We at Just Listen To This are always drawn to original songwriters, whatever the musical genre. Somehow Andrew Roachford, Matt Andersen, Ashley Campbell and others seem more interesting than just performers.
Enter the gentle giant Eric Paslay, a man whose songs and stories one can relate to, recognise and savour. We had the chance to settle down for a chat with the friendly songsmith..and we took it…
JLTT: Right okay we are up and running, Eric. Great to be with you. The songs on here (Eric Paslay’s self-titled album), is it fair to say that most of your lyrical work, your creation really does centre on the human condition?
EP: Yeah absolutely.
Maybe in the way it does with Suzanne Vega or Springsteen but you’ve got your own twist. How much of it is autobiographical or are you a storyteller?
I’m a storyteller and I should’ve gotten in more trouble when I was young probably (laughs) to turn some of these stories into songs but I watch other people’s lives and I see things. Like you said, it is the human condition. It might not have actually happened to me but I can kind of feel their pain or their love or whatever it is and try and write about it.
That is the very essence of blues and country music as we know.
Yeah. I don’t know.. we show up and see what song wants to be written. It might be our stories but if it is not our story we know it is somebody’s.
Before I go through a list of songs, I know that you are not playing alone on this and I don’t know who else is playing on this record.
Great musicians.
Do you want to talk us through some musicians in your live band?
Heck, my live band is incredible. We’ve got Dane Kinser on lead guitar and he’s from Eastern Tennessee and we’ve got Josh Hazelton on drums from Vermont. He’s been in the Shoals for a long time and playing on records down in the studios. We got lucky as he decided he wanted to come back out on the road so we’ve got a great drummer in him. Then we’ve got a kid from Warrington, England who is out on the road with us called Chris Roach and he plays bass. I love all these guys. It is so funny, we joke that Chris doesn’t play more than five strings or any instruments that don’t begin with B because he actually plays banjo on a couple of songs now.
I had to get a six-string Baritone tuned A to A because of the guy from Commander Cody – Bill Kirchen.
I’ve gotten to write on a Baritone acoustic a couple times and those are very rare to find. They are just kind of fun as it is like when you pick something up which doesn’t sound like you instrument but you can play it the same way it is kind of intriguing.
So I’m assuming that you like playing live?
I love it. I love playing live.
Solo or with a band?
I love both. I cut my teeth playing solo and that’s just how I learned and I couldn’t afford a band nor did I have one. I moved to Nashville and there they do all the songwriters rounds which are usually just you and a guitar. At least back then it was.
Bluebird Café type stuff.
You were the bass player, the guitar player and the drummer.
We’ve got a buddy JD Simo who used to play lead guitar at one of the main places.
I do know JD yeah.
He’s our kind of cat we love the guy.
I haven’t seen him in a little bit but I love him.
When he comes here we always try and catch up.
I love that but man when you get to play with a band, magic can happen there too.
You know what I like? You go to the band and say “There are the chords” and then they all come in and suddenly all the black and white is colour. Do you give your guys freedom to actually colour it how they like?
Oh yeah. It is always wild when you record a record and spend a lot of time on the parts and all that. It is good to be close just so that people are familiar with it but I always love it when the guys wander a little bit this way and that.
Our main bands here (UK) bring new stuff in live first and then record.
Yeah which is great and a good idea. You should do it that way.
By that time Eric, you already know what the crowd likes. I always tell my guys “This audience could be anywhere else tonight and they are here with you.”
With a song even, someone is giving you three or four minutes of their life you better make it worth it. They’re not getting it back.
‘Friday Night’ is already a bit of a classic isn’t?
Yeah what the heck? It has been around for a little bit but I’m glad that it has done so well. It was my first number one as a singer so it worked out great.
What intrigued me because it seems ambivalent is ‘She Don’t Love She’s Just Lonely’. I’m not sure how much empathy there is – whether it is a bitter song or whether it is just observation.. I know people don’t like explaining their songs too much but most have a go.
The point of the song is the very last verse ‘She don’t love you she’s just lonely. But she wasn’t once upon a time. I remember her in sunlight, I remember her when she was mine.’ So the point of the song is it is almost an apology to the guy she’s with and to her as well – “I’m so sorry I broke her heart so bad that she doesn’t know how to love again”. That song was written in thirty-forty minutes, it just kind of fell out. The beauty about that song is ‘a heart can hear it how it needs to hear it’.
