Exposed Vocals just caught an interview with singer/songwriter Paulo Franco

Paulo Franco is singer/songwriter who proudly wears his emotions on his sleeves.  It took him a while to get there, but he is finally realizing a dream he has had since childhood – to write his songs and perform them live.  Paulo grew up a first generation American in a bilingual home.  Both of his parents are from Medellín, Colombia and his wife Sonia was born in the City of Cali.

With his second full length release The Last Card, Paulo continues a journey of honest and soulful songwriting that finds its inspiration in his family, his heritage, his observations and his gift for storytelling.  With this release, he brings a new element into his songwriting, the Spanish language.  The Last Card takes the listener on an eclectic journey that highlights the many influences in Paulo’s musical repertoire – old school country, classic rock, alt country and Latin rhythms.

The album starts off with the haunting Spanish song, Catrina Y Su Calavera.  It was a song inspired by a local craft beer brewed with lime zest and aged in tequila barrels called La Calavera Catrina.  The beer’s label was inspired by the famous etching drawn that inspired the day of the Dead iconography by Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada.  Paulo remembers drinking it for the first time wondering whether it was beer or tequila he had just drank.  That made him think about that appearances sometimes mask reality.  At its essence, Catrina is the story of a man who falls in love with a beautiful but mysterious woman that sits next to him, who carries with her a skull.  The man is smitten, but when they drink a shot of tequila together, a fog begins to roll in.  The man doesn’t know whether she is an angel or a demon – he only knows he is madly in love with her.

The record’s first single, Leaving The River City was a song penned as a response to Chris Knight’s Rita’s Only Fault.  Chris Knight has been a big influence on Paulo’s songwriting, but he always felt the ending of that song wasn’t right with Rita going to jail for fighting back against her abusive lover.  Paulo put his education as a lawyer to work and came out with a different ending for the woman in this song. “When I wrote that song, I had the phrase ‘she’s leaving the river city’ stuck in my head for a few weeks.  I had no idea why “she” was leaving.  Then I heard Rita’s Only Fault and I knew right away.   Rita just needed a better lawyer, and I was willing to represent her pro bono.”

The album’s title track was a song written over the grief of Paulo losing his best friend at the end of 2014.  “I’ve always been a big fan of blackjack and poker and it struck me that the deck of cards could be used as metaphors to tell a story.  It broke my heart when I heard that my buddy Tom James passed away.  He was one of those larger than life guys whose presence lit up any room he entered.  I wanted to write a song that honored him and his children.”

In making the record, Paulo turned once again to former Silos co-founder and former Cracker bass player, Bob Rupe.  Rupe was at the helm for Paulo’s last release, a collaboration with Austin, Texas based Shane Cooley.  This time, Rupe took over production of the CD.  Paulo states, “I wanted Bob to take me out of my comfort zone and to try things that can only be done in a studio.  You can hear that in the effects that are placed in the vocals with Catrina.  They help convey the haunted experience felt by the narrator of the song.  We took a song like La Estrella del País, which pays homage to everything that is wonderful about Medellín but you seldom hear about – the spring like climate, the majesty of the Andeas mountains, and the beautiful women of the Aburra Valley and gave it truly Andean feel.  Bob also encouraged me to play a traditional Colombian instrument on that track, the Tiple.”

Rupe enlisted fellow Richmond musicians Johnny Hott (House of Freaks) and Dusty Simmons (DJ Williams Projekt) on drums, Daniel Clarke (Ryan Adams and the Shining, kd Lang) on keyboards, Stephen McCarthy (Long Ryders, Jayhawks, Gutterball) on guitar on leaving the River City, and Dan Sessler of Paulo’s backing band. Also included is another collaboration between Paulo and Shane Cooley, the song One More Night.  Paulo also brought on board Charles Arthur, whose guitar work has been featured on several Slaid Cleaves records.  “I had met Charles before, but ran into him at a Slaid Cleves concert. Slaid is probably my favorite songwriter.  So I took a chance and asked Charles if he’d be interested in playing on my record.  I was delighted when he said yes.  It was the same with Daniel Clarke.  I happened to run into him when he was out wandering the crowd at a Ryan Adams show in Charlottesville.  We chatted for a few minutes and I got the courage to ask him.  He told me to give him a call when he got back from tour.  His keyboard playing added a new element to my songs.  I even got him to bring out the new accordion he had recently purchased.”

