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Pimps and Preachers [FLAC/320]
Among those who value originality, inspiration, eccentricity, and character as well as talent that hovers somewhere on the outskirts of genius, the story of Paul Thorn is already familiar. Now, Thorn reveals another layer of his fascinating history on the album Pimps and Preachers, addressing that subject on the title cut and in the intriguing family portrait he painted for the cover, which highlights his daddy, the preacher and his uncle the pimp.
The cover depicts a teeming street scene, at the unlikely intersection of Redemption Lane and Turn Out Blvd. two figures dominate: a pimp and a preacher, both dressed to the nines beneath broad-brimmed hats, surrounded by streetwalkers, holy rollers and onlookers all on their paths to salvation or perdition.
Nearly lost in this tumult is a small boy, banging a tambourine branded with the name of Jesus but backed up against a hooker holding a fistful of greenbacks. That little boy represents me, says Thorn. I m in the church group but my eyes are looking back to the streets where all the sin is going on. It shows me being intrigued by the broad world. That s why I made this my album cover: It describes who I am.
Pimps and Preachers fills in the missing pieces of Paul Thorn's musical autobiography and goes further. Throughout his career as a singer and songwriter (he's had others -- as a boxer who battled Roberto Duran on national television and as a factory worker, to mention just two), Thorn has offered narratives of the sacred and the profane. Most often these have been in the first person, steeped in Southern musical traditions informed by gospel, rhythm & blues, roots rock, and blues. That said, while anyone who's followed him knows his father was a Church of God preacher, few knew his uncle -- his father's brother -- was, in his own youth, a pimp, and Thorn's life was informed by both. The grand funky blues of the title track and the beautiful, electric country soul of "I Hope I'm Doing This Right" tell those stories in his beautifully direct, rough-and-tumble poetic style. But it's the rest of the album that reflects his growing sophistication as a songwriter.
Check the rollicking opener, "You're Not the Only One," with its .38 Special-esque shuffling guitars accompanying him, relating a morality tale about the similarity of people's problems despite their standing in life. "Love Scar" artfully tells a (true) story that a woman revealed to him about a unique tattoo she received (and regrets) during a vulnerable time in her life and how the memory of the experience haunts her. Despite his obvious gravelly baritone and masculine delivery, he offers this midtempo ballad --one of the saddest allegories on love's blindness written in a long time --with great empathy: "He said, if I could be a tear/Rollin' down your cheek/And die on your lips/My life would be complete/The words that he said really hit her in the heart/So now she's walkin' round with a love scar." "You Might Be Wrong" is a rock & roll admonition about self righteousness-- that no one holds a monopoly on the truth. "Tequila Is Good for the Heart" is a rocking, humorous but poignant honky tonk waltz that claims both prayer and drinking are a good combination for curing a broken heart. The raucous, funky shuffle "I Don't Like Half the Folks I Love" is a personal revelation that hits close to home for most of us.
Ultimately, Pimps and Preachers is a great rock & roll album that -- for all its good-time feel -- accomplishes the profound: it exposes the fictions, both spiritual and carnal, that promise us heaven, while holding us bound and twitching, just above our particular hells.
TrackList:
01. (00:02:55) Paul Thorn - You're Not The Only One
02. (00:04:07) Paul Thorn - Pimps and Preachers
03. (00:03:38) Paul Thorn - Tequila Is Good For The Heart
04. (00:04:05) Paul Thorn - Love Scar
05. (00:03:03) Paul Thorn - Weeds In My Roses
06. (00:04:05) Paul Thorn - Better Days Ahead
07. (00:04:03) Paul Thorn - Ray Ann's Shoes
08. (00:03:27) Paul Thorn - You Might Be Wrong
09. (00:04:55) Paul Thorn - Buckskin Jones
10. (00:03:25) Paul Thorn - I Hope I'm Doing This Right
11. (00:04:19) Paul Thorn - I Don't Like Half The Folks I Love
12. (00:03:40) Paul Thorn - Nona Lisa
13. (00:04:46) Paul Thorn - / That's Life
Playing Time.........: 00:50:29
Total Size...........: 347.00 MB (FLAC)
Total Size...........: 120.00 MB (MP3)
Personnel:
Paul Thorn (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mandolin, shaker);
Bill Hinds (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, slide guitar);
Kelvin Holly (acoustic guitar, baritone guitar);
Billy Maddox (acoustic guitar);
Michael Graham (baritone guitar, mandolin, piano, tambourine);
Donnie Carpenter (fiddle);
Jeffrey Perkins (drums).
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