle. This is what I was emotionally going through at the time" style. I'd
rather write about the world and what I'm seeing. So this was cool - I put myself in the
songs, like Alfred Hitchcock
does with his movies. I interact with the characters. It was a wonderful experience for me
to do that.
What other songs are on the album.
"Never Lived at All" is about people
who abandon reality to pursue a dream - and how important a dream is to really living a
full life. It's kind of a family sketch of different people in my family. I'm in there - I
don't use my own name. I use someone else's name. He's a novelist, not a musician. The
whole thing is about being able to work through rejection and failure, and still live for
the dream. I wrote "Self Portrait" in the studio. I wanted to use the phrase
"a carnival of voices" in a song somewhere. I wrote this song around
that phrase. It's about internal battles in people's heads. The song "Lay Your Wager
Down" is about as personal as I get - it's between my father and I. When I get
personal , I tend to veil things in metaphor. I don't think you could exactly establish
what the situation is between us. You sort of sense it through the mood of the music. It's
like a "Conversation With a Ghost," no one really knows what the song is about.
They get a lot out of it, because of the mood. The last song on the record is called
"Change" and I wrote it on Martin Luther King Day. It was around the time that a
lot of things were happening - the Oklahoma bombing and all that. It's sort of a
social song, about people's perspective of change in the world.
When you appeared on "The Postcrypt"
compilation, was that because you played there regularly.
Yeah, I'm one of their favourite artists. I got
a great following there. I'd written the song "All Things Being the Same," a
couple of weeks prior to that recording. I'm glad it got on there, because I go back to it
sometimes, just to hear where I was coming from musically. The song has evolved some since
that time.
What's happening with your
video documentary.
I just saw the film portion of it - we
had forty-five minutes of Super 8 film that we took. It came out wonderfully. We're going
to let the album come out first and get it rolling. Probably around Christmas, I'm going
to release the video. We have forty five hours of video to edit down. We have a lot of
work in front of us. I'm going to be pretty much tied up with the record until the Fall.
It's going to be great. I hope to do another video when I'm forty. We went from Boston to
San Francisco, and then we drove back across the country.
It's not an "oh woe is me,
touring is so hard" scenario.
No. I don't think so. It's sort of like
"Spinal Tap" meets
"Don't Look Back."
It's reality - it starts off and I'm doing a theatre show. There are several hundred
people in the audience. Then it switches to me sitting on my own playing to an audience of
six.
And you knew all their names by
the end of the evening.
Exactly. That scenario is why I wanted
to do the film to begin with. So that people would understand that it's not all -
Glory.
No, it's not. It's very, very difficult
work.
Who will release it. Philo
don't have have a video wing as far as I'm aware.
They do actually, but they release
mostly teaching videos. What I'm going to do and hopefully with their permission, this is
going to be cool - either they'll put it out themselves, or they'll let me out it out and
get the money back that I invested in it. I'm not looking for major distribution. I'm
basically releasing it to let it get to my fanbase in the folk world. I'll cart it around
the country, till I sell five hundred copies. Then I'll start thinking about the next one.
You intend doing more of them.
Yeah. They're going to be like
documents of how my career develops. I'll do one when I'm thirty five or forty.
What about becoming involved
with enhanced CD Roms.
If the technology can be done easily
for me, I think I would be interested in doing them. We could even use footage from the
film we've made. Rounder would have to get involved with that. I don't think they're ready
to move into that world.
Whose idea was it to release
"This is Boston - Not Austin" compilation.
That was Ralph's idea. There are
compilations all the time, but I don't think there's been a good one that represents
Boston. The Acoustic Underground was recording people who won their contests. That was
leaving out a lot of people, who are beyond the contest level. So Ralph out that out and
it did great. He's actually planning another one.
Is "Paperback Man"
going to be something of a rarity.
I don't know that I'll record it again.
It's nearly five minutes long and it's an out there song, about a woman who gets sucked
into a novel - it's almost like science fiction. I don't know if I'll put that on a
record. I like to use compilations to put out whatever I'm working on at the time. I had
that song, as I'd written it the week before. He wanted me to record something. I've been
performing it live, here and there, and it's a lot of fun. It's got a great groove.
Finally, can I just ask you
about some of the songs on your first two albums. On "Say Something" was
"Blizzard" influenced by living in Boston.
I was driving in the mid-west - in
Chicago, I think. Around November or December. There was this huge storm. I just pictured
a person driving and wanting to get home - having been away from his loved ones for a long
time. That kind of thing. I wanted to capture the emptyness of the road. Driving in a
blizzard can be a wonderful thing. I've done it frequently.
I thought it would be scary.
It can be. I don't worry about
accidents so much, because people are driving so slow. When you do go off the road - I've
had a crash on the highway in a blizzard at sixty miles per hour. I slammed into a guard
rail that was packed with snow, and managed to pull the car back on the road and just
drive away. It's fairly safe to drive in a blizzard, if there's not much traffic. You
can't really hit anything solid but snow.
Is there a particular situation
which "Washington D.C. 5/91" refers to.