The rest of the album rounds out with delicate finger picked songs like Carolina Girl and Anything For You, to more country sounding songs like Run Rene Run, which tells the plight of an undocumented Mexican running from the Texas Rangers for a crime he did not commit.  Rolling Back to Raleigh conveys both the joy and sadness that Paulo felt leaving his daughter at college for the first time.  The album closes off with Too Far Gone, a song that started off as a demo on Paulo’s first release By the Light of  A Paper Moon that had a more psychedelic rock sound to it.  Paulo remembers,”Bob said to me if you’re going to do a rock song, do a rock song.  So we deconstructed the song, brought out some vintage amps, and the Gibson SG that was a trademark of the Silos records I wore out from overplay in law school, and we rocked it out like it was being played in a garage.”

The Last Card represents the next step in Paulo’s second career as a songwriter.  “Making this record has been an incredible part of my musical journey.  I will always be indebted to Bob and the musicians who helped me with this projected, and made me a better songwriter and musician in the process.  When I was in law school, two of my high school buddies turned me on to both the Silos and the House of Freaks.  Almost thirty years later, I’m making music with the guys who were a big part of the soundtrack of my life.  The other incredible aspect of making this record was that Bob was generous enough to let me use the SG he recorded with on the Silos records.  He also let me use House of Freak’s Bryan Harvey’s guitar on a couple of tracks.  To hear that guitar come alive again not far from the house where Bryan and his family lived was a very emotional experience for me.  I plan on taking everything I learned from making this record and building on it with my next one.”

Paulo is looking forward to launching the record officially on October 15 with a CD Release party at Richmond’s Capital Ale House from 1-4:30 p.m.  The CD will be available on line through his website www.peflmusic.com and on iTunes and other online music services.  He has a few more dates at some of the Virginia breweries and wineries he routinely plays throughout Virginia.  He is looking forward to taking the record out on the road for a few tour dates in 2017.

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Exclusive Interview:

So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?

My story starts in the City of Medellín, Colombia.  That’s where my parents are from.  My dad came to the US to do post graduate work after getting his medical degree.  He and my mom had to be married by proxy because he could not leave the US due to his visa (if he left he could not return), and my maternal grandmother would not let my mother come to the US alone, even to get married to the man she had been dating for over 6 years.  So my dad signed the marriage license in Phily, mailed it back to my mom, and his little brother stood in and said his vows on his behalf.  That was not my mother’s idea of a romantic wedding.  So instead of a white gown, my mom showed up to her wedding in a knee length black cocktail dress.  It caused quite a scandal in 1963.  That story is the inspiration for the song I wrote with my good friend and sometimes collaborator Shane Cooley.

My mom met up with my dad in Philly.  He did his residency at Georgetown University in Washingon DC and shortly thereafter I was born and then my sister.  As fate would have it, my parents made a promise to theirs to return to Colombia.  They did, and my dad went to look for a job as a surgeon.  Everyone back in Colombia told him that he would have to do his residency all over again.  My dad thought that was madness.  He also recognized that my sister and I were getting very Americanized by that point, speaking mostly English and already in primary school.  They recognized that my sister and I would never have the same opportunities growing up in Colombia than in the US.  So they decided to stay.  They stayed over 43 years.  They finally went back to Colombia upon retirement.

I grew up outside of Washington, D.C. in Northern Virginia.  Went to college in Ohio, law school in Richmond, Virginia and came back to Richmond for good in 1998.

I’ve always known I wanted to be a musician since I was a little kid.  But when you grow up as a first generation American, the American dream is for your son to grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer.  So I chose the law.  I have been playing guitar since I was 9 years old, and dabbled playing live about 4 years out of law school.  Then I got married and guitars took a back seat.