If you are trying to get through something, or you are angry at somebody or you are just trying to find forgiveness somehow/someway. That’s kind of what that song is. I wrote it with a girl called June Wayne and we were trying to write a song for George Strait because he had just announced The Cowboy Rides Away Tour which is probably where the line ‘too many cowboys rode away’ came from. Her grandfather was John Wayne so she grew up around cowboy stuff. We were on some up-tempo positive cowboy thing or something.
There is a song I love called ‘I Bet He Knows’ and I like it because it is actually on the pleasure of having an ex not succeed. Tell me about ‘Never Really Wanted’ that is kind of haunting me.
That was my very first single in the States on the radio and it just sounded great. Most guys, especially when we are younger we never really ask the girl out. We don’t find the guts and it is like “Hey, you’re never gonna get her if you don’t go for it and ask her.”
If you offer a woman a seat on a train or a bus you can get the hardest look.
It is called being a gentleman. If I hold the door open for someone it doesn’t mean I’m checking you out it means my mom taught me right.
What’s your hometown?
Temple, Texas.
Where is that near?
Central Texas in between Waco and Austin, Texas. So ‘Never Really Wanted’ is basically that I never asked the girl out and I sure wish I did have. I never really wanted her but now I do.
But you see, we’ve all been there. ‘Good With Wine’.
It is what it is. People are always like “This tastes great with wine, that goes great with wine and it is No, YOU go good with wine.” It is just a cool idea and I wrote it with Jesse Alexander and Gordy Sampson. They are great writers and that was Jesse’s idea and we had fun writing it.
Did you ever go to Antone’s?
I did go to Antone’s occasionally, I’ve maybe gone there twice. I lived in Nashville when I was twenty and most of the time you had to be twenty one to get into Antone’s.
I saw Stevie Ray Vaughan’s first show in the UK, I saw Jimi Hendrix and I met Jim Morrison. That’s how old I am! I was gonna ask you about Storyville.
I remember hearing Storyville on a radio station like 100.1 or something about sixteen years ago. They are great Austin band
When you play live with this set of songs, do you do ‘Amarillo Rain’?
I do. We actually play it quite a bit and if it is a longer set we’ll do ‘She Don’t Love You’ as it is a ballad. For festivals they want it a bit rowdier sometimes.
Well I am offering to play mandolin on ‘Amarillo Rain’ so if that can happen one day…
(Laughs) Hey well I’ll be back in the UK in the Fall so thanks very much.
Reminds me of Guy Clark but I don’t know why.
(Surprised) Wow! Thank you. I love Guy Clark. He is such a great storyteller. That song just like ‘She Don’t Love You’ just fell out and I wrote it with a girl called Amy and we were both born in Aberline, Texas but I think ‘Amarillo’ just sings better!
In my notes for ‘She Don’t Love You’ I wrote that it should be a duet with a female.
It could work. You know what’s wild? ‘Amarillo Rain’ I actually wrote that song a long time ago and I recorded a version of it with a girl called Emily West who is on Capitol Records. My gosh she’s a singer. Wow. But the version I have right now in its current state could make my album. This is a recording from way back but it still sounds like me and her. It is kind of amazing how many recordings of mine have never been heard. I’ve had one album out and I’ve recorded about three.
Oh right.
I’m just waiting for someone to pull the trigger and release some more of this music. I am glad that we could put the ‘Work Tapes’ out. Side note – on ‘Amarillo Rain’ the girl singing on that is Amy who I wrote with because that is like the very first recording and the moment that we wrote it. We didn’t even know what it was yet.
Alright. When you play you sense things, here’s three words for you : Little Big Town.
I love them. They sing on ‘Country Side of Heaven’ on this album and back when it was just me and a guitar I got signed up to open for them and I drove around in my truck for the first couple of weekends and they were like “Eric, are you driving in your truck to all these gigs?” I replied “Yeah it’s great I’m getting to see the country.” They said “We have like eight open bunks in our buses so come hang out.” I ended up on the bus hanging out with them. They are like family and such good people.
You have played several festivals in the UK but could you please tell us how your appearance in Hyde Park with Eric Clapton came about?
