Life Is Just A Vapor Paul Thorn

• 1 Tough Times Don't Last 03:31
• 2 Courage My Love 03:50
• 3 She Will 04:06
• 4 Chicken Wing 03:11
• 5 Life Is Just A Vapor 04:26
• 6 Geraldine & Ricky 04:06
• 7 I'm Just Waiting 04:04
• 8 I Knew 03:48
• 9 Wait 04:08
• 10 I Love You Like A Cigarette 04:05
• 11 Old Melodies 04:18
• Total Runtime 43:33

Info for Life Is Just A Vapor

When it comes to songwriting, less is more and simplicity is strength. Just ask Paul Thorn, who's spent three decades turning soulful grooves and small syllables into songs that pack a big wallop. Maybe he learned the power of minimalism from his years as a pro boxer, maybe it just comes naturally. But whether he's targeting heads, hearts, hips or the occasional funny bone, he somehow manages to condense large nuggets of wisdom into tight little mantras, the kind embroiderers stitched onto pillows before internet memes existed.

Thorn's new album, "Life Is Just a Vapor, contains some beauties. "Life is a vapor, let's live it while we can"; "tough times don't last, but tough people do" (from "Tough Times Don't Last"); "any mountain up ahead is just a hill" (from "Old Melodies"). They're words of advice, comfort, support, encouragement, often meant to uplift, especially in times of struggle.

"I like for people to be touched by music and get something from it, something that they can take with them throughout the day," Thorn says. "Every song on this album, there's a message in it of some sort about how to live life."

American Blues Scene writer Don Wilcock calls Thorn "an everyman (who) addresses things we all think about, but few can articulate with the kind of candor, humor and folksy truth that immediately endear him to almost everyone lucky enough to hear his music."

Whether he’s expressing love in “I Knew,” warning an ex’s new conquest about the dangers ahead in “She Will,” extolling the value of holding off on sex in “Wait” or listing the ingredients for making a marriage work in “Courage My Love” (“a half-acre on your daddy’s land / and a little luck / a load of white gravel in our driveway / so we don’t get stuck in a rut /a 3-horsepower lawnmower and courage my love”), Thorn delivers his messages with consummate skill — and pinpoint precision. One minute, he’ll unwind an outrageous tale full of wild characters (often accompanied by his own cartoonish illustrations); the next, he’ll tug at heartstrings with confessions of love, loss or failed dreams, balancing wit and pathos with an ease only the best storytellers can pull off. One of Thorn’s favorites was his friend and mentor John Prine, who inspired the title tune.

We’ll discuss that one in a bit, but first, we should mention that in “Wait,” a commentary about dating in the Tinder era, the fella who buys his dates dinner with a two-for-$20 coupon is someone Thorn actually knows. “Geraldine and Ricky” is based on real people, too — well, a real person and her hickory-headed dummy. Whether written solo, with longtime manager/collaborator/album producer Billy Maddox or with Chuck Cannon, Scotty Brassfield or Denny Carr, nearly all of these songs are inspired by or reference actual events or people; Geraldine was a traveling evangelist who couldn’t connect with children until she tried ventriloquism. When she spread the lord’s word through Ricky, kids were mesmerized — including 5-year-old Thorn, who requested, and got, a ventriloquist doll for Christmas.

“I would get up and tell jokes at church, and I'd take it to school and tell jokes at school,” he says, with that Tupelo, Miss.-formed accent and instantly charming, matter-of-fact delivery he has. “I had my mind up that when I grew up, I was going to be a ventriloquist.” (His singing career actually began at 3 — in church, of course; Thorn’s dad was a Pentecostal minister.)

Over a snaky rhythm enhanced by guest guitarist Luther Dickinson, Thorn fictitiously paints Geraldine as “a toxic opportunist looking for anything that will better her situation.” When she lands a dying old sugar daddy, she dumps Ricky. But karma catches up to Geraldine, while Ricky, thankfully, gets rescued.

But Life is Just a Vapor is not all homilies and humor. “I’m Just Waiting,” a catchy, funky tune featuring blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa, deftly examines relationship insecurity. In “Chicken Wing,” over a cool melody on which guitarists Michael Graham and Bill Hinds (on slide) merge T. Rex with Southern rock, a former pimp and scam artist admits: “I’m in the winter of my life / I love my dog, I like my wife / I wash the dishes, I sweep the floor / I keep a 12-gauge behind the door.”

For the record, the song is not about the uncle Thorn introduced on Pimps and Preachers, one of a dozen albums he’s released on his own Perpetual Obscurity Records since founding the label in 2000. (Thorn made his recording debut on A&M Records in 1997, after ex-Police manager Miles Copeland III heard him and had him open for then-client Sting, one of A&M’s top talents.) And just to be clear, Thorn’s definition of pimp includes “anybody that manipulates people and doesn't give them nothing in return.”

“I'm around pimps every day, especially in the music business,” he adds. “A pimp is a larger word than just somebody on the corner with a gold chain. ‘Chicken Wing’ is an overview of a bunch of pimps that I have known in my life and I melded their stories together. … all that song is about is different seasons of life.”

“a natural-born Southern storyteller with humble stage banter and musical delivery that’s gritty and gruff” (NPR)

Paul Thorn

Paul Thorn
"In the past, I've told stories that were mostly inspired by my own life," the former prizefighter and literal son of a preacher man offers. "This time, I've written 10 songs that express more universal truths, and I've done it with a purpose: to make people feel good."

