Q&A: (Paul Brill)

When compared to artists splattered across magazine covers or appearing in mainstream music videos, not very many people have heard of the musician Paul Brill. Recently named as my top new discovery of 2003, Brill is one of those songwriters who seemed to have appeared out of thin air and furnished enthusiastic listeners with the kind of music never lacking emotion.

Brill, 32, lives in his hometown of New York City and is what many would define as the quintessential autonomous artist as the founder of Scarlet Shame Records, an independent record label.

Brill's fascination with music first surfaced as a young kid. He comes from a breed of self-taught artists known for writing songs in their bedrooms on four-track recording devices.

As a young adult, Brill moved to Vermont, then to California, specifically Los Angeles and then San Francisco, before returning to New York. He released a solo record, "Halve the Light," in 2001, and released the 2003 LP and EP both entitled "Sisters."

The music of "Sisters" is best described as pop, country rock, although it's evident Brill's sonic tastes encompass numerous genres such as jazz, classical and world music. He recruited some very proficient players for the project, and incorporated string arrangements and horn lines with the standard instrumentation - drums, bass and guitar - of any average band.

Brill's lyrical prowess is wonderfully thought-provoking and the musical compositions beautifully complement his knack for songwriting.

He recorded the "Sisters" EP in four days in a studio in Portland, Ore., and followed the session with the "Sisters" LP, which is essentially a well-constructed interpretation of 12 songs he has played live over the past year.

Aside from the woodwind and brass sections, Brill also used the steel pedal guitar, a piano, an accordion and something called a Tibetan singing bowl.

The Beach Reporter recently sat down with Brill and talked to him about his new recording project, the songs on the "Sisters" LP and the cover art for it.

The Beach Reporter: How are the recording sessions for the new record going so far?

Ah, it's pretty out there. I'm kind of making some big departures and I'm doing a lot of it myself, incorporating a lot of samples and beats. You sometimes hit a wall and figure, "What are you doing? You've got to do something else." The last record I did was such a fast process just because we were doing all of it in the studio from start to finish. We were kind of approaching it as a representation of what our live show is about, so we kind of just played the songs straight ahead as we'd been doing them live. The songs I've written, I'm kind of deconstructing them and approaching them with different attitudes or different ideas, building different elements into them. I'm experimenting as I go along so it's not as rigid, I guess, which is good and bad because you can spend a million years doing this stuff. I'm doing a lot of editing at home, so I'm not worried about the studio costs. Usually you're going into the studio and you're paying your $50 an hour or whatever and all you want to do is finish, so this is good ... good and bad, not good for my sanity.

I understand you enlisted the talent of some members of the Duke Ellington Orchestra and the Tin Hat Trio. How did this collaboration develop?
It happened pretty organically. The Tin Hat Trio is just an amazing group. I met Rob Burger who is the extraordinare of the group. He plays tons of different types of organs and accordions. I met him through some friends, just asked him to play and he did. He was there in the studio for literally about an hour and a half, and just absolutely killed everything he did. It was all first takes. He's an extraordinary musician. The horn guys, again some friends, I knew the trumpet player James Zollar who's just ridiculous. He's one of the greatest living trumpet players. I actually know the trombone player, Stafford Hunter, as well. I asked them both and they really did me a favor. I also got another guy, Brad Leali, who played saxophone and clarinet. They knew it was a shoestring budget so they just volunteered their services. They totally hooked me up which is a real treat to have people of that caliber playing on the record.

As the founder of a record label, how does that work out being you are the founder but also a touring musician, too. How do you balance it all?

It's hard. The record label is not as big as I'm hoping it to be, so that doesn't take up too much time, but it does take up a lot of energy with each release. You've got to put packages together. Fortunately, I hooked up with a really good distribution company. In all honesty, the balancing of that and making money and everything else, it can get a little wearisome but I do have a nice little stable of interns who have volunteered along the way.

So are you actively looking for acts to sign to your label?

I am now. In the past it's mostly been my stuff and some friends, and I recently put out a children's album with this group that I work with called Little Kids Rock that was started by a friend of mine. It's a nonprofit organization that brings musical instruments and classes to disadvantaged kids. The effort teaches these kids to write their own music. The CD is of these kids' songs that they wrote and recorded, so I just put it out on the label. I'm now actively looking for about two or three new groups. I'm kind of picky when it comes to the right thing to get behind because it does take a lot of work.

I like the arrangement of 'Barefoot in the Snow' because of how the percussion drops in on the vocals, guitar and the shaker. It seems like a song that was first developed on the guitar and it kind of expanded from there. Is this what happened? Do you write most of your songs like this?

