Who is Paul K.?

Early this year I picked up a CD called “Love Is A Gas” (1997) by Paul K. and the Weathermen.  I had been peripherally aware of Paul and his work through reviews and various sources; however, I was not prepared for the stunning beauty and sincerity of his work.  “Love Is A Gas” moved me…completely.   It is a work of unprecedented honesty, and it sent me off to search for more.
    I soon discovered that Paul had a new CD, “A Wilderness of Mirrors”.   Released in early 1998, the recording is a towering achievement.  It is an album of unparalleled emotion, balancing jubilation against terror, joy against sorrow, and hope against despair.
    I began to wonder, “Why has it taken so long for me to hear this?   Who is Paul K.?”
    As I raved about the music to others, the question arose again.

    Who is Paul K.?

     I guess that was the point of an interview.  It would be an opportunity to find out who Paul K. is, or at least gain some insight and let people discover a little more about the “greatest unknown songwriter of his generation”.
Hell, I wanted to know more about Paul K.  After all, statements like “criminally underexposed”, “to be treasured” and “one of this generations most compelling song writing voices” have been tossed about in abundance when referring to his work, and upon traveling through his musical world myself, I found them to be entirely true.  His is a soaring talent, and it is an indictment on his very generation that he remains inglorious.
 
    But how could so many have missed him?  How could this American treasure go unnoticed? Why?
    “Ours is an impatient culture”, said Paul, explaining his relative anonymity.  “We want immediate gratification.  It's no great sin, but it’s how we are as Americans.  We don't want to take the time to understand things. We don't want to listen, and go deeper.”
    Going deeper, listening to Paul K. talk is very much like listening to his music.  He is thoughtful, provocative, challenging, humorous, and always entertaining.  There is Truth to his purpose.  His astute view of the world in which he (and we) lives feeds his soul.  Which in turn feeds his music.  And, for those who do have the patience, those who want to understand and take the time, listening to Paul K. is an enriching and rewarding experience.

    Growing up in 1970’s Detroit, Paul Kopasz was a Midwestern Roman Catholic child of the industrial steel belt.  It was a time when, in cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland, the American Dream was “left for dead”.   Without the myth of that Dream, and backed by a fervent Catholic upbringing, Kopasz, like so many other “steel belt babies” of his generation, looked elsewhere for a future.
    “Do you remember the late 1970’s and early 80’s?” asks Paul K.  “I do!”
    “In places like Detroit, Cleveland, Youngstown (Ohio), Toledo, and even Chicago there were many blue-collar Polish and Irish Catholics, Germans, some Jewish people, all these hard-working immigrants, and suddenly they're saying to themselves, “What the fuck?  What's going on here?  Twenty years ago we were the center of the universe.  What?  You don't need our steel anymore?  You don't need the cars we make?  We're fucked…oh well.”
    “But, these people went on, sustained by their culture.  This entire Midwestern part of the country survived on its varied beliefs, its culture, and its Catholicism.”, Kopasz exasperates.
    Rock and Roll was the cultural center for the adolescent set during these years.  The region became well known for it's passionate embrace of rock music, and Paul K. was no exception.
    “In Detroit we had the greatest radio stations.  I was probably eleven or twelve years old when I started listening to FM radio and reading Creem magazine.”, he explains.  “Stations like WABX and WWWW played the greatest fucking music.  It was amazing.”
    Kopasz was hooked.
    He recalls picking up an issue of Creem that featured music equipment.
    “I would stare at all these glossy pages of guitars and amps, and read about bands.  Somewhere in that issue there was a comment that said, jokingly,   “you've got to be a guitar player if you want to get the girls and be popular.”
That's when I decided I had to get a guitar.”
 
    With guitar in hand, Kopasz finished high school and journeyed off to the University of Kentucky for a spot on the debate team.  He might as well have drifted down the Congo looking for Mr. Kurtz, and into his own heart of darkness.
    Somewhere, along the way from Detroit to Kentucky, through New York City, returning to Kentucky again, Paul K. ended up addicted to drugs and living a Spartan squatters life.   Music (he released many home recorded cassette “albums” in the mid-80’s) seemed to fuel the drug use, the drug use fueled the need for more, which, in turn, fueled the lying, begging, borrowing, and of course, stealing.

 
    Retreating from his demons and turning inward, Paul focused on music, and became an American song writing treasure.
 
     Beginning with 1988’s Patriots album, Paul K. began building a following.  But, more importantly, he began building a body of haunting, engaging, and timeless rock music.  His growth as an artist as well as a person can be heard and felt throughout his earlier work, peaking with the release of The Blue Sun.
     A collection of songs culled from his early cassette material, The Blue Sun announced Paul K. as an urgent and vital American artist on many levels.   The album clearly demonstrated K.’s ability to alternately “search and destroy” while quietly haunting you.  It also demonstrated Paul's commitment to his art.
    Blues for Charlie Lucky led to Garden of Forking Paths, which preceded Coin of the Realm - all of which laid the foundation for the brilliance that would soon follow.
 
    “All of my shit came from Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, and recently, just the last ten years, everything I learned came from Townes Van Zandt.” Paul explains of his musical evolution.
    “If I hadn't met Townes, I couldn't still be doing this.”
 
