Paul Cauthen is a big, imposing figure as he ambles towards me, wearing beach shorts and flip flops, though he retains his rock’n’roll credentials with dark shades and the black, open crown hat that seems a permanent fixture on his head.
He is only a few minutes late for the interview which comes the morning after he has hosted and performed at the Big Velvet (his nickname) Revue the night before at The Basement East, only a few doors down from where we are now standing in the swanky foyer of the newly-built Field Jones Hotel in Main Street, East Nashville. The gig – now an annual event at AmericanaFest – finished around 2 a.m. and I’ve no idea how long the after party lasted.
But he is very relaxed and I’m relieved.
And over the course of the next 40 minutes or so, he is considered, articulate and talks easily about the making of his current, excellent album, Room 41, during, and despite, a severe spell of self-destructive, personal problems, how a model broke his nose in a video film shoot, and why one of his new songs would never likely be performed at the Grand Old Opry. It was a lively, smooth, flowing conversation.
Cauthen, previously leader of roots outfit Sons Of Fathers, shifted his focus to his solo career with the release of My Gospel in 2016. This was a blast of Texas country, Memphis soul and gospel that earned him the reputation of an emerging outlaw artist.
His vocals certainly have a Johnny Cash quality to them and, while his musical style remains true to its origins in many aspects, it also incorporates funk, gospel and electro, giving it a unique panache, quite unlike anything else in the market. It’s not commercially driven, radio friendly garbage, quite the opposite.
It seems the industry is not quite sure where to pigeon hole him but it is finding him too difficult to ignore, given the dynamic he’s creating and his quality output.
Before discussing Room 41, I was interested to get the story behind the Big Velvet Revue that had packed out The Basement East.
“It’s a gathering of all my favourite artists at the time, that I’m hoping will be around to do something with me at AmericanaFest and SXSW in Austin,” he says. “I just call them all up when they’re in town for the festivals and it usually works out. This is our third year. The first year was such a success that I think, man, I’m here to stay. We had a friend from our agency who has a good hook up there at The Basement East.
“We told him that at SXSW they sold $70,000 dollars’ worth of alcohol in six hours at our show, one of the biggest feats of Wessex Street in Austin (laughs) So, everybody just said ‘yes, please come’.’’
ROOM 41 could be described as a triumph over tragedy. The song titles themselves speak of Cauthen’s state of mind at the time after a period of personal trauma, self-afflicted in many ways by burning the candle at both ends and not helped by some relationship breakdowns.
The song Cocaine Country Dancing mirrors a person in free fall, Can’t Be Alone and Angel mourn failed relationships and the car crash left behind. Some of those songs evolved from mammoth drinking sessions, staying up and writing from 4am until midday before crashing out and repeating the same cycle over a period of weeks. The track Slow Down must have been a reminder to him that things couldn’t continue at such a pace and possibly proved a welcome turning point for him.
“That’s exactly what that’s songs about, just slow down, it’s four in the morning again,” he agrees. “I was in that room for the whole time. Lay Me Down, the last song on the album, I had for about eight years, but the rest, came out of that room. It was a rough time. I just tried to dig myself out through my music, happiness came with my songs. It was like therapy, man, then I was like going crazy. I was writing fifteen to twenty songs a week and throwing them to my producer and he was saying ‘we like this, we don’t like this and we do like that one’. I was just trying to forget about genre and push beyond all that and bring in the things I love about music. Rhythm and blues, jazz and fun, bring them all into one record. We wanted the sound thumpier and sounding cool.’’
Even more experimental than its predecessor, MY GOSPEL, the new album is quite unlike anything in country or Americana at present. An example is the thumping Freak, which lands heartily somewhere between country soul and hip hop. The autobiographical Big Velvet, with its Prince-like rhythm, is amply decorated by Cauthen’s belting yet soulful vocals. The music is quite unique, certainly not market driven at the behest of some record company guru or aimed at a particular listenership.
“No, I don’t care. I’m over caring. I’m done caring about targeting anyone. I want them to come to my music not me go to their music,” he states. “Well, you know at one point I had four different producers working with me. One from Def Jam records who makes hip hop records, he did all the modulation and auxiliaries.
“I had Niles City Sound producer Austin Jenkins and then I got Beau Bridge, my main producer who’s done all my records, and Matt Pence my drummer, who mixed the whole thing and helped me produce it at Echo Lab in Argyle Texas.
“We let all the cooks add their best recipes and flavour to it and the ego left the room. We just let everybody have an open canvas to be able to paint on, instead of me saying this is the way I want it painted and these are the colours. Everybody had their own brushes and paint and all of a sudden, we’ve got something that didn’t sound like anything else. I thought it ended up pretty cohesive even if I did think at one stage ‘holy shit what am I doing? What is this? Dr. Dre meets Waylon Jennings (laughs). Finally, we got to this point where I’m really digging this new sound.’’
Cocaine Country Dancing is a funked up, dark and frenzied adventure - and possibly the most striking track on the album. Its accompanying video is equally dazzling - check it out on You Tube - gloriously over the top, very much in keeping with the groove on the track. Its making proved eventful, too.
