By Ian Woolley
At 64 years old, you could forgive Paul Young for wanting to take it easy, but far from it. He’s having too much fun with his Tex-Mex band…
Paul Young (photo credit James Hole)
From his early life, Paul Young’s musical influences would bring him the fame his soulful voice demanded. A voice that would see him perform on some of the world’s biggest stages and equally the most important people that graced them.
Now after 25 years together with two studio albums, and countless gigs, it seems that finally, Paul Young has found solace in his music.
Los Pacaminos
So onto the new album…“I’m working on a new album loosely called the Basement tapes, but I’ll come up with a better title. I’ve had lots of tracks I’ve been doing over a long period and there are one or two tracks I think are lovely. So I’ve put my favourite tracks altogether and they still sound great and still sound current”.
Talking of current stuff, the Pacaminos and Paul released Prairie Serenade which has been getting rave reviews and plenty of airplay. Paul said: “Someone wanted an unknown track for International Woman’s Day in Italy for a TV show, but with the lockdown, obviously we had to do some visuals to put over the track. I’ve been talking with the boys and we’re thinking about releasing another from the Fistful Of Stains album.”
Finally, I asked him: if there was a musician dead or alive who would give an edgy feel to his band for one gig, who would it be? “If Woody (Steve Oakman) didn’t mind, the great Leonardo ‘Flaco’ Jiménez, who is probably the greatest accordion player to come out of Mexico. He’s played with Ry Cooder but there is a slight difference in that Woody is a keyboard accordion, and ‘Flaco’ is a button accordion, and that gives you a totally different sound but it would be great to have him.”
Excerpts from an exclusive interview with Paul Young for The Beat.