{"id":13041,"date":"2017-08-03T05:30:36","date_gmt":"2017-08-03T09:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=13041"},"modified":"2017-07-26T11:51:35","modified_gmt":"2017-07-26T15:51:35","slug":"christopher-paul-stelling-embracing-the-unknown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/08\/03\/christopher-paul-stelling-embracing-the-unknown\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Paul Stelling: Embracing the Unknown"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Christopher Paul Stelling is a singer-songwriter; he doesn’t include an ability to predict the future among his skills. Yet unlike some of the most respected pollsters, the seismic political changes that took place in the United States last November didn’t come as a surprise to him. The songs that he wrote as the future began to unfold are collected on Itinierant Arias<\/i>, his fourth album. Stelling plays the Altamont Theatre May 27, his band’s first local show since returning to Asheville after nine years living in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

Stelling wrote obliquely topical songs like \u201cBadguys\u201d months before the election. \u201cI turned in the finished record in September,\u201d he says, \u201cso I was writing it all throughout the year when I was touring.\u201d He’s a bit surprised that the country’s turn toward a populist demagogue caught so many people unaware, and suggests that many Americans \u2013 himself included \u2013 tend to live their lives inside a \u201cbubble.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you live in Asheville you live in a bubble; if you live in New York City you live in a bubble,\u201d says Stelling, who started his musical career in Asheville, relocated to Brooklyn, and has of late moved back to Western N.C. \u201cBut if you get outside of these isolated environments, you see what’s really going on.\u201d He believes that his travels \u2013 taking him to places like Oklahoma, Ohio, \u201cmiddle-of-nowhere Kansas\u201d and Europe \u2013 opened his eyes to the concerns of a much wider sampling of people.<\/p>\n

Stelling is wary of too much being made of his supposed prescience. \u201cThere’s always a press release that a [record] label writes to spark people’s interest,\u201d he says, demonstrating a healthy awareness of how the music business operates. He doesn’t consider any of the observations within the songs on Itinerant Arias<\/i> at all prophetic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe general denial with which we were approaching this … regime change, if you will, is pretty insane,\u201d he says. Stelling’s busy touring schedule these last couple of years took him away from the telephone and Internet; instead he was \u201cgetting on the road, meeting actual people and talking.\u201d Stelling says he connected with people in a casual way, without any kind of agenda.<\/p>\n

Songs often grew out of Stelling’s experiences on the road, but not in a deliberate way. He says that he rarely sits down to write a song about a specific topic or idea. \u201cIt’s more like automatic writing,\u201d he explains. \u201cI usually figure out what [my songs] are all about afterwards.\u201d While he doesn’t consider himself \u201cmystical,\u201d Stelling allows that he considers songwriting something of a spiritual practice, \u201ceven though I really regret using that word,\u201d he adds with a laugh.<\/p>\n

When he does<\/i> sit down to work, songwriting isn’t usually on his mind. \u201c90% of the time I’m sitting at the desk trying to book the shows and make the tours and order the t-shirts \u2026 and sustain actually being a working, blue-collar musician,\u201d Stelling says.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe that’s not as romantic as people would want to hear,\u201d Stelling says, \u201cbut [songwriting] is more the ‘magical’ element of it. The songs just kind of show up. <\/b>I don’t consider that effort; that’s not hard for me. <\/b>Thinking and pondering and being creative: that’s easy for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

For an artist who’s been getting some notices for his insight into where this country was headed, Christopher Paul Stelling seems remarkably content with the idea of embracing uncertainty. \u201cThat’s kind of my thing on the whole record,\u201d he says. \u201cThat’s my faith at this point. You can drive yourself crazy trying to know.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody wants to know<\/i>,\u201d Stelling says. \u201cAnd religion sells us on this. I really do believe that deep down they know<\/i> they don’t know. But they’re selling us on the fact that they do.\u201d Stelling chooses instead to accept \u201cnot knowing\u201d with open arms. But not, he says, \u201cin a way that’s [full of] angst or antagonistic; more in a way that’s freeing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stelling savors the freedom he experiences as a touring musician who isn’t super-famous. \u201cWe have the benefit of really kind of knowing our audience and befriending our audience in a way that a star never could, you know? <\/b>We’re accessible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christopher Paul Stelling is a singer-songwriter; he doesn’t include an ability to predict the future among his skills. Yet unlike some of the most respected pollsters, the seismic political changes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13042,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,62],"tags":[237,3117],"class_list":["post-13041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-new-release","category-rawk","tag-asheville","tag-christopher-paul-stelling","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13043,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13041\/revisions\/13043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}