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Birmingham singer/songwriter PAUL POULTON has paid his dues. He talked to journalist, Tony Cummings.
Paul Poulton isn't your standard songsmith. In March 1990 the very first issue of Cross Rhythms magazine wrote about how Paul's songs sometimes drew on the works of CS Lewis and GK Chesterton. It read, "Mix those diverse (literary) elements together with a shot of rhythm and blues, a laid-back Tom Petty-like vocal style and a large dash of the unique Paul Poulton sense of humour and you get somewhere near the flavour of the man's work."
In his first year on the road he did 100 concerts. In 1989 he recorded his first album 'I Think I'm Being Followed'. Paul remembered, "I did a song on there called 'Strange People' which I still get asked to sing lots of times now."
I asked Paul about how, against all the odds, the Birmingham songsmith secured a radio hit in the USA with "Flaky People" from 1999's 'Flaky' album. "That was one of those songs that every verse just fitted beautifully. It was at the time when there were problems with the President (of the USA) and Monica Lewinski, and stuff - it was around about that time. That got a lot of airplay because there was one verse particularly about flaky leaders who offer us the world when they need us. You know, they fool around in their ivory towers when they've got where they want. It was number two in one chart in the mid-west. It was in the chart for about three months. I mean they must have been really fed up of me after three months."
The album which showcased "Flaky People" was actually credited to The Paul Poulton Project. I asked Paul whether such an aggregation still existed. He replied, "Yes they do, that's my band. I do some solo gigs, but when I'm with my band it's nice energy guitar-based rock and we have a blast. I really enjoy touring with the band. When I go over to America usually what happens is I go solo one year and then with my band the next. I've been doing that since I started going over there, which is nice because when I go solo I can take my little boy and my wife with me as well."
2005 has seen the release of two Paul Poulton albums. He spoke about the inspiration behind 'Affected'. "Just as I'm going around my daily life I get inspired. I was in my car the other day and thinking about a family I met in America, they were such a nice family; beautiful kids, good marriage, beautiful house, good job, nice church. Then the lady emailed me telling me they were going to split up! I thought, 'Oh, no!' I couldn't believe it! This thought suddenly hit me, that trouble affects all of us, every one of us on the planet, it affects us somehow. When I got home I got my guitar out and got this groove going and wrote this song called 'Affects Us All'. As it happens they didn't split up, which I'm really pleased about, they got it together - but I got a great song. God does inspire me and it's no good writing a song without the inspiration; I don't churn songs out. I don't think I ought to write a song because I haven't written one for a while. You know I heard Sting say that, I heard him on TV. They said, 'You entered into this contract for 10 albums with a record company.' He said, 'Yeah, but that's ridiculous because you can't write until you're inspired,' and I totally identified with what he was saying. Without inspiration you haven't got a song."
Another new Paul Poulton release is the Christmas epic 'Grooves 4 Scrooge'. Commented Paul, "As soon as you mention the words Christmas music it sounds like you're 'middle of the road' and I'm not like that at all. I always try to be cutting edge, because that's the way it comes out. Over the years I've worked hard on the carols, getting some mean licks and mean grooves to them, because the carols are important. They've got great words, you know? Charles Wesley - he worked on one particular song for years and years, but he could never get the third verse right and so he left it in his drawer and every now and again he'd get the song out and try and work on this third verse and he just couldn't get it right. And then one day he got inspired - he suddenly got the piece of paper out, wrote the third verse and then shortly after that he died. That song is 'Hark The Herald Angels Sing' and it's a great song, great poetry, but particularly the third verse; 'Born to raise the sons of earth/Born to give us second birth.' Every Christmas people sing that song, it's in the psyche of the western world, because he waited for the inspiration to come. So we give this real mean groove to it and people really join in with it. I like to do that with the old songs; I do it with some hymns as well, I give hymns a bit of a mean rock 'n' roll feel, 'cos that's how we've all grown up - we've all grown up mean and the music has to suit it!"
Paul is now immersed in a Christmas tour. He finds that Christmas is his busiest time on the road. "I've already got the Christmas tour well under way. There are a lot of dates in for that and people have been asking me about December 2006! I've got people booking that up as well, so - yeah, I'm always on tour. Wasn't it Bob Dylan who was on the never ending tour? Well, I've joined him on it!"
INTERVIEW WITH "MAN2MAN" MAGAZINE:
M2M: Have you always been a Singer/Songwriter?
Paul: I left school, went to college and studied engineering. I was offered a position in a band as a guitarist/singer and part songwriter so I left engineering behind for music...but I have always appreciated having a good working knowledge of pneumatics and hydraulics. Especially when it comes to fixing my little boy's toys.