When I got divorced I decided that I would never let music take a back seat anymore.  I dusted off my guitars, and a colleague at work at the Virginia State Bar asked me to be in his cover band.  As I began to meet more musicians in the local scene at Richmond, I got a taste of songwriting. I started writing my own songs and put out my first album on my birthday back in 2012, which by the way is the same day as George Harrison, John Doe and Ralph Stanley, thank you very much!

How did you come up with going solo under your name instead of a moniker? What was your inspiration behind it?

Going solo sort of came up by necessity.  I had started writing my own stuff but one of the guys in my cover band wasn’t that interested in doing original material (ironically he’s writing his own stuff now).  So I got some friends together to help me record my first album and the band sort of coalesced around that.  It’s worked out really well for me because I am the principal songwriter and vocalist in the band and I play a lot of solo gigs.  So when I play  solo it’s my music so my name is attached to it.  The band is undergoing a name change right now, so instead of Paulo Franco and the Rateros, we are going to be going forward as Paulo Franco and the Freightliners.  I particularly liked the alliteration and the nod to Townes Van Zandt.  He’s one of my favorites, and we do a rocking cover of White Freightliner Blues.

What do you think about online music sharing? Do you ever give your music away for free? Why?

I have mixed feelings about it.  In all for it 100% in all respects.  However, in order for that to be a sustainable model there has to be a better way to compensate songwriters who make their living off their art.  The lawyer in me is not very thrilled about the process in which the Department of Justice went about modifying the consent decrees with BMI and ASCAP.  The justification they gave for doing away with fractional licensing just isn’t true.  That’s the way things have been done for quite some time and with some success.  Even though I’m just protoplankton swimming against the current out there in terms of market share, the removal of fractional licensing presents a real problem for me.  I have a lot of works out there co written by Shane Cooley.  He’s ASCAP and I am BMI.

The producer of my latest record is Bob Rupe, who was a founding member of the late 80s alt county band The Silos.  He also played bass for Cracker for many years.  David Lowery is Cracker’s frontman and I’ve been watching online his fight to make the current music distribution model fairer for the artists who compose the music that allow the online music services to exist in the first place.  I don’t buy into this nonsense that Spotify and other sharing services are really technology companies who are simply delivering content to their end users.  There would be no content but for the songwriters.  So for the songwriters to be left fighting for the scraps that fall from the tables of the captains of technology doesn’t seem very equitable.

Having said all that, I ask who the hell is Paulo Franco?  That’s a good question. I’m a guy struggling to get his music out there so getting it made available to people to create a buzz is important.  That means giving it away from time to time and making available on as many platforms as I can.

Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?

I play a lot of gigs locally in Central Virginia.  I get asked all the time how do I get so many gigs?  Central Virginia and Richmond in particular have a burgeoning craft beer scene and music goes hand in hand with that.  And Virginia wines are in the national spotlight right now.  There’s a lot of great things happening there.  I’ve gotten those gigs through hard work and face to face contact.  With the explosion of places to play, so too have the number of bands that are looking for work.  Sometimes sending an email works, but most of the gigs I have gotten are from going to the venue, dropping off a press kit, shaking someone’s hand and then following up with an email.  As an artist, the objective of writing music is to connect with another human being.  A handshake is the same thing.  It’s contact with a venue that cannot be achieved by an email.  Going out and supporting the local scene is always a good thing as well.  It allows you to network.  Open mics are also a great way of meeting other musicians out there.

The second thing I would say is to treat your music as a business.  If you’re looking to gig, you’re probably looking to get paid.  So be professional.  It’s a good reflection on you.  I’ve been a lawyer for almost thirty years.  The Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct mandate that I comport myself with a baseline level of professionalism.  Although it’s voluntary, the same thing applies to the music business. I always try to be courteous and professional with the people that hire me.  Show up on time.  When a brewery or a winery says that drinks are on the house, I don’t abuse that.  I always let them know that I can come back and get drunk on my own dime with a designated driver.  I’ve seen it happen too many times when performers get plastered and act inappropriately and unprofessionally, and I’ve watched many a venue owner go to DEFCON 1.

Do you ever make mistakes during performances? How do you handle that?