Yeah, that song was a demo when I first wrote it. It changed a little bit when I brought it to the band. I remember I was really into the demo when I did it. It turned out pretty close to the way we do it live except for the string arrangements. The producers of the record threw up an arrangement pretty much on the spot when we were recording it. They charted the strings, which is pretty basic stuff and I had this idea of a kind of rolling guitar. We actually got this cool 12-string Rickenbacher for the choruses. Most of the time I'll have a song I've written on guitar, track it and think about how I want to interpret it, but now I'm getting into starting from scratch without the guitar. Maybe I'll have a beat, or a rhythmic element or I'll twist it around and tweak everything. It ends up sounding a lot different than it did.

Lyrics like, 'Take all the swords, take all the wounding words and throw them on the fire, turn them into vaccines for all the wasted days. And someone left the light on in the shed. It's throwing amber shadows on the ivory linen hanging from the bed' are really wonderful. How do you come up with your stuff? Are you an avid reader?

I do, I read a ton, but, I don't know, I don't want to be pretentious and say like "I'm a poet" (laughs). It's pop music. I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world and I'm not the greatest singer in the world, but what I try to do is, I don't know how to say it without sounding egotistical, but I care a lot about lyrics, they mean a lot to me. Lou Barlow from Sebadoh once said, "There's not much more you can do..." I'm probably butchering what he said, but "There's not much more you can do than really give your fullest attention and care for the lyrics." Or something like that, and I totally agree. I try not to have too many throwaway words or anything. With that song, I had this image of an illuminating light coming from an outdoor shed. When I write songs I try to tell stories, but in little fragments or visions or little encapsulated moments. I'm experimenting more these days with songwriting, doing a little more of a narrative approach - direct storytelling as opposed to the more oblique stuff I've done in the past.

You have some recurring metaphors in your songs like the 'underground,' the 'hallway' and the 'highway.'

Yes, there are recurring themes in both records. I called the record "Sisters" because it's actually two albums I put out at the same time. I called both of them "Sisters" for obvious reason that there are two records, but it was more a play on the fact that the songs were largely about conflict, and women and conflict. For some reason, I just wrote a bunch of songs about women and characters about women in general and the conflicts they go through. Conflict is kind of the root of songwriting, writing in general, I guess, right?

The bass line to the song 'Begin at the End' is one that reminds me of a rhythm from Eastern Europe or something. You include a lot of different and unique instrumentation on the record whether it is the singing bowl, woodwind, tuba, cello and violin. How did you figure out you wanted all of these instruments on the album?

Yeah, the bass line is like an oompah and the singing bowl was a nice little discovery. I can't take credit for that one. One of the best parts of that record was I had like 15 people come in to play at different times which is really great. If I had my druthers, I'd have a gigantic orchestra playing with me at every show, but I'm afraid that can't happen for financial reasons. So it was really great having all these people come in. The new record will also sound big like "Sisters" (LP) but won't be quite as eclectic with as many guest musicians on it. It will be more centered on a nucleus of people doing crazier sounds.

What have you listened to over the years?

I listen to a lot of stuff. I started with regular rock music and then went through huge jazz and country periods, old-time stuff. I listen to a lot of Pakistani Kweli music, North African and Middle Eastern stuff, a lot of Islamic devotional music, and now and over the last few years, I've been really into a lot of electronic music and it's inspiring me. The goal now is to bring in these new sounds without completely surrendering and becoming something else. I want to stay true to my vision but it's also about change, too, at the same time. I'm at an interesting point right now where I'm a little bit out there and I'm not sure where this next album is ending up but it's pretty cool.

I love the song 'Blue Blanket.' I can't stop listening to it and I wanted to know whom that song is about?

It's kind of a conflation of different people and different ideas. I was never quite happy with the way that song came out. It's a personal thing. It's a song I did a lot live and it's really kind of a strong song. When we did it live, it stopped things because it was very spare. So it was hard for me to record it, I don't know why but people do seem to like it. It's kind of the song about having your moments when you're in the city where you're just kind of too loud and things are disturbing your well-being - too much concrete.

The cover art of the album, where did you find this picture?

It's a picture by a well-known photographer named Mary Ellen Mark. She is just amazing, she's incredible and I've actually been haunted by that photo for several years. I approached her people about using it on a different record, which was a project of an old band, and they pretty much rejected us by pricing us out of the market. When I started putting the "Sisters" records together with what the songs were about and the images that kept going through my head, I just kept going back to that photograph and it just seemed like the perfect thing. As luck would have it, I approached them and they were very generous and lowered the price significantly to a point where it was affordable. It never fails to get some sort of polar extreme response from everyone who sees it. People either absolutely hugely love it or are completely freaked out and won't even look at it. It's a picture of blind orphan girls in Russia. It has a timeless look to it. I'm pretty honored, actually, to have it as the record cover.