M2M: Did you go to Bible school?
Paul: No, but I have always grown up with books and love studying them. I read a lot of CSLewis, GKChesterton and George MacDonald. I study the Bible not only because I write but because I love studying it. Just having my daily reading opens up avenues of thought I've never considered before. It's the secret of the universe in our own living rooms.
M2M: How did you become a Christian?
Paul: When I was young I didn't like going to church, mainly because it meant I missed the second episode of Batman. The church I went to was next to the Fish & Chip shop where a bunch of boys would hang around. Once half a bag of chips suddenly flew in through the window, but the preacher carried on as if nothing had happened, to me, that was the most interesting part of the service. I would talk to God even though I was only five, but it became a dynamic, interactive, reciprocal relationship at sixteen.
M2M: How do you juggle your time between family responsibilities and work, especially when you are travelling?
Paul: Spending time with my family is a very important priority, so I am strict about taking on extra responsibilities. There is a time for every activity under heaven. Getting the right time for the right activity is important, doing the right thing at the wrong time is not clever!
You always know when you've met someone with no timing, because if you tell them that you are about to fly off to Spain on your holidays, they'll tell you about a plane crash they've just heard about on the News.
M2M: Hobbies?
Paul: Running, but I'm not very good at it. I entered a 10 mile race on Boxing Day. My Mother said "who is making you do that?" "No one Mum, I just wanted to enter it." "What!" she said.
What was the question again? Oh yeah, Running and Reading, but not at the same time.
M2M: What's your favourite food?
Paul: Mexican Bean Feast, but you can't eat it too often.
M2M: What's it like performing on stage?
Paul: Do you remember listening to a song on the radio and playing a Tennis Racket in front of the bedroom mirror and pretending to be a guitarist? But if anyone came in the bedroom you suddenly stopped. Well it's like that, but when the people walk in you don't stop.
M2M: How do you keep your feet on the ground?
Paul: If I'm not humble how can I help anyone? The good thing about being humble is that you never get embarrassed, because you never pretended to be perfect in the first place. So when things go wrong and you walk into the ladies toilets instead of the men's it's just another opportunity to be humble.
Interview with US papers HEDRICKS COUNTY FLYER and WESTSIDE FLYER of Indianapolis
Q First, tell me something about the CD project, Angel, getting radio play attention. What is the background of the song?
A I've always wanted to meet an Angel, and if one came to visit me I would be very polite. Abraham killed a choice tender calf when Angels visited him, I don't have a calf but I could offer them some toast and make them a cup of tea. But maybe I have met an angel and didn't even realise it. So we need to treat all people as if they were angels unaware, and be respectful, loving and hospitable.
Q Scott Tyring described you as a modern blues sound singer who gets his audience moving. He says your lyrics are intelligent and fun. Can you explain "intelligent" and "fun."?
A The serious business of heaven is Joy. "Does not He who created the eye, see? Does not He who created the ear, hear?" So included in the sense is: doesn't He who created laughter, laugh? Doesn't He who created a sense of humour, have one?
Q What do you do to make your songs moving, intelligent, and fun?
A I get inspired and have to write what's on my heart via my mind. My songs are like springs of water that shoot up out of the ground.
Q What instruments will you be playing in your one man concert?
A Acoustic guitar, but I play it like it's a band. Segovia said "the guitar is like a whole orchestra in one insrtument." There's a lot you can do with a guitar, Psalm 33 tell us to play skillfully, that means practice. So I'm a practicing Christian who plays guitar, I hope to get fully qualified real soon.
Q Can you give me a little about your Christian upbringing in England?
A I didn't understand much in those days, but I knew Jesus was real. I would ask, to try to learn, I asked someone about heaven, they told me it was a land flowing with milk and honey. I thought, "hey, it sounds like a soggy place".
Q Where else in the Midwest will you be touring, and why did you choose the country belt of the Midwest to do a tour?
A Some of my music has received radio play in Ohio and people have e-mailed me, bought CD's and helped promote the concerts. I went to Texas on my first visit and got to play in some fine venues. The American people have always showed me so much kindness there is a particular ethos to the States that you don't find anywhere else in the world. God Bless America.