The appearance in Hyde Park was a miracle. So this is crazy – before you came in there was actually a song from Clapton’s first unplugged album being played. The first song I ever learnt how to play was ‘Tears In Heaven’ from that album. I always say I wish he hadn’t written that song because of what it is about but it is such a beautiful song. So the fact that… and I’d never gotten to see Clapton play. The problem we have as musicians we are always playing shows as opposed to going to see them.
Dare I tell you Eric that I was at the final Cream concert at The Royal Albert Hall with Taste and Rory Gallagher and Yes. Dave Crosby was backstage.
Wow. What year was that?
1968. I had to eat beans on toast for a week to buy a ticket.
That was money well spent. Not it is really amazing being on the bill and it started with a military show in Abu Dhabi and I couldn’t believe that we got to open for Clapton, Santana, Gary Clark Jr, Steve Winwood it was amazing. I couldn’t believe and I was pumped that we were not only able to see these guys play but we were going to play also.
When you play live do you have any favoured stage guitars?
Yeah I mean my go to is a J200 Gibson and a J45 Gibson and they’ve just been really good for me. For the rockers we do the J45 more and if we have more finger-picking we will us the J200 or things like that. I have guitars but for an acoustic guitar player I don’t have a ton. I kinda like building stuff so I kind of go I need this tool and then use that. I’ve got other guitars that I’ve written on and I have this old Alvarez that I bought way back when I moved to Tennessee and I’ve written a bunch of songs on it and I’m grateful I get to play Gibsons. But if it sounds good I dig it and I don’t care how expensive or cheap it was, what names on it. If it sounds good play it.
Can you tell us about when you first played in the UK?
The first time I got to come over was for the CMA Songwriters Series and I got to meet a bunch of the people who organise C2C Festival and that is a festival I really want to be involved with.
I tell you one of our bands to look out for The Wandering Hearts – two girls and one guy all lead vocalists and they do Americana type of material.
The Wandering Hearts – I need to hear them. I love the name.
Who would you like to do a song with?
I can’t say. It depends on the day – sitting here now I would love to do something with Clapton. Then you go when we go to Ireland where are Bono, The Edge at! All these people don’t’ need any help though!
Your producer Marshall Altman – he gets quite a 3-D sound doesn’t he by packing stuff in behind your voice?
I would go over there every night and we would just tinker and find sounds. On ‘Song About A Girl’ I said to the drummer “Play something weird” so he played something and then we put a filter on it and that is what happened there and then. We originally had a harmonica microphone going through an old amp and I was originally gonna play something on harmonica and I just started singing the melody and that is what ended up on the record. Marshall was great to work with and with our craziness together it sounds pretty darn good.
The consistent thing about the record is your voice but you don’t quite know where the instrumentation is going as each song starts.
Yeah. That’s what I love about it. The musician in me wants to entertain everybody and the marketing side will confuse people sometimes who ask “What do you do?” and I go “I entertain you is what I do and I give you a great song every time”.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for listening to my material!
Pete Sargeant and Glenn Sargeant
(Many thanks to Steve E, Ian and Jo Ashbridge and of course Eric)
Feature Image and Photos of Eric Paslay: Supplied By Artist
Additional Photography: Stock Photography
Eric Paslay’s self titled album is out now.
You can read our revieew of Eric Paslay’s self-titled album here: http://bit.ly/2J2knHe
For more information visit his official website here: http://bit.ly/2MBAFJC
In addition, Eric will embark on a September 2019 UK/Ireland Tour with special guests Thompson Square on select dates as well as an appearance at The Long Road Festival 2019. The tour will visit the following venues:
Friday 6th September 2019 – (With Special Guests Thompson Square), The Academy, Dublin, Ireland http://bit.ly/2ofGvIt
Saturday 7th September 2019 – Rhinestone County Stage at The Long Road Festival 2019, Stanford Hall, Lutterworth, United Kingdom http://bit.ly/2OOt5gY
Tuesday 10th September 2019 – (With Special Guests Thompson Square), Oran Mor, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom http://bit.ly/1PNNnib
Wednesday 11th September 2019 – (With Special Guests Thompson Square), Band On The Wall, Manchester, United Kingdom http://bit.ly/2kbnIJK
Thursday 12th September 2019 – (With Special Guests Thompson Square), Bush Hall, London, United Kingdom http://bit.ly/2Mg0e6r