There’s a great quote that’s attributed to Beethoven that says, “to play a wrong note is insignificant, to play without passion is inexcusable.”  Mistakes are a part of live performance.  Finding a way to recover is what you look for.  So if I forget a line, I do just like what Arlo Guthrie did in Alice’s Restaurant, I just wait for it to come back around on the guitar.  Fortunately I’ve gotten to the level of playing where mistakes are not train wrecks.  You just keep going and have faith that the muscle memory will bring you back around and pull you back from the cliff!!  If a train wreck happens, make the best of it and go with the flow.  Last thing is tune!!  It shows you care!

Does anything interesting happen on tour that you think our readers would enjoy hearing about?

I’m 52 years old and married.  I came into this game kind of late.  I still like to have a good time, and knock back a few rounds from time to time.  But if you’re expecting tales of roasting goats in the hotel room like that rock band that Ed Begley talked about in the movie Best in Show, or throwing TVs out of hotel windows, wild parties, I wish there was something I could tell you.  They say to never let the truth get in the good way of a story but my wife might read this!

I will say that the best part of being out there and playing is getting to meet people that appreciate what you do.  Music moves me in very profound and emotional ways.  I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve been at a show where I have been moved to tears, or overcome screaming out the words to a great song with everyone else around me. So to be on the other end of that is an incredible feeling.  I remember the first time I saw someone mouthing the words to one of my songs and being totally blown away.  When someone says thank you for your music, it justifies all the hard work.  Of course I’d like to get to the point where I can I could make a living playing music.  But if it never gets any bigger for me than what it is right now, the fact that there are even a few people listening makes it all worthwhile.  I’d still be playing and writing even if I were the only person listening.  But I like icing on my cake!

Where do you usually gather songwriting inspiration? What is your usual songwriting process?

The best piece of songwriting advice I got was chatting with Paul Thorn after one of his shows.  He said, “write what you know.”  A lot of the inspirations for my songs come from my family.  Stories about them, love songs for them.  Rolling Back to Raleigh is about the time when I dropped my daughter off for college for the first time.  As happy and excited as I was to see her growing up, I knew when we left to go back home that day that she would not be coming back as our little girl.  That made me sad.  I mentioned the story about my parents wedding.

It’s rare that I write lyrics first.  I usually come up with a riff on the guitar and just keep working it until something comes up.  That’s what was going on with Leaving the River City.  I kept working on the riff and suddenly the words she’s leaving the river city came out.  Why the protagonist was leaving I had no clue.  Then I listened to one of my favorite songs by Chris Knight, Rita’s Only Fault.  It’s about the love a guy has for a woman named Rita, with whom he’s always been in love.  She was the high school prom queen who married the quarterback. His best days were behind him and he beat Rita when she was drunk.  Rita took the law into her own hands and killed the QB.  She gets hauled off to jail.  It’s such a gut wrenching song.  Then it dawned on me that Rita could have used a better lawyer.  So that’s where the idea for Leaving the River City came from.  The woman in that song might have gotten away with it, and I’d like to think it was because she had a better lawyer!

What are some really embarrassing songs that we might find on your mp3 player?

The first concert I ever saw was Kiss.  1977 at the Capital Centre in Largo, MD.  I was 13 years old and a member of the Kiss Army.  My parents went with me, back in the day when people openly smoked marijuana in the arenas.  My mom was running a fever, and I recall laughing when one the guys sitting next to us offered my mom a bong hit.  I always look back at the moment as the time I realized just how deep a mother’s love for son can go.  My sister and I still get a kick out of that.

Some people still see Kiss as joke, but they have endured and they keep that mouse trip they’ve built relevant and printing money.  Whatever people may think of Kiss, the opening band that night was AC/DC.  So yeah, I saw AC/DC with Bon Scott.

But as far as truly embarrassing, probably some of the boy band stuff that my daughter  left on it!

If you were given half a million dollars and a year off, what would you do? How would you spend it?

This is probably the easiest question for me to answer.  First, I’d pay off my daughter’s student loans.  Second, I’d buy my wife a new car.  Then I’d sock away a year’s worth of my lawyer salary, rent a car, and tour the US playing music.

