Elwood’s Interviews with Paul Thorn

Read the interview here:

ELWOOD
Your last album was “Pimps and Preachers.” And it was based your experiences with your father and your uncle. Are they still alive?

THORN
Yeah, my father’s still a minister. He’s getting old, he’s about to retire I think from being a minister and his brother, my uncle, was a pimp actually in San Francisco back in the day. As a child those two men were my mentors and I really am glad they were. Because the advice I got from my father, the preacher, and my uncle, the pimp, has really served me well as I went out into the broader world and has given me ability to cope with certain things that I wouldn’t have had had I just seen one side of the coin. There’s darkness and light in the world and pimps and preachers pretty much spelled that out real clear.

ELWOOD
Paul on your new album you do a series of “covers” – songs written by others. A favorite is “What The Hell Is Going On,” An Elvin Bishop Song. Do you remember the first time you heard Elvin’s music?

THORN
When I was a kid they had Wolfman Jack’s Midnight Special. It used to come on at midnight and sometimes I would stay up, I was just a kid, and I remember I was sitting there eating a bowl of Fruitloops and I heard him singing “I’m Strutting My Stuff” y’all in one of his songs. And there was a kid eating cereal you know, its really strange that years later in my life that I would actually know that person and not only that he would have become a friend and play guitar on my record. I mean its like sometimes I feel like the Forrest Gump of music cause I’ve just stumbled on all these wonderful things by chance ya know?

ELWOOD
And then what about Delbert, how were you made aware of Delbert McClinton?

THORN
Well you know I’ve always been a Delbert McClinton fan growing up. And one day I was exercising in a fitness facility, I have a membership in Tupelo where I live and my cell phone rings and to make a long story short it was Delbert McClinton. He said, “Hey I know you don’t know me, I’m Delbert McClinton,” he said “But I heard your CD, I really liked it, I’m a fan,” He said, “I would like for you to come and play on my Blues Cruise.” And so needless to say I was pleasantly shocked and I’ve started playing on Delbert’s Blues Cruise where he invites all of his friends to come up and perform for a week. And we became friends and I think I’ve been on the cruise like seven times now and he actually sang on my new record as well. It was like a lot of really special things happened on this What the Hell is Going On record, having Delbert on it, having Elvin. They’re living icons and I can’t think of any people I’d rather had than them. It was awesome.

ELWOOD
You gotta tell me the story about Bull Mountain Bridge. What a great song.

THORN
Thanks, well you know I’m 48 years old. And when I started really writing songs and I had somebody to teach me how to write, that person was Billy Maddox who I’ve been writing for with for years. But the gentleman who taught Billy how to write, the gentleman who schooled my mentor was Wild Bill Emerson who wrote Bull Mountain Bridge, He’s still alive, by the way, but he’s just an old school country songwriter who back in the day wrote songs for George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Hank Williams, Jr. I mean he was a very successful artist but Bull Mountain Bridge was one of his more obscure songs that nobody ever recorded. Why I don’t know, ‘cause it’s an awesome song. It’s a story. It tells a story about this drug dealer who gets murdered by somebody who’s high up in the Klu Klux Klan because he caught him sleeping with his woman. And its just the way he tells the story its really something special and it’ll give everybody that listens to the record an idea of where my style of songwriting originated. It actually came from Wild Bill Emerson and that’s why I sang the song.

ELWOOD
When you say “story song,” what does that mean a story song?

THORN
Well like even though I’m not a country artist the style in which I write is like country songs where there’s a beginning, there’s a middle, and an end. And its just a little three minute story. And that’s mostly what I write. They’re just like little mini stories that I try, it’s like reading a book in three minutes, that’s how I try to do it. And I try to get it from stuff that really happens in my life ya know. Yeah there’s lots of songs like that, probably my favorite story song is Sunday Morning Coming Down which was written by Kris Kristofferson and sang by Johnny Cash, you should check it out. It’s a real simple song about a guy that’s lonely on a Sunday morning and he’s got a hangover from being drunk the night before. Its real simple but it speaks to a whole bunch of people on Sunday morning.

ELWOOD
And are you still writing songs? I mean I assume you are.

THORN
Yeah I’m putting songs together, you know. Time will sneak up on you. And you’ll be needing to put another record out so yeah I’m writing some stuff and I feel pretty good about it and I don’t really consider myself a straight up blues artist but I’ve been I’m thankful I’ve been accepted into the blues world. I’ve been getting a lot of really great festivals I’ve played the King Biscuit two or three times and other festivals. One thing I’ve learned, is the blues fans are really music fans and if you’re good at what you do and you entertain those people they’ll like it, its that simple.