Yeah. That night I was there - there's
a Latino section of town - there had been some green card situation, where the Feds had
gone in and swept the area. Riots broke out. Five people were killed. Cars were
overturned. They had to call in riot police. If you know Washington D.C. and most
Americans you know - they always make the family visit to Washington D.C. - in one part of
town, it's the most incredible beauty and money, and everything is well groomed. On the
other side of the city, they have the worst murder rate in the country. Extreme poverty.
It's that dichotemy, which made me write the song.
What about "Angel."
Angel was a kid that I worked with ,
who was a dealer. He came into school high every day. When he was twelve years old he got
caught in the projects selling a bag of heroin.It was inspired by him. I pictured it from
an addicts perspective. Then Angel comes in as sort of the guest artist who is selling
heroin.
Obviously you have different
gun laws in the U.S. relative to the U.K. Tell us about "Autobiography of a
Pistol" and what you feel about the U.S. gun laws.
I think people see it as a black and
white issue and it's a grey issue. The people who are pro-gun, think there should be no
restrictions on what a human being can hold. People who are anti-gun, think that no one
can have guns. No one should be able to hold guns. It's a grey issue. There should
certainly be stiff restrictions on who can carry a firearm - the amount of firearms that
people can own, and the kind of firearm. To me it should all be done - I mean you have to
take a course and get a license to learn how to drive, but any moron can pick up a gun and
start shooting things. I'd like to see a psychological test and - just simple ones, that
are revealing about the person taking the test.
Obviously we've had some
problems at home of late, but you can not predict what initiates these situations.
You can't. If people really want to
kill someone, they're going to find a gun anyway. "Autobiography" is a song
about shirking responsibility, and how everyone is sort of blaming it on someone else. The
line "guns don't kill people bullets do" - that's the whole apex of the
song summed up right there.
You came to songwriting late in
life, yet you wrote a song titled "Who Killed John Lennon." Has he been an
influence on you musically.
Yeah. The Beatles were, I think, in my unconscious
from childhood. Just because they were The Beatles. I didn't really dive
into them artistically, until I was in my early twenties. I started listening - not
listening for the music, but started listening to what was being said and how it was
produced. Tried to figure out what the effect it was having on people. I think Lennon is
really the rock n' Roll heart and soul of The Beatles. And a big hero of mine.
Were you also trying to make a
point with the song, in terms of who killed John Lennon.
I was watching tv and they were
interviewing the guy who killed him. Over two days. It wasn't even a one day interview, it
was a two day thing. I just thought "What the hell are they doing with this guy."
This is exactly the reason why he did it, and they're putting him on tv.
To encourage somebody else to
shoot -
The next guy. Right. The gist of the
song is, not to mention his name publically - not to give him any space - just to say,
he's the guy who killed John Lennon. Don't say his name. Don't give his face any coverage.
Don't let him talk into a microphone. The song also connects well with "Autobiography
of a Pistol" and the madness of the whole thing.
What about this guy Robert
Wilson in "3000 Miles." Is he a real person.
Yes, he was. He was based on a guy -
his name wasn't Robert Wilson, but I used the name because it seemed to fit. And it rolled
off the tongue. It was a kid I went to College with, who used to take the Greyhound every
summer and go for these adventures. I think you learn a lot about Americans by sort of
getting captured in this tin can, and round the country with people. Having
conversations with strangers. People from the mid-West get on and there's a different
vibe. Then they get off and people from the Utah Rockies area - they get on and it's a
different vibe - then the Californians -
Was this guy older than you.
He was, yeah. He was twenty-four when I
met him. He was still a College student and had been to about eight Colleges at that
point. I was twenty-one at the time.
How do you feel about your
musical career at this point in time. Is everything going as you had hoped.
Yeah, I have a long way to go before
I'm a national name. I'm selling around twenty thousand copies of each album now. When I
sell up to around one hundred thousand, that's when I get to be on the level of the people
that I think I want to be at. I think this new record is going to sell probably, almost
twice as many as my last one did. The next record beyond that, will probably be the one to
break me nationally. And get people who are not folk fans, to become aware of who I am. It
takes a long time to build up through this grass roots thing.
You mentioned building blocks
earlier. You feel that the gradual is the better process, rather than the
instant.
Well, it's the process that I'm on. I
think there are other people who can go overnight like that - put out one record and have
it work for them. I'm sort of writing stuff that's - I don't know how poppy it is - how
pop accessible it is. It's kind of heavy stuff. I think once you see it live you're
smitten by it. I tend to write character sketches. You don't hear a lot of that on
commercial radio.
Because people have to listen
and people sometimes don't have time to listen.
People listen to music. It's meant for
background. It's the soundtrack to their lives. They're not paying attention the the
words. I don't write music like that. But - we'll see what happens. Press is how I got my
following. I don't get a lot of radio airplay - the folk stations are playing it of
course. Every single person we sent my press kit too, would write about me because I'm a
writer. They connected, because journalists are writers and they could see the quality of
my lyrics. That has been the most important aspect of my career - is my ability to get
press - so far anyway.
This interview was taken from the
Kerrville Kronikle No.21, 8th. Year. Edited and published by Arthur Wood.
