New York, NY (Top40 Charts/ Shore Fire Media) Paul Burch, Nashville's honky tonk auteur and a writer of unmistakably modern but instantly classic songs, announces his new album, Fevers, coming this fall via Plowboy Records. Backed by his redoubtable band, the WPA Ballclub, Burch's 9th album Fevers reveals the side of Burch most often heard on stage - intense, unbridled, and full of bravado. Long a proponent of live, analog recording, Burch captures the sound of discovery - of performance over perfection-- with his forthcoming full-length. Fevers is a riveting and haunting mix of honky tonk, stringband blues, and rock and roll grooves that defies easy categories. That's no surprise since Burch is a category unto himself.
Critics have praised Burch's albums as "music that sounds thoroughly modern but completely unlike contemporary country" (USA Today) and Entertainment Weekly has called him "a modern day Jimmie Rodgers." The UK's Uncut Magazine has awarded each of Burch's past three albums a five star rating saying: "No one makes records like this anymore."
Fevers catches Burch's mellifluous voice and the rolling swing of the WPA Ballclub while the iron is still hot. "I tried to hold onto the fervor that first drove me to write the song in these performances," says Burch. "My songs always come to me in a fever. But this time I let them run a bit wild without a thought as to what kind of album I'd end up with."
Fevers ranges from lyrical ballads like Melancholy Baby—which combines harmonium and violin into an unearthly string section—to a startling reimagining of the folk classic Cluck Old Hen, which conjures a sandstorm howl of chanting feedback with the very same instruments.
Multi-instrumentalist and long-time collaborator Fats Kaplin (founding member of both the WPA Ballclub and Jack White's Buzzards) co-produced the album with Burch himself. "Fats shares my love of recording live as a group and performing without a set list," says Burch. "Knowing records by Charlie Patton and Jimmie Rodgers as kids shaped the way we listen and perform." In many ways, Fevers represents a summation of Burch's exploration of the American groove: "I love country and the blues and I'm finding a way to make my own rock and roll."
For Fevers, Burch arranged the band around each song's featured instrument and taped performances just as the rehearsal was coming together. "The focus was on connecting to the tune and making a recording that's between a live performance and a studio record. Fevers is a literal record of a band and a songwriter discovering music and hearing it bloom."
Burch describes Fevers as the sound of a writer in a state of discovery. "Typically no one likes to admit that you're in a state of transition or development, but I'd rather the audience be there to participate in it," says Burch. "Fevers is right on, but not 'correct' by the standards most people are making records today. Even though I wrote most of Fevers' songs, I'm not sure what to call them. The WPA Ballclub is my instrument and I mix and match musicians to the song."
Burch's love for seeking new and unusual combinations is a lifelong passion. Born in Washington, D.C. the son of a painter, Burch's childhood centered around the Workshop, an artist collective overseen by master printmaker Lou Stovall.
"Lou's Workshop was a playground both for me and his artists. Lou encouraged different disciplines to work together. They were my inspiration for the WPA Ballclub." Stovall's close friendship with jazz pianist Les McCaan provided Burch his first musical teacher. "We rented a farm house that belonged to 50's TV star Arthur Godfrey. Les would come out to play piano and talk about how instruments can blend together to paint a picture. Lou Stovall did something similar with his silkscreen prints and with color combinations that sharpened or distorted the image."
Fevers shows that behind Burch's ever-sharpening wit and beguiling lyricism is a keen desire to connect. The harmonies of
Kelly Hogan, along with Jen Gunderman and Kristi Rose, provide both sweetness and dissent to Fevers' tracks, which shift between the clattering, vibrato-heavy Couldn't Get A Witness, the pounding Rhodes piano groove of Breaking In A
Brand New Heartache, to the deep blues of Ocean of Tears--originally by Kay Star and Tennessee Ernie Ford---sung by Burch and Hogan literally cheek to cheek.
"Songs like Ocean of
Tears go back to my days singing in the honky tonks downtown when I first came to Nashville and formed the WPA," recalls Burch. "By day, I'd knock on the doors of musicians who played on the great country records. At night, I'd set up at Tootsies with the WPA on a plywood stage with a single mic in a back room that had no roof, singing songs up to the stars."
Fans and critics quickly took note of the scene, which Burch chronicles in Fevers' Saturday Night Jamboree, featuring Chris Scruggs (grandson of Earl Scruggs) on fiddle, for an effortlessly swinging track that sounds like a Saturday night.
Burch was first singled out when his 1996 debut, Pan American Flash, was named Amazon.com's #5 Best Country Albums of the 90s and was described by Billboard's Chet Flippo as "extraordinary…establishing Burch as a leader in marrying country's roots tradition with a modern sensibility."
But Burch has never referred to himself as a country singer ("Charlie Louvin said I am but I'm not so sure") and his previous albums have landed on "best of" pop, rock and country lists in the US and UK. Burch's musical appeal transcends genres and generations as evidenced by collaborations with Mark Knopfler, Vic Chesnutt, Ralph Stanley, Candi Staton, Ryan Adams, Lambchop, Exene Cervenka of X, and the Waco Brothers for the album Great
Chicago Fire in 2012.
Though Fevers will make new fans and excite longtime listeners, it also neatly fits into Burch's oeuvre, an ongoing exploration into how American music is constantly reshaping itself. "I had no idea artists in Nashville weren't also writers, producers, arrangers, and bandleaders for their own work," says Burch. "I took a different path—and sometimes I was an outsider. But it's paid off I think. I'm free to take chances. I'm always looking for something that can expand my writing voice and scares the wits out of me."
As a writer and an interpreter, Burch gravitates towards endeavors that can push his work into unknown territory. He's composed music for novels (Last of My Kind based on Tony Earley's Jim the Boy), served as a film consultant (PBS' The Appalachians), and in
September will appear on Hip Hop for Public Health's Songs for a Healthier America, an innovative collaboration between musicians and public health advocates supported by Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign. Burch also received a GRAMMY nomination for his contribution to the comeback album for Charlie Louvin (Charlie Louvin). And Burch's tribute to
Buddy Holly, Words of Love, led to a friendship and a new fan in Holly's widow,
Maria Elena. "Words of Love is a beautiful album," said
Maria Elena. "He has everything
Buddy wanted to hear in an artist--his own style and his own sound."
David Olney's Predicting the Past, produced by Burch and recorded with members of the WPA Ballclub, is due out in 2014.
Fevers continues Burch and the WPA Ballclub's efforts to bring a revolution of sorts to their sound—sonically and lyrically—that began with Still Your Man and the opening of Burch's analog studio, Pan American Sound.
Fevers includes 10 Burch compositions along with a combustible reading of I'm Going to Memphis, by
Memphis Slim, first heard on the Alan Lomax album, Blues In the Mississippi Night, once again connecting Burch to the deep and tangled roots that drive his sound.
Peter Guralnick, author of biographies on
Elvis Presley (Last
Train to
Memphis & Careless Love) and
Sam Cooke (Dream Boogie) says: "I'm a Paul Burch fan. How could I not be? His music never fails to achieve its purpose, what Sun Records founder Sam Phillips has deemed the unequivocal purpose of every kind of music: to lift up, to deepen, to intensify the spirit of audience and musicians alike."
Look for Fevers on vinyl and CD November 5, 2013 on Plowboy Records.