Which explains numbers like the acoustic-electric charmer Don't Let Nobody Rob You Of Your Joy, where Thorn's warm peaches-and-molasses singing dispenses advice on avoiding the pitfalls of life. The title track borrows its tag from a familiar saying among the members of the African-American Baptist churches Thorn frequented in his childhood. "I'd ask, 'How you doin', sister?' And what I'd often hear back was, 'I'm too blessed to be stressed.'" In the hands of Thorn and his faithful band, who've been together 20 years, the tune applies its own funky balm, interlacing a percolating drum and keyboard rhythm with the slinky guitar lines beneath his playful banter.

Thorn's trademark humor is abundant throughout the album. I Backslide On Friday is a warm-spirited poke at personal foibles. "I promised myself not to write about me, but I did on 'Backslide,' " Thorn relates. The chipper pop tune is a confession about procrastination, sweetened by Bill Hinds' slide guitar and Thorn's gently arching melody. "But," Thorn protests, "I know I'm not the only one who says he's gonna diet and just eat Blue Bell vanilla ice cream on Sundays, and then ends up eating it every day!"

Mediocrity Is King takes a wider swipe, aiming at our culture's hyper-drive addiction to celebrity artifice and rampant consumerism. But likeEverything Is Gonna Be All Right, a rocking celebration of the simple joys of life, it's done with Thorn's unflagging belief in the inherent goodness of the human heart.

"I don't think I could have written anthemic songs like this if I hadn't made my last album," Thorn says of 2012's What the Hell is Goin' On?. Like 2010's autobiographical Pimps & Preachers, it was among its year's most played CDs on Americana radio and contributed to Thorn's rapidly growing fan base. And Thorn followed that airplay success with his current AAA-radio hit version of Doctor My Eyes from April 2014's Looking Into You: A Tribute To Jackson Browne. The latter also features Grammy winners Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, Lyle Lovett, the Indigo Girls, Lucinda Williams, Keb' Mo', Ben Harper and Don Henley.

What the Hell is Goin' On? was also Thorn's first set of songs written by other artists, borrowed from the catalogs of Allen Toussaint, Buddy and Julie Miller, and Rick Danko, among others.

"I lived with those songs and studied them before I recorded that album, and that changed me and made me grow as a songwriter," Thorn relates. "Lindsey Buckingham's Don't Let Me Down Again especially got me thinking. It was a rock anthem with a sing-along hook, and I fell in love with it and the idea of big vocal hooks. So every song on Too Blessed To Be Stressedhas a big vocal hook in it. And it works! We've been playing these songs in concert, and by the time the chorus comes along for the second time people are singing along. I've never seen that happen with my unreleased songs before, and I love it."

It helps that those big vocal hooks on Too Blessed To Be Stressed are being reinforced by the sound of Thorn's flexible and dynamic band, as they have been doing for years in concert. During their two decades in the club, theater and festival trenches, the four-piece and their frontman have garnered a reputation for shows that ricochet from humor to poignancy to knock-out rock 'n' roll. Guitarist Bill Hinds is the perfect, edgy foil for Thorn's warm, laconic salt o' the earth delivery – a veritable living library of glowing tones, sultry slide and sonic invention. Keyboardist Michael "Dr. Love" Graham displays a gift for melody that reinforces Thorn's hooks while creating his own impact, and helps expand the group's rhythmic force. Meanwhile drummer Jeffrey Perkins and bassist Ralph Friedrichsen are a force, propelling every tune with just the right amount of up-tempo power or deep-in-the-groove restraint.

"These guys really bring my songs to life," says Thorn. "A lot of albums sound like they're made by a singer with bored studio musicians. My albums sound they're played by a real blood-and-guts band because that's what we are. And when we get up on stage, people hear and see that."

Thorn's earlier catalog is cherished by his many fans thanks to his down-home perspective, vivid-yet-plainspoken language and colorful characters. It helps that Thorn is a colorful and distinctly Southern personality himself. He was raised in Tupelo, Mississippi, in the land of cotton and catfish. And churches.

"My father was a preacher, so I went with him to churches that white people attended and churches that black people attended," Thorn says. "The white people sang gospel like it was country music, and the black people sang it like it was rhythm and blues. But both black and white people attended my father's church, and that's how I learned to sing mixing those styles."

His performances were generally limited to the pews until sixth grade. "I'm dyslexic and got held back in sixth grade," Thorn relates. "I didn't have to face the embarrassment, because my family moved and I ended up in a new school. There was a talent show, and I sang Three Times a Lady by Lionel Ritchie with my acoustic guitar, and suddenly I went from being a social outcast to the most desired boy on the playground. The feeling I got from that adulation stuck with me and propelled me to where I am today."

At age 17 Thorn met songwriter Billy Maddox, who became his friend and mentor. It would take several detours – working in a furniture factory, boxing, jumping out of airplanes – until Thorn committed to the singer-songwriter's life. But through it all he and Maddox remained friends, and Maddox became Thorn's songwriting partner and co-producer.

Nonetheless, Thorn possessed the ability to charm audiences right from the start. Not only with his music, but also with the stories he tells from the stage. "Showmanship is a dying art that I learned from watching Dean Martin on TV when I was a kid," Thorn explains. "He could tell little jokes and then deliver a serious song, then make you laugh again. And he would look into the camera like he was looking right at you through the TV. That's what I want to do – make people feel like I'm talking directly to them."

That's really Thorn's mission for Too Blessed To Be Stressed, which can be heard as a running conversation about life between Thorn and listeners – a conversation leavened with gentles insights, small inspirations, and plenty of cheer. "I wrote these songs hoping they might put people in a positive mindset and encourage them to count their own blessings, like I count mine," Thorn observes. "There's no higher goal I could set for myself than to help other people find some happiness and gratitude in their lives."

This album contains no booklet.