Tony Cummings catches up with hard rocking trio the PAUL POULTON PROJECT
Paul Poulton ProjectEvery few years the hard pressed hacks at Cross Rhythms Editorial shrug their shoulders and say, "Isn't it about time we did a Paul Poulton feature?" For the truth is, the Brummie singer/songwriter has been a fixture of Britain's Christian music scene as long as there has been a Cross Rhythms. He was featured in the very first issue of the CR magazine in fact and since then has clocked up literally thousands of gigs and a steady flow of independently released albums. In recent times though things have changed for the veteran songsmith in that Paul no longer goes out to gigs clutching an acoustic guitar but tours accompanied by two hard rocking cohorts. The Paul Poulton Project (as they are named) consist of Paul (vocals, guitar), Ross Lander (bass) and Joe Blanks (drums). There was in fact an earlier version of the Paul Poulton Project (with Rob Allen and Paul May) who recorded one album, 'Flaky' (1999). But it's Paul Poulton Project mark two who have been attracting much praise for their high energy stage performances and, in 2007, a fine album, 'Dumb Dogs' (a track from which, "I've Never Met Bob Dylan", was named by Cross Rhythms as one of the Best 20 Tracks Of 2007). Now PPP are hard at work at Raindance Studio, Amblecote, recording a new album, 'Looking For Someone To Blame' with engineer/producer Chris Smith.
Paul spoke about 'Looking For Someone To Blame', which should be released in the autumn. "It differs slightly from 'Dumb Dogs' in that most of the tracks are radio friendly, catchy and melodic, all of them, as usual, are guitar-driven. The songs have a message, which people seem to appreciate where ever we play, whether it's a rock venue or a church organised event. We try not to shout at people with a message, but rather engage them with an interesting perspective. God's love is very broad, it has something for everyone whatever stage in their lives they're at."
What promises to be one of the outstanding tracks on the new album is "Hypocrite's Blues". Paul explained the song's unusual genesis: "One day in the studio I was messing around with an old spiritual hymn called 'Ain't It A Shame'. I added some of my own verses to it, it's a funny song. Chris recorded it while I was playing it on my acoustic guitar. Joe Blanks walked into the studio to put some drums down on another track we were recording, but heard 'Ain't It A Shame' and immediately put the drums down for it. It was all so spontaneous, his playing was great, accentuating the country/blues/gospel feel of the song, it all went down in one take. We ended up with a song for the album in just a few minutes without even trying. Normally it can take a loooong time to get a song right. I put a rough mix version of the song on our MySpace site and people immediately started talking about it and pasting it onto their sites. Radio stations across the world have already got a copy and have been playing it. When my wife heard the song she thought it was a bit risqué so I called the song 'Hypocrite's Blues' to help explain the song to anyone who didn't think we should beat our wives."
Another unusual track on the album is "Don't Blame Me" which, believe it or not, features a famous mainstream song in each verse, namely Billy Paul's "Me And Mrs Jones", the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", the Beatles' "Lady Madonna" and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven". Explained Paul, "To engage with people you have to talk about things they will relate to. Christians sometimes struggle to get people into church because some churches have a language all of their own. They don't relate to ordinary people very well, so the song as with most of the songs on the album relates to people about ordinary things. 'Married People' for instance talks about married couples have fun in bed when the kids are asleep, and all the other things married people do, they shout at each other, they get counselling, they stay together but it takes work. That song relates to people and people have let me know. There are ways of talking about the Bible without it being boring. I think God relates to us in ordinary ways but we complicate things and they end up unable to be understood, we don't even understand them ourselves. I've been working on another book that looks at that very theme, it's called An Ordinary Life. But I need to finish the album before I get stuck into writing the book."
Writing books isn't a new activity for Paul. Last year American publisher Resource Publications published his work Fishing For Praise. Explained Paul, "The book looks at the question why do people praise - is it a weird thing or is it a normal aspect of life that we all engage it? The book sets out to show it's a normal thing that we do every day. Like, we praise our wives when they look nice, we praise the guy who cooked the dinner in the restaurant, we praise the filmmakers of a good film, we even praise our dogs when they go to sit by the door and don't leave a little puddle by the sofa. Praise is a normal part of life and so when Christians get together in church, it's what we do. It's a normal thing. If somebody's been to a good football match they say, oh you missed a great match the other day. It was a really great game. And we will talk about the good players. So when Christians get to church, what we kind of do, some of the songs are aimed at Christians. We sing to each other, 'Come, let's praise the Lord,' or something like that. What we're saying to each other is, 'Isn't God great. He's done so many good things that I can't express myself properly I've just got to sing this song. So this will do for me to praise God.' So that's what we do.
