Saturday 24 February 2007
Paul Burch’s East to West was recorded live at British Grove Studios in London and in Nashville. With backing from the WPA Ballclub along with Grammy winners Mark Knopfler, Tim O’Brien, and a duet with Ralph Stanley, virtually every song was a first take, prompting O’Brien to shout “that’s music you can’t play wrong!”
Paul Burch was raised outside Washington DC in rural Virginia and Maryland.
“The D.C. music scene in the 70’s was fantastic. Any night of the week you could hear jazz, r&b, and bluegrass. My family took me to everything: John Prine, Gram Parsons with Emmylou; Linda Ronstadt and Les McCann used to come out to the farm we rented, Joe Boussard was on the radio playing Charlie Patton records. I saw John Fahey play in tiny coffee houses. It was magic.”
PB started as a drummer (”pots and pans, Sears toys to drum sets”) and then went to guitar and piano. As a teenager Burch moved to Mississippi and then Indiana where he graduated from Purdue University and formed his first band, Atomic Clock. He was a dj there for WCCR, interviewing blues greats like James Cotton, Lonnie Brooks, and Son Seals when they came to town. “We were on the circuit and those guys were very accessible, especially to me and my friends because we knew all their records.”
Burch arrived in Nashville in the early 90s and saw his first sessions with Owen Bradley. He soon began a residency at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, the old hangout to Opry performers. Soon the “Lower Broadway” scene took off as word spread about an edgy new take on honky tonk music.
“Honky Tonk music was the first time rural musicians tried to fuse personal experience with the craft of professional songwriting. The result was this brief period that produced a very poignant combination of fact & fiction, dark and light, knowingness and fear. Strangely, every musician I’ve ever met from all backgrounds at some point find themselves there. It sounds like a home that never was.”
PB’s debut Pan American Flash was voted in the top 5 country cd’s of the 90’s by Amazon.com. Billboard’s Chet Flippo called it, “extraordinary, establishing Burch as a leader in marrying country’s roots tradition with a modern sensibility.” Chet Atkins heard the album and phoned the Opry’s Midnight Jamboree to spread the word.
PB has since contributed to recordings by Candi Staton, Ryan Adams, Vic Chesnutt, Lambchop, Bobby Bare Sr., and Kate Rusby. Previous albums–Wire to Wire, Blue Notes, Fool For Love, and Last of My Kind - made multiple year-end “best of” lists including Village Voice, Washington Post, London Times, and Chicago Tribune. Burch served as music consultant to PBS’s “The Appalachians” and his songs have appeared in films by Walt Disney, HBO, BBC and recently David Croninberg’s “History of Violence.”
That’s the assessment of critic Peter Cooper of Nashville’s Tennessean newspaper about Last Train Home. And while roots-rock is the heart of LTH’s sound, don’t overlook the country, swing, bluegrass, blues, folk, mariachi, punk, pop, and Tin Pan Alley influences you’ll find if you lend this band an ear. What began as a part-time band in Washington D.C. back in 1997 has evolved an acclaimed full-time touring unit based out of Nashville.
In 2005, LTH performed on the CBS “Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,” and on the public radio show, “Mountain Stage,” and was named by the Tennessean as one of the finest live acts of the year: “Best Live Show of 2005: Tie between Neil Young at the Ryman and Last Train Home at the Family Wash.”