A New Grammy Category continued from AmericanMusicMaster.Com

Paul Thorn

A New Grammy Category
Scott Russell, Music & Entertainment Writer

If there were a category for the best you never knew about, I hereby nominate The Paul Thorn Band hands down.
Once you've heard Paul Thorn & his band, you'll wanna tell the world !!!!
Pimps & Preachers, Thorn conveys this theme through brief but epic vignettes – parables, almost, in the tradition of his father’s Biblical exegeses.“Love Scar” grew from a conversation Thorn had with a woman backstage at London’s Royal Albert Hall, shortly before he would open for Sting. He noticed that her shoulder bore a tattoo of an eye shedding a tear. When he asked what itmeant, her answer was sadder and deeper than he had expected.

“She told me about how she met a handsome guy and they had some drinks together,” Thorn recalls. “She had a one-night stand with him and got so distracted by his charm that she went out and got this tattoo because of his opening line when he had started to hit on her: ‘If I could be a tear rolling down

your cheek and die on your lips, my life would be complete.’ Unfortunately, that tattoo is with her forever, even though he was gone the next day.”

Each track recounts its own story while clarifying and reinforcing Thorn’s broader vision. The comic yet unsettlingly candid account of romantic opportunity lost too soon on “Nona Lisa,” the immeasurable intensity of love captured in the artfully offhand lyrics of “That’s Life” (taken entirely from words spoken to Thorn by his mother), the assurances extended to all who suffer through uncertain times in “Better Days Ahead” – every moment on Pimps & Preachers speaks universally but with a fluency that stems from the earthy blues, haunted old-school country,and stripped-down urgency of the gospel music that surrounded Thorn throughout his Mississippi upbringing. But Thorn’s knack for using snapshots from everyday routine as the elements of this exquisite writing owes entirely to his distinctive abilities and commitment to linking these elements into a profession of mercy and forgiveness – ultimately, the real message of Pimps & Preachers.

“Look, there’s nothing wrong with songs about holding hands or sitting by the phone and waiting for a girl to call,” he says. “But I wrote songs like that when I

was 15. I’m trying now to sing about things that mean something to me, for people who want something real, who not only want forgiveness but are willing to

give it.”

“Besides,” he concludes, bringing Pimps & Preachers back home, “If I came back to my dad or my uncle with songs like that now, they’d both kick my ass! So I’m still just trying to follow their lead.”