Over a decade of critically acclaimed albums, Paul Burch has established himself as a writer, singer, producer, and arranger with a personal and original take on American music. His albums are an odd but riveting mix of rock and roll, blues and honky tonk grooves often infused with Latin American rhythms, atmospheric tape loops and feedback. The results make for vibrant, haunting music that seems unmoored to time or continent or what Mojo descibes as "the sound of a celestial jukebox heard from around the corner."
PB's new album, Words of Love/Songs of Buddy Holly, features 13 classic Holly songs reimagined with all of Holly's trademark guitar and drum grooves intact.
Arriving in Nashville in the early 90's, PB's marathon shows at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge drew world press to Nashville’s live honky tonk music scene and helped introduce Americana to Music City USA. While at Tootsie's, Burch formed the WPA Ballclub, which remains his backing band today. Burch's debut album, Pan American Flash, was hailed by Billboard's Chet Flippo as “extraordinary, establishing Burch as a leader in marrying country's roots tradition with a modern sensibility” and placed #5 in the Top 10 Country Records of the 90’s by the editors of Amazon.com.
PB has collaborated with stylists in every musical genre including Mark Knopfler, Ralph Stanley, Lambchop, Exene Cervenka, Beverly Knight, and Vic Chesnutt, and joined Jeff Tweedy, Elvis Costello, and George Jones on the GRAMMY nominated comeback by Charlie Louvin. Burch also served as music consultant to the PBS film “The Appalachians" and composed Last of My Kind, a soundtrack to Tony Earley's NY Times bestseller Jim the Boy.
Critics have praised Burch’s albums as “music that sounds thoroughly modern but completely unlike contemporary country” (USA Today) and Entertainment Weekly has called him "a modern day Jimmie Rodgers". A new collaboration with Chicago's Waco Brothers, Great Chicago Fire, will be out in 2012 on Bloodshot Records.
Peter Guralnick, author of biographies on Elvis Presley (Last Train to Memphis & Careless Love) and Sam Cooke (Dream Boogie) says: "I'm a Paul Burch fan. How could I not be? How many other contemporary artists have forged a body of work of such cleverness and coherence, careful craftsmanship and white-hot heat, with all the zeal of the most dedicated student and all the passion of a true original? His music never fails to achieve its purpose, what Sun Records founder Sam Phillips has deemed the unequivocal purpose of every kind of music: to lift up, to deepen, to intensify the spirit of audience and musicians alike."