Rock and Roll is a young man’s game.  I got into the game way late and real life got in the way.  I have bills to pay, a wife, a daughter with student loans.  I can’t afford to walk away from my day job.  The biggest challenge for a person in my shoes is finding a model to get the music out there to as wide an audience as possible while still maintaining all my of responsibilities at work.  There are ways to do it and I’m beginning to explore those avenues.

What are you working on musically, right now?

Right now, I am focusing on writing new material for another record and keeping the band up to date with that new material.  I really enjoy collaborative songwriting and am looking forward to doing that more with some friends and hopefully some other songwriters out there.

How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?

This is the first release where I’ve been working with a publicist.  Some friends of mine had worked with City Bird Publicity and I was impressed by some of the opportunities and attention they had gotten.  I got in touch with Melissa Nastasi at City Bird and it’s been great

I try and work social media very hard and try to engage fans with interesting, odd ball posts on Facebook or Twitter.  Something other than music that keeps my fans laughing.  Every day I learn something new.

If you could perform anywhere and with any artists (Dead or Alive) where and who would it be with? Why?

If you are the genie in the bottle and are granting me one wish, it would be for 1,000 more wishes so I could play with everyone.  Jamming with the Stones or the Dead would be amazing.  I would love to sit in with the Drive By Truckers or Jason Isbell.  As far as singer songwriters go, I’d love to play with Slaid Cleaves.

As to where, even though I’ve never been I think it would be Red Rocks.

But the one thing I’d give anything for would be to  play in a small bar with Johnny Cash.  The only person I’d want in the audience would be my Dad.  He LOVED Johnny Cash.  Before my dad passed away, he knew that I was playing music again, but only cover bands.  My dad never got a chance to hear me sing my own songs.

So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?

A friend of mine that I met while we were partners in a law firm together has gotten the songwriting bug as well.  He has some great lyrics.  He wrote a wonderful tune called These Blue Mountains that I play almost every time I’m on stage.  It gets a great response.  I’ve always joked with my friend Jeff Brown that when they clap for his song that’s my Salieri moment from Amadeus, and I look up to the heavens and say with a snarl, “Grazie, Signore.”  We plan on getting together and coming up with a few more tunes and releasing an EP with those tunes and a couple of others I’ve written.

If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?

That’s easy.  Trying lawyers for ethical violations on behalf on the Virginia State Bar.  That’s my day job.

Do you remember buying your first album? Who was it? What was going through your head?

Like it was yesterday.  It was 1970 and I was 6 years old.  My dad went to buy some stereo equipment and brought  my sister and me.  To get us out of his hair, he told us to each go over to the record section and pick out a record.  I saw Let It Be by the Beatles and I grabbed it.  Those guys with their long hair, wow, I thought they looked so cool!!   I grabbed the record and took it up to my dad who was waiting in line to pay.  Then my sister walked up with a Partridge Family record.  I begged and pleaded to change my selection to the Partridge Family, but my dad wasn’t having any of it.  It’s not like he really knew who the Beatles were, he just wanted to pay and get us out of there.  Forty six years later, I know exactly where my copy of Let It Be is.  I can’t say the same for the Partridge Family record.

How do you juggle the rest of your responsibilities while trying to stay ahead in your music life?

This is the biggest struggle I face.  I do it all.  I book the shows, I promote.  I write.  I coordinate practices.  All while holding down a job as a lawyer for the Virginia State Bar.   The folks at work are very supportive of what I’m doing.  In fact, it was one of my colleagues at the Bar who got me back into playing music.  When I applied for the job, he went to the person that hired me and said, forget about everyone else.  This guy Paulo plays guitar.  I need a new guitar player for my band.  I got the gig and I got the job.  The rest is history!

The only way I am able to do it is because I have the full support and love of my amazing wife Sonia.  She is so patient and understands how important this is to me.  I know it gets hard on her sometimes.  If the music pays off financially I’d like to take her on a really nice long vacation!!

What should fans look forward to in the next year or so?

I think fans might see a little less of me around Richmond and perhaps doing more short tours in strategic places around the country.  Since I’m writing some tunes in Spanish maybe try and play Spain (so I could take Sonia with me) play some more in Colombia and other parts of Latin America.