Paul Metsa

Singer/songwriter Paul Metsa grew up on Minnesota’s Iron Range, the same region that gave rise to Bob Dylan. His mother performed as a jazz singer, while his father owned a tavern and worked professionally as an accordionist. During grade school Metsa formed his first folk duo, later fronting a rock band. In 1979 he left Virginia, MN, and settled in Minneapolis to launch a full-time career. Early on he joined the band Cats Under the Stars, which issued the single “Blue Ghosts”/“Louie, Louie” in 1982. Going solo, he founded Raven Records and self-released his debut album Paper Tigers in 1984; the set was later reissued on CD with bonus tracks in 2001. Two singles followed—“59 Coal Mines”/“Stars Over the Pacific” in 1986 and “Ferris Wheels on the Farm”/“Party to a Crime” in 1987—before his second studio album, Slow Justice, appeared in 1990. A live set, Live at the Guthrie, came out the next year, succeeded by the 1992 retrospective Radio Motel and the 1993 studio release Whistling Past the Graveyard. Another concert document, Mississippi Farewell, surfaced in 1994, and Metsa issued the EP Lincoln’s Bedroom in 1998. Throughout this period he maintained a busy club schedule across the United States and abroad. While preparing a project for his twenty-fifth anniversary as a performer in 2004, he rediscovered tapes recorded at Mars Studio in Austin, TX, during October 1990. Loud House Records acquired the material and brought it out as Texas in the Twilight in January 2005.