"But praise is all around us, everywhere. We hear it a lot. We also hear the opposite of praise as well. People get slagged off and stuff but the Bible teaches us to talk up, be positive and a lot of people in the world are positive. When Christians meet together it's normal to praise God. That's what we do because he does so many good things. And God praises us too - that's the thing. Praise isn't one way. It's not like Jesus has got a big ego that he wants praising all the time, or he's insecure or something. It's not like that. We're recognising who Jesus is. Jesus is the creator of Heaven and earth. He wants to help us, he wants to be our friend and he wants to be our brother. We recognise that fact and so we say he's truly great. He's the most excellent of men, like the psalm says, 'You are the most excellent of men.' When we are worthy of praise God praises us too. It's not like it's all one way. The Scriptures tell us we are to seek the praise that doesn't come from men but comes from God. Seek his praise. So he praises us too. And an insight into praise is that it gives us a lot of information on Heaven and Hell. So the book looks at praise as a doorway through to Heaven or through to Hell.
"As I was writing it I just found myself going through these avenues of really, really interesting stuff and it all started from just the one thing, why do we praise. Deists, Benjamin Franklin was a deist, he believed in God but he didn't praise him. He said we don't have to praise him. Just knowing he's there is enough. He also said God doesn't want our praise. He said why would he want our praise? Do we want praise from a monkey? Or a lesser life form. It doesn't mean anything to us if a monkey praises us - what does that mean? And he said that's what it's like to God. So deists don't praise God and there's quite a lot of deists about, even though they don't realise they're deists. I think, and I try to say this in the book, because praise is a normal part of life it's important that we do praise God because some people can't praise. We all know people who have never got anything good to say about anyone. It's just like beyond them to say anything good. All they want to look at is people's bad points and there's lots of bad points to look at in the world. We're not stupid, we know that's the case but there's also lots of good things to look at and the good things should be highlighted and praised. And so that's what Christians do. We see God who is good; he's totally good, excellent, nothing bad about him. In fact Jesus is the one person on earth there is nothing bad to say about. So we can just say good things about Jesus because he's good. So that's what the book's about. But there are lots of avenues and different chapters that look at different aspects of praise. It was originally called Aspects Of Praise - there's about 10 chapters about different things. Now it's called Fishing For Praise."
The powerhouse drummer in the Paul Poulton Project is Joe Blanks. Joe explained how he contacted Paul, "I went to this website and it said Walsall and it said Paul was a clean living guy and stuff. So I met up with him and it ended up that he lived down the road in Rugely." Paul interjected, "Joe told me, 'I'm on the telly next week so you can watch me play. And he was on Let me Entertain You on the BBC.'" For those not familiar with Let Me Entertain You, the audience have the opportunity to buzz a poor performance and if they got more than 50 per cent buzzes the hapless act would be kicked off the stage. Amazingly, solo drummer Joe won two heats and came third in the final, winning three thousand pounds in the process.
Not surprisingly, in view of his TV talent show success, Joe admitted to being a showman. He said, "That's my thing. I prefer doing live gigs rather than studio work. But the solo was varied. I played with four sticks, I stood on the drums, I did animal impressions, I did stick twirling." Paul added his praise for his virtuoso drummer, "He's a great drummer, solid, but he's got this excellent showmanship too. Some people are born to be on stage and Joe's one of them. He was only 16 when he was on the TV show."
Equally crucial to the Paul Poulton Project sound is bassist Ross Lander. Ross is a veteran of the Christian scene. "I have been playing bass in different churches for 18 years now. That's a lot of meetings! I think my record is four in a day. I have also played at services at three different towns in a single day - London, Huddersfield and Bradford. In Huddersfield, I joined a praise party band called RAW (Ready And Willing). That was a lot of fun. We rarely had a planned set list and solos could be requested at any point by the band leader. I also joined a group called Glass around that time. We were featured in Cross Rhythms in issue 49 in 1999 and the EP had a great review. Sadly, the band folded due to a lack of motivation, which was a real shame as there was real potential there. I have been part of the worship team at the Elim national conference a couple of times, and a few other Bible weeks. I have been playing for a jazz/funk/soul function band for the last two years, which has really stretched my playing. I joined the PPP in Feb 2007. I have a friend who has known Paul for ages and he told me Paul needed a new bassist, and was able to recommend me. I sent some MP3s through and that seemed to be enough to land the gig. I first met Joe a couple of hours before we were due to play in front of 1000 people in Sheffield! I had only met Paul once as well! It was something of a baptism of fire, but it went well. We have still never had a band practice to this day."
Like each band member, Ross has plenty of vivid memories of gigging with the Paul Poulton Project. "One of the craziest was at a pub in Huddersfield. We played in a sort of courtyard out of the back of a van. If the setting itself wasn't surreal enough, things got really weird when the power went off in the middle of a song and Joe began running around the place playing window bars, tables and fire escapes. The crowd went crazy for it! The landlord offered us more money if we could keep on playing!"
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Does Paul Know His Onions?