Paul Christian
Never Been Lonely
Label: Texas Drift Records
Minnesota’s own Paul Christian has a new album out, Never Been Lonely.
Inspired by the likes of Chris Isaak (thanked in the liner notes for his advice and inspiration), Orbison, Yoakam and Lovette, Christian has a superb talent for folk songwriting – evidenced in the musical showcase of his 11-track album.
In addition to gently persistent acoustic guitar work, Christian & Co. have added toharmonica, keys and slide guitar to the musical medley – although musical rests are equally as important. However, bold lyrical understatement is the theme here. Despite calling his Minnesotan home a flyover state, Christian has unwittingly given influential props to the “Land of Lakes” – with its biting cold, lonely winters and unforgiving coastal isolation.
The tone is absolutely authentic, and the recording itself is golden smooth. And after years of resisting the sell-out bug — Christian has been offered the chance to sell his music to the likes of Randy Travis and Alan Jackson — we think he made the right choice to go it alone.
Paul Christian is getting some love by Cities ‘97 here in Minneapolis, which recently added his heartbreaker, “South of San Antone,” to their playlist.
Speaking about his new album, Christian took the time to answer a few questions for us:
In addition to guitar, we hear some keys on here. What kind of keyboard do you use
I have a Korg Triton I bought a few years back. We had a couple of different ones on “Never Been Lonely.” The song “South of San Antone” if I remember right, was a wurlizter. That song got added to Cities ‘97 just this week! I’m pretty stoked about that.
Tell us about the recording process
We recorded it in I think, 4 studios. It started out pretty rough, then got a little smoother with each new studio until I wanted to move on to the next album and collaboration. For a little while I worked with Tom Herbers and he did some nice things to it, but from now on I’m going to focus more on working with fellow singers in the recording process because already in the little while I’ve spent recording with Darren Jackson I can see that as a singer he takes a whole different approach to recording vocals.
What do you like best about songwriting?
One of the best and refreshing things about being a singer/songwriter is the development that happens over a handful of years. If this project was more of a band effort, I’m guessing the second album would be a lot like the first, but instead I’m doing something like Chris Isaak meets the Apples in Stereo instead of revisiting the folk and country. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.
I think our team effort is pretty special and I hope to work with Darren on a long term basis.
What’s up with the crazy 11th track?
I put in the remix at the end to hopefully avoid getting pigeonholed too much in the Americana and Folk world.
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