Paul Burch

Paul Burch is an American singer, songwriter, producer, and recording engineer. Though he was a member of the Nashville-based alt-country band Lambchop from 1997 to 2005, multi-instrumentalist Burch has forged a solo career as an old-school country artist whose sound deliberately evokes the vintage honky tonk era in Nashville and the rockabilly of Sam Phillips' Sun Studios in Memphis. In addition to his own recordings, Burch has worked on dozens of dates with everyone from Bobby Bare and Charlie Louvin to the Waco Brothers, Laura Cantrell, and Richard Bennett. Beginning with Pan American Flash in 1996, Burch began to craft a warm, immediate sound based on live studio recording. After 2000's quintessential Blue Notes and 2003's Fool for Love, he developed a reputation as a savvy songwriter and producer. Beginning with 2006's East to West, he started working with proto rockabilly and early country rock. In 2011, he released the widely celebrated Words of Love: Songs of Buddy Holly. Burch & the WPA Ballclub issued Trovatore: The Lives of Eugene Walter in 2018. Born and raised in rural Maryland and Virginia, Paul Burch enjoyed the music scene of 1970s Washington, D.C., with his family taking him to see such big names as Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, and John Prine. An occasional member of Lambchop, the Nashville-based singer/songwriter made his solo debut in 1998 with Pan-American Flash. Wire to Wire followed later that same year, and Blue Notes was released in mid-2000. The following year, Last of My Kind, inspired by Tony Earley's novel Jim the Boy, arrived. He released the album East to West in 2006; recorded in British Grove Studios in London, as well as in Nashville, the record featured Mark Knopfler and Ralph Stanley. In 2009, Burch & the WPA Ballclub (Jim Gray, Fats Kaplin, Dennis Crouch, Jen Gunderman, and Marty Lynds) issued Still Your Man, an all-new collection of songs recorded in a converted warehouse on the outskirts of Nashville's Music Row. Released in 2011, the tribute album Words of Love: Songs of Buddy Holly was recorded live in the studio, employing a minimalist's arsenal of upright bass, drums, and guitar peppered with the occasional blast of saxophone and accordion. It was followed in 2012 by Great Chicago Fire, a collaboration with the Waco Brothers. In November 2013, Burch & the WPA Ballclub released Fevers, a selection of tunes informed by rockabilly, hard country swing, and honky tonk. The album was co-produced by the artist with multi-instrumentalist Fats Kaplin, with guest vocalist Kelly Hogan lending a hand. In 2016, Burch released Meridian Rising, "an imagined musical autobiography" of the country legend Jimmie Rodgers. He neither followed the conventions of a traditional tribute album nor the contours of a biographical outing. Free of historical trappings, Burch dreamed up musical scenarios for Rodgers that didn't necessarily adhere to written history, and tipped a hat to Rodgers' jazz and blues contemporaries. Three years later, Burch issued Light Sensitive. In addition to the erstwhile WPA Ballclub, his cast of collaborators included Robyn Hitchcock, Luther Dickinson, Amy Rigby, and Aaron Lee Tasjan. Its contents blurred boundaries between the roots genres of rockabilly, blues, balladry, and atmospheric sounds inspired by various geographic locales from the American South.
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