    Texas troubadour/poet Townes Van Zandt’s influence clearly changed the course of Paul K.’s musical and spiritual life.
    “I met Townes and Alex Chilton on the same day.  It was an interesting case study.  On one hand, Alex Chilton is this great songwriter and fantastic guitar player, yet extremely, extremely bitter.” Kopasz recounts.   “An angry sort of guy.”
    “And now, here's Townes…and to compare Townes to Alex Chilton is like comparing Leonardo Di Vinci to Mark Rothko or something.  Townes was a renaissance sculptor as compared to a cubist.”, he chuckles.  “With Townes, here was this drunk and dysfunctional guy who never really got his due.  He never really made any money in the music biz except for the Willie Nelson song (“Pancho and Lefty”).   And Townes wasn’t bitter at all!” Kopasz mused.
    “So, on the one hand here’s this guy who’s real bitter and thinks that the world owes him more.  And on the other hand, here’s this guy who’s a genius poet that doesn’t really give a fuck.”
    “Anyhow”, he adds, “I thought to myself: Here’s the secret to being happy in life, to not give a fuck.  At least not so much.”

    Kopasz applied this simple, newfound wisdom to his work.  The result was a trilogy of recordings nearly unrivaled in modern rock.

    Achilles Heel is the first chapter, or rather book, in this body of work.  It is an intricate look into the state of our times, as well as the state of Paul K.  In it Kopasz demonstrates his uncanny ability to become a social critic (songs like “Internet Worm”, and “Little David”), angry punk, (“Deportee”), political conscience (“Roses For The Rich”), as well as bluesman, humorist, and folk provocateur (“Cold Summer”, “Rerun”, and “When You Read This I’ll Be Gone”).  And finally, he shows his deep reverence for Van Zandt with a heart rending, deeply felt version of “Tecumseh Valley”.
    Paul K. shows that he has in fact taken to heart not giving “a fuck”.  And that freeing of his motives has allowed honesty and emotion to carry his day.
 
    Love Is A Gas is the second, and perhaps pivotal book.  Produced by Maureen Tucker (Velvet Underground), K. acknowledges his musical roots.
Polished and loaded with terrific rock-on-the-verge-of-pop songs, it could have, and probably should have been Paul K.’s big break.
    Once again backed by his on-again/off-again band, the Weathermen, K. travels through musical time.  Smoothly flowing from “new wave”, (“Apple In My Eye”) to Detroit soul/funk (the wonderfully moving “David Ruffin’s Tears”), from modern alternative (“Deep Freeze”) to Stevie Wonder (Jesus Children Of America”).  Only his ability to smoothly integrate and transition between these styles within his own work exceed Kopaszs’ depth of musical influence.
 
    The third, crowning, and most recent tome is A Wilderness of Mirrors.   Recorded without the Weathermen, Kopasz goes unaccompanied on this journey into the soul.  His soul.
    Opening with the bell-like clang of hammer to metal, Wilderness begins down its tremulous path.  K. immerses himself in the tale of Alvin Brodey, a subsistence farmer in the late 1940’s who, upon encountering some “strange things” during a National Guard clean-up operation outside Roswell, New Mexico, sees his life slowly and completely collapse.  But it is not necessarily a sad story.   It is the story of life.  Veering wildly from the depths of despair to the pinnacle of hope, the album ultimately results in acceptance.  There are certain events in life that can shape us, that can affect our psyche and alter our existence, but in the end, are not ours to control.
    Musically, Kopasz creates a landscape for his story and it’s characters.  From the sweeping acoustic beauty of “Overture” and “What You Dream And What You Dream Know” to the soaring guitar of “Crash” Kopasz uses his entire arsenal to create this musical odyssey.  Bluesing it up for “Aftermath”, going down into the slow, smoldering grind of the terrifying “The Doctor Will See You Now”, K. once again displays his expanding musical prowess.
    And with the lilting, redemptive “One More Form of Pride”   the album and the  “trilogy” come to a brilliant close.

   Yet, throughout it all, Paul K. has remained virtually anonymous.  It is a mystery to all that have discovered his music, as well as Kopasz himself.
    “I’m now trying to get myself to a place where mentally, or spiritually, it does not bother me.” Paul K. says.  “Obviously, throughout all of this I’ve thought, ‘Why am I not like Greg Dulli, on the cover of Details?  How come nobody realizes this stuff is great?  We’re working our fucking asses off!’  It bothered the fuck out of me for a long time.”
    “Now, lately” K. chuckles, “I’m getting older.   I’m getting to the point where the music itself, and the pleasure of making it, of interacting with the people I make it with…that’s the payoff.”
     He quickly adds, “If you’re waiting around for a bigger payoff, such as a check, or fame, or glory, or some shit like that, well, you must be pretty stupid.”

    Paul K. has finished a new album, due for release in early 1999.  He says it’s a return to the sounds of Love Is A Gas, and that it’s more accessible and pop/rock-ish.  A new, listener friendly, album, that perhaps, will stop the “criminal” underexposure.
   When asked for perspective on his “criminal” lack of success and wider recognition, K. is frank.
   “Man, am I tired of hearing that.  Is it criminal?  Yes.   Am I going to press charges?  No.”

   Townes would be proud.

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