“A good friend of mine I’ve been trying to work with for years, Tim Ketchersid, is working out in Los Angeles. We finally got together and we got a budget good enough to get a guy like him and a crew like that. At night we smoked up, drank some and hung out until three or four in the morning and Tim and I wrote this whole idea of this mechanical bull. The idea was that the mechanical bull was actually someone’s vice, and everybody was getting thrown off it. The bull’s name was eightball. That’s what you call a measurement of cocaine. Basically, you ride on something that’s crazy and you’re gonna get thrown off. And the electric bull operator was dreaming of being this electric cowboy, an incredible bull riding baddass. We just went with this crazy story. This guy, having vices, just getting thrown in the gutter. And even someone whose living in the gutter and making wrong decisions, even then they have dreams, that’s what that whole thing is.
“He dreamt of being the Big Velvet, a persona that’s bigger than him. We just leaned into that. It was fun. We had beautiful models from Los Angeles come in, all three of us got on the bull at one time and I had all these glass mirrors all over me, and on my boots. The bull came up and a model’s knee hits me in the nose, breaks my nose and my heels from the glass mirrors on my boots cut the two models. (Laughs) It was a wreck, a tragedy that just went down in the middle of our set that day. Beautiful models bleeding and me with a broken nose. Don’t hop on a mechanical bull folks, there’s no reason.’’
Only two weeks previously I had received an album by an artist named Elaina Kay for review. Cauthen produced it and this was obviously something I intended to raise. Little was I to know that he had been in a relationship with her and some of the material on ROOM 41 was most probably determined by its failure. The interview could very well have ended there and then, following on from what could have been perceived as a loaded and painful reference. But he was happy to respond calmly and with compassion.
“’Elaina had become my girlfriend and we were dating there for a minute. She had so many great songs, and really rose to the occasion and got that done. I have nothing but goodwill for her and her career. When you’re producing or helping out, you come across people that have got talent but don’t know how to write, finish songs and record them. I see someone like me in them when I was young and I want to boost their timeline and learn things earlier, teach them some of the things I’ve learned, often by my mistakes. Help them grow as an artist. Like a flower, very delicate, too much sun and you die, too much water the same thing. You have to be super delicate with an artist. This business doesn’t pay well, so I gotta keep working, hustling, performing, hosting, producing. I’m always trying to keep irons in the fire.’’
In the run-up to the making of ROOM 41, Cauthen brought out a seven-track, mini album, HAVE MERCY. That was in 2018 and it brought him industry accolades with comparisons to Nelson, Kristofferson and Jennings ringing out from all quarters. With his professional career on the ascendancy it might have been expected that he would follow a similar path to both Sturgill Simpson and Chris Stapleton and win across-the-board industry recognition, and the commercial success that follows.
Unfortunately, this coincided with a crisis point in his life. He eventually found himself holed up in a room at the Belmont Hotel in Dallas where he lived out of a suitcase for the best part of two years. The tempestuous episode could only deliver one or two outcomes and fortunately for Cauthen and, with the support of a number of collaborators, it proved to be the catalyst for the deeply personal and powerful album that is, ROOM 41.
In the meantime, it’s back to work with a showcase lined up for that evening at The Anchor, an in-store performance at Grimey’s Record Store on Saturday afternoon and an appearance, his sixth, at The Grand Old Opry on Saturday night. I doubt if he’ll get to perform Cocaine Country Dancing on that hallowed stage.
“’I give them a list of songs and they select three, I’ll do one broken down acoustic. They probably won’t let me do Cocaine Country dancing. It’s not like it’s me saying ‘go do cocaine,’ more like, let yourself go and dance. It’s just a song. I play backed by their musicians at The Opry, but I’m bringing two of my guys this time to help as I want to get some of my players up there. The rest of the band are mighty pissed about that. Following on from that it’s the West Coast, Mid-West then East Coast with Randy Houser all over the whole Unites States with five of us on stage, six including me.”
Before saying our goodbyes I’m curious to hear his take on religion given the numerous references across all his work and his role as a preacher. His response is brief but wholehearted:
“Spirituality is important to me. Religion is separation in my opinion. My ministry is in a bar playing to people getting pissed drunk.’’
En route to the hotel, I did wonder seriously whether an early morning call on Cauthen would find him in engaging form (given his late night/early morning work), or if he would turn up at all, despite music industry people assurances that he’d be there.
I had shared my concerns with my pal, Mike Ritchie, the presenter of the Mike Ritchie Show on Celtic Music Radio from Glasgow every Sunday afternoon, who accompanied me. Mike is part of our travelling entourage that enjoys AmericanaFest each year and his presence was twofold. An experienced journalist in a previous life, I invited him along to provide moral support if the interview was heading off the rails and, secondly, to join me for breakfast in the event of a ‘no show.’
Both Mike and I had the pleasure of meeting Cauthen when he performed at The Kilkenny Roots Festival a few years back. My introduction followed his solo performance at midday in The Pumphouse Bar, whereas Mike had enjoyed his company on a bus journey back to Dublin Airport at the end of the festival.
My worries disappeared the moment Cauthen caught sight of us. Making eye contact, he drew both hands from his shorts’ pockets, gunslinger style, and pointed each index finger in our direction with the greeting: “Glad to see two friendly faces.’’
Somehow, my feeling that things were going to work out just fine were spot-on.
Written by Declan Culliton Photograph by Anna Webber
Room 41 by Paul Cauthen on Velvet Rose/Lightning Rod Records is out now