Paul Burch

American musician Paul Burch performs as a singer, songwriter, producer, and recording engineer. Between 1997 and 2005 he belonged to the Nashville alt-country outfit Lambchop, yet the multi-instrumentalist simultaneously built a solo identity as an old-school country performer whose style intentionally recalls the classic honky tonk period in Nashville and the rockabilly sound associated with Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios in Memphis. Outside his own projects he has appeared on dozens of sessions with artists ranging from Bobby Bare and Charlie Louvin to the Waco Brothers, Laura Cantrell, and Richard Bennett. With the 1996 release Pan American Flash he began developing a warm, immediate production approach centered on live studio takes. After the release of the defining Blue Notes in 2000 and Fool for Love in 2003, he earned recognition for his acumen as both songwriter and producer. Starting with East to West in 2006 he turned toward proto rockabilly and early country rock. The widely celebrated tribute Words of Love: Songs of Buddy Holly appeared in 2011, and in 2018 Burch & the WPA Ballclub issued Trovatore: The Lives of Eugene Walter.

Raised in rural Maryland and Virginia, Paul Burch experienced the 1970s Washington, D.C. music scene firsthand when his family brought him to concerts by Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, and John Prine. Although he occasionally performed with Lambchop, the Nashville-based singer and songwriter made his solo debut in 1998 with Pan-American Flash. Wire to Wire arrived later that same year, followed by Blue Notes in mid-2000. The next year he released Last of My Kind, a work inspired by Tony Earley’s novel Jim the Boy. East to West came out in 2006; recorded at British Grove Studios in London as well as in Nashville, the album featured Mark Knopfler and Ralph Stanley.

In 2009 Burch & the WPA Ballclub—comprising Jim Gray, Fats Kaplin, Dennis Crouch, Jen Gunderman, and Marty Lynds—issued Still Your Man, an entirely new collection of songs tracked inside a converted warehouse on the edge of Nashville’s Music Row. The 2011 tribute Words of Love: Songs of Buddy Holly was captured live in the studio with a minimalist lineup of upright bass, drums, and guitar, occasionally augmented by saxophone and accordion. Great Chicago Fire, a collaboration with the Waco Brothers, followed in 2012. November 2013 brought Fevers from Burch & the WPA Ballclub, a set of songs shaped by rockabilly, hard country swing, and honky tonk. The artist co-produced the album with multi-instrumentalist Fats Kaplin, and guest vocalist Kelly Hogan contributed vocals. Meridian Rising, released in 2016, presented “an imagined musical autobiography” of country legend Jimmie Rodgers. The project avoided both the conventions of a conventional tribute album and the structure of a biographical portrait; instead Burch invented musical scenarios for Rodgers that did not always follow documented history while acknowledging the jazz and blues contemporaries of Rodgers.

Three years later Burch released Light Sensitive. In addition to the former members of the WPA Ballclub, the sessions included Robyn Hitchcock, Luther Dickinson, Amy Rigby, and Aaron Lee Tasjan. The material crossed boundaries among rockabilly, blues, balladry, and atmospheric textures drawn from various American Southern locales.