Paul Cauthen Wednesday, February 26th All Ages | 8pm **Tickets on Sale
Friday, January 17th at 10am** Making Room 41 nearly killed Paul
Cauthen. Ironically enough, it’s also the very thing that saved him.
“Finishing this record was one of the craziest experiences I’ve
ever been a part of,” reflects Cauthen, the larger-than-life Texas
troubadour nicknamed Big Velvet for his impossibly smooth, baritone
voice. “I’m honestly glad it’s done because I don’t think
I’d survive if I had to do it all over again. No way.” Written
during a roughly two-year stint spent living out of a suitcase in
Dallas’ Belmont Hotel, Room 41 chronicles Cauthen’s white-knuckle
journey to the brink and back, a harrowing experience that landed him
in and out of the hospital as he careened between ecstasy and misery
more times than he could count. Cauthen has long been a pusher of
boundaries (musical and otherwise), and Room 41 is no exception, with
electrifying performances that blend old-school country and gritty
soul with 70’s funk and stirring gospel. His lyrics take on biblical
proportions as they tackle lust and envy, pride and despair,
destruction and redemption, but these songs are no parables. Cauthen
lived every single line of this record, and he’s survived to tell
the tale. “I’ve always been the kind of artist that can’t write
something unless I feel it and I mean it.” says Cauthen, “This
record is as real as it gets for me. I am these songs.” Cauthen
first earned his reputation as a fire-breathing truth-teller with the
acclaimed roots rock band Sons of Fathers, but it wasn’t until the
2016 release of his solo debut, My Gospel , that he truly tapped into
the full depth of his prodigious talents. Vice Noisey dubbed it “a
somber reminder of how lucky we are to be alive,” while Texas
Monthly raved that Cauthen “sound[s] like the Highwaymen all rolled
into one: he’s got Willie’s phrasing, Johnny’s haggard quiver,
Kristofferson’s knack for storytelling, and Waylon’s baritone.”
The album landed on a slew of Best Of lists at the year’s end and
earned festival appearances from Austin City Limits and Pickathon to
Stagecoach and Tumbleweed along with dates opening for Elle King,
Margo Price, Midland, Cody Jinks, Social Distortion and more. He
followed it up two years later with Have Mercy , an album that
prompted Rolling Stone to dub him “one of the most fascinating, and
eccentric, new voices in country music” and NPR’ s Ann Powers to
proclaim 2019 as “the year of Paul Cauthen.” As his professional
life reached new heights, though, Cauthen’s personal life hit new
lows, and he soon found himself drifting without a home. Checked in to
room 41 at the Belmont, he began escalating his self-destructive
tendencies, medicating heartbreak and anxiety with alcohol and drugs
as he ground himself into oblivion. “I’d drink like a fish all
night and stay up writing or recording from about 4am until noon,”
Cauthen explains. “Then I’d sleep away the rest of the day until
it was time to start over again. The only thing that kept me ticking
was the songs.” Cauthen’s routine may have left him with plenty to
write about, but it was taking a heavy toll on both his physical and
mental health. “The whole ‘ripping your heart of our chest and
pouring it into your art’ thing might be good for songwriting for a
little while,” says Cauthen, “but I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.
I worked myself up into such a frenzy that I couldn’t keep going on
without getting some real medical help.” Cauthen credits his
survival in no small part to his collaborators on the album, a wide
range of writers, musicians, and producers who rallied around him and
believed in his work enough to help him see it through. The production
credits alone read like a who’s who of modern Texas music, including
Niles City Sound (Leon Bridges, Nicole Atkins), Matt Pence (Jason
Isbell, Nikki Lane), and Beau Bedford and Jason Burt, Cauthen’s
longtime creative foils at Dallas’ Modern Electric studio. “Modern
Electric is always going to be my home,” says Cauthen, “but after
we started working on this album there, I felt like I hit a wall and
needed a change of scenery, so I brought the band with me over to Fort
Worth to work with Austin Jenkins and Josh Block and Chris Vivion at
Niles City. Nobody had brought the Dallas sound to Fort Worth like
that before, and it turned out to be a recipe for something really
special.” The mix of producers and recording environments helped
Cauthen walk the line between retro and modern, with bold, adventurous
arrangements informed by country tradition but completely untethered
from its strictures. The introduction of album opener “Holy Ghost
Fire” sounds more like Gnarls Barkley than Merle Haggard, and the
ultra-funky “Cocaine Country Dancing” flirts with Prince, but the
arrival of Cauthen’s unmistakable voice gives each song a singular
life of its own. As with much of the album, tracks like “Holy Ghost
Fire” and the “Cocaine Country Dancing” find themselves taking
good hard looks in the mirror, and while they’re not exactly
thrilled with what they see, the experiences are ultimately cathartic
ones. The sweeping “Prayed For Rain,” for instance, serves as a
reminder to be selfless in the face of our more egotistical instincts,
while the heartrending “Slow Down” is a plea to treat ourselves
with patience and kindness, and the R&B-influenced “Freak”
recognizes that, deep down, we all want and deserve the same things
out of life. “I wrote that song about my experience in the Smith
County Jail,” says Cauthen. “I met a lot of crazy characters
there, but everybody in this world deserves a chance. At the end of
the day, we’re all freaks, and we all just want to love and be
loved.” Cauthen’s never had a problem when it comes to loving
those around him, but learning to love himself has been a different
story altogether. He comes to terms with the person behind the persona
on “Big Velvet,” grapples with his faith on the rousing “Give
‘em Peace,” and channels Roy Orbison on the gorgeous “Can’t Be
Alone.” “I started writing that song on the piano in the lobby of
The Belmont at 4am,” says Cauthen. “I probably woke some guests
up, but at the time, I didn’t really care. I just didn’t think I
could take feeling alone like that any more.” In the end, writing
and recording Room 41 showed Cauthen that he wasn’t alone, and in
that sense, maybe these songs are parables after all. As richly
detailed and firmly rooted in Cauthen’s lived experiences as they
are, the stories here are universal, with the kind of deeply layered
meanings and insights that continue to reveal themselves slowly over
time. These days, Cauthen is out of the hotel, but he still carries
the lessons he learned in room 41 everywhere he goes, approaching life
with a newfound gratefulness and living in the moment with an
appreciation for the present that might have seemed impossible even
just a year ago. “I’m making a living with my music and paying the
bills,” says Cauthen. “I’ve already made it in my eyes. I’m
here. I’ve arrived.”
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27/02/2020 Last update