Advice to the Graduate
Though often tagged as retro, Paul Burch’s latest goes forward in time
by Noel Murray
The most noticeable thing about Paul Burch’s East to West is that, for once, a Burch album doesn’t sound like it fell through a hole in time. Burch’s voice will always be delightfully archaic, and he’s not about to stop gravitating toward songs that roll through the folk music tradition, picking up phrases that repeat until they stick. But unlike his early retro-minded releases, East to West sounds like it was recorded in 2006. Or at least 1986.
Burch has always resisted the retro tag, though he admits he thought about his sound more for this record. His first course of action was to get rid of the steel guitars. “I was actually a little sick of steel guitars,” Burch says. “I had no idea how seriously people take the sound of a steel guitar, and what that means to a record. To me, it’s just a musical sound. I admit it’s become a cliché, and people can spray steel guitar all over a record and call it country. But my attitude has always been influenced by Paul Niehaus’ playing. Because when we started, he didn’t have great technical skill, just fantastic emotional skill. And we both loved the blues. We were coming at it from the Muddy Waters style. Very deep and very dark. But for these songs, it never occurred to me to use steel guitar, just like it never occurred to me to not use it on my previous records.”
The result is an album that combines Burch’s hallmark intimacy with a streak of rowdiness. It manifests in songs like “I Will Wait for You,” a roadhouse rattler at living-room scale. Burch’s impressionistic storytelling comes through in “December Sparklers,” a mod-country number sprinkled with visions of fireworks, and “Wander,” a misty waltz as personal as a dream. But while East to West has a lot of grit, it’s also as swinging and upbeat as one of its standouts, “When I’m in Love,” which is graced by a guitar solo that sounds like arrows arcing through hoops.
The sound of East to West was midwifed by Dire Straits’ own Mark Knopfler. It’s a long way from where Burch began, when he had to track down the few Nashville musicians who shared his musical obsessions. “I was really fortunate to come along when I did, because I didn’t really know much, and Nashville was such a different place 10 years ago. No one was listening or even cared about traditional country music, so I never felt threatened by the business. I just sort of went about doing my thing, and it allowed me to get better in increments.”
As Burch gets better, he remains discontent. “I still never think of myself as a recording artist,” he says. “I take what I do seriously, but every year when things get better, they get better in a really subtle way…. But what makes it fun for me is that I’m not pressured by anything other than trying to make a better record each time. The expectations are really just my own. I’ve never had the pressure of, ‘If you don’t make it with this record, everything is gone, you’ll have to start from scratch.’ That’s a terrible way to live your life.”
Burch also seems entirely unaffected by his successes, like when he admits that he didn’t see the film A History of Violence (which uses his “Life of a Fool” over the opening credits) until about a month ago. “I watch it,” he says, “And it just seems out of place, like I’ve somehow stuck my music on there myself. I still think of what I do as very homemade, because I still have to sweat every session. How am I going to afford this? How am I going to make another record? A lot of songwriters have talked about a song flying away after a certain point. It could be a year, a month, when the song is ‘hot,’ and you sort of lose track of it. In my own small way, that’s kind of what it feels like, like my song’s gone off to college or something.”
Some of East to West’s songs could easily fly away from Burch someday, like “Daddy Rhythm Guitar,” which lays charmingly personal lyrics over a walking beat that nods to Johnny Cash’s “Tennessee Flat-Top Box.” Elsewhere, there is “John Peel,” based on the true story of an afternoon Burch spent with the late British DJ, and a different kind of real-life UK tale, “Last Dream of Will Keane,” about the notorious Irish criminal Liam Keane, whom the Dublin courts have had trouble putting away.
Burch says the song is ultimately about frustration, and in some ways, so is the record. “The whole record is really about the dividing line we’re all on,” Burch says. “Most of the songs are about characters who find themselves at a part of their life where they realize that the decisions they make could have a big effect on how their lives play out. When you’re younger, you don’t really worry about that so much. There’s always a back of someone’s car you can sleep in. This is more—I hate to say it—an adult record, where the decisions you make, you might not bounce back from.”
From the album’s opening song, that theme is apparent. “Montreal” rumbles like a train, and turns the title city into an emblem: the place where something so vivid happened that now even the name conjures memories. The album title refers to Burch’s recent move from East to West Nashville, but it’s also about this sense of transition, and about being haunted by the choices of the past. As Burch explains, “The record is about ambivalence, but not quite like Hamlet. The songs are from many views, but they’re all about how to keep living, even when making drastic moves. With awareness comes an opportunity. Maybe spirituality of some kind. Not everyone seizes it. Some winds chill. Some winds cool.”
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