{"id":6326,"date":"2014-09-12T05:30:24","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T09:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=6326"},"modified":"2014-09-12T05:30:24","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T09:30:24","slug":"everything-comes-together-the-paul-john-interview-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2014\/09\/12\/everything-comes-together-the-paul-john-interview-part-three\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything Comes Together: The Paul & John Interview, Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

The album that would become Inner Sunset<\/em> was announced in 2013, but the project’s gestation was a lengthy process, especially when compared to the quick, DIY measure employed by most other artists on the Mystery Lawn label. \u201cSeveral factors contributed to the album taking so long to come out,\u201d John Moremen<\/strong> explains. \u201cFirst, we wanted to record it at Mystery Lawn Studio with Allen Clapp<\/strong><\/a> engineering. It was a very busy four-year period for Allen, working with The Corner Laughers<\/strong><\/a>, Alison Levy<\/strong><\/a>, Jim Ruiz<\/strong><\/a>, Agony Aunts<\/strong><\/a>, William Cleere<\/strong><\/a>, Marshall Holland<\/strong><\/a> and [John Moremen’s] Flotation Device<\/strong><\/a>. We had to wait until Allen and the studio were available.\u201d Paul Myers<\/strong> stresses that \u201cAllen was ridiculously generous with his time, resources and talent, but that often meant we had to wait while The Orange Peels<\/strong><\/a> recorded and toured, or while other Mystery Lawn people had their turn with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>And while The Paul & John<\/strong>‘s mid-project decision to use only newer songs resulted in a better record, that too set the completion date back somewhat. \u201cOver the course of four years,\u201d says Myers, \u201cour sound evolved, and the later songs were better than the early ones. We’d decided that there’d be no filler or dead weight songs; every moment had to be uniformly ‘awesome,’ if only to ourselves.\u201d Moremen notes that \u201cwe completely rewrote the album about a year after we started working on it.\u201d And that, Myers adds, \u201cmeant throwing out stuff, re-cutting some stuff, and writing new stuff. Time flies when you’re having fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreoever, while Inner Sunset<\/em> is a carefully crafted work from start to finish, it’s the product of two men who remain very involved in a multitude of other musical (and music-related) endeavors. \u201c We aren’t a day-to-day thing,\u201d Paul Myers points out. \u201cWe both have other projects and jobs, so we end up taking weeks and months to accomplish what some bands do in a couple of days.\u201d During the years leading up to the eventual release of Inner Sunset<\/em>, music journalist\/author Myers was writing and doing promotional work for A Wizard \/ A True Star<\/em>, his excellent book<\/a> on Todd Rundgren<\/strong><\/a>. Meanwhile, Moremen was \u201cbusy working on The Orange Peels’ Sun Moon<\/em> album, recording a new album with Flotation Device and playing shows with Alison Levy, Roy Loney<\/strong>, and Half Japanese<\/strong><\/a>.\u201d He laughs and says that \u201cIt\u2019s kind of a miracle that we finished Inner Sunset<\/em> with all those other projects happening.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/center>Yet another<\/em> factor that affected the release timetable for Inner Sunset<\/em> was the pair’s reliance upon crowd funding to finance the album. \u201cI was a nervous wreck when we first launched our Kickstarter and donations weren’t coming right away,\u201d Myers candidly admits. \u201cYou start to doubt your mission, and for me, it stirred up old demons about social popularity. Insecurities run deep with me, and I really began to feel scared.\u201d But once word got out about the planned album, support grew quickly. \u201cThe best part was the overwhelming support,\u201d Moremen says. \u201cPeople really, really<\/em> wanted to see this album come out. We had so many positive vibes coming our way from so many people wishing us well.\u201d As the funding deadline approached, fans rallied. Myers explains that \u201cin the final weeks, the drought lifted, and a deluge of pledges came in. We exceeded our goal. So now, I feel gratified that people really did care. And I hope they actually play and enjoy the record.\u201d<\/p>\n

And though it was ultimately successful, Myers and Moremen learned a lot from the Kickstarter experience. \u201cThe next time I do one of these, I\u2019m going to put a little more planning into it regarding budgeting,\u201d says Moremen. Striking a hopeful note, he adds, \u201cthe next one should be a lot easier!\u201d Myers sums up the crowdfunding concept in a single sentence: \u201cPeople ultimately love to help creative people bring their artistic dreams to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Paul & John’s Inner Sunset<\/em> is available now from Mystery Lawn Music. And as Todd Rundgren<\/a>, one of Myers’ musical heroes, might say \u201cAnd there’s more.\u201d Paul says, \u201cwe’re putting together the live band [a record release show in San Francisco is scheduled for October 30], and we hope to start writing more songs together real soon. That’s where it all starts for me. I really hope it’s not another four years until a follow up!\u201d<\/p>\n

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Continued from Part Two… The album that would become Inner Sunset was announced in 2013, but the project’s gestation was a lengthy process, especially when compared to the quick, DIY […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,51,55,62],"tags":[1188,1245,1553,1665,2175],"class_list":["post-6326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","category-new-release","category-pop","category-powerpop","category-rawk","tag-john-moremen","tag-kickstarter","tag-mystery-lawn-music","tag-paul-myers","tag-the-paul-john","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-51-id","cat-55-id","cat-62-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6326","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=6326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}