Life Chapters: An Interview with Singer-Songwriter Paula Boggs

Photo: Tom Reese



                  Paula Boggs has worn more than a few hats in her lifetime, a musician and songwriter logging in a decade now as the front-woman for the Paula Boggs band, a lawyer, a former federal prosecutor, and an Army Airborne veteran. Up until this year, when she and other members decided to resign, she was also a longstanding member of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, originally appointed by President Obama. Boggs has spent a lifetime in service in various fields and capacities, but it is with music that one feels the soul speak through those life chapters. As Paula puts it: "Music is our best shot at “hearing” each other." On the bands new album Elixir: The Soulgrass Sessions, the call to connection, action and human understanding is poignantly at work through each of the songs, and if ever there were a time when such music was necessary, it is now. "Every day is a canvas" and we must use our brush well, if the surface happens to be our world what would you want to see reflected back at you, truth, beauty, love, understanding? These are the themes threading through Boggs' vast musical book, the life chapters lead one to a present not just born of experience, but of a lot of hope too; "I’ve now lived through enough freakout moments to know the sun will rise the next day," Paula says, adding: "It’ll rise for you too."


AHC: What has this journey in music, so far, been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way? 

Paula: My music journey has life chapters.  Exposure to music came early through the rhythm and blues I heard at home, to the Catholic folk music at school and my dad’s church, to the more solemn traditional minor chord music also at St. Joseph’s, to the gospel music of my mom’s African Methodist Episcopal faith.  Though I started playing piano at age 6, by 10 I’d found a passion for guitar and songwriting.  

During my teen years in Europe where my mom taught, I continued to write music, performing in choirs, talent show or a music event, but I also got exposure to more classical music, jazz, European folk music, Armed Forces Network top 40 music and euro-rock.  Returning to the U.S. for college exposed me to new and diverse music, including Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen — and living in Berkeley, CA after that exposed me to more.  

Throughout this time I played in and sometimes wrote music for folk mass and found my way to an open mic from time to time until I stopped — partly due to leaving the Catholic Church and also because a law career consumed more of me year over year. Though I didn’t consider it “low” as I was going through it, not playing or writing music for 15 years was my music “low” and I’m living the “high” right now.  I’ve never felt more free to write and share music than right now.

AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them?

Paula: I don’t remember a time without music.  My dad in particular was very musical.  He played sax and was a cantor.  Jerry Butler’s “Moon River” is the first song I recall and I was likely 2 or 3 when I first heard it. The nuns at my Catholic school were smitten by Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Judy Collins, Peter, Paul & Mary, etc. so I was hearing that from first grade on along with the folk mass music of the day.   Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence” floored me the first time I heard it — the chord progressions, it’s poetry, it’s message, the weaving of their voices — and 50 years later, Disturbed floored me again by covering it.  

AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? 

Paula: A “good” song communicates something impactful to the listener.  On our latest album, “Elixir, The Soulgrass Sessions” we have songs that tell traditional stories, those that convey messages that can be received more than one way, songs that through words, melody and arrangement set a mood or evoke a visceral state and those that tell a story solely through instruments. For me, writing inspiration comes from a variety of places — a newspaper article, a triggering personal life event or empathy for another’s, something random while walking, people-watching at Starbucks; it’s all fair game.

AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, a slightly imperfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, states of rupture/rapture, hope lost and regained? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener?

Paula: I don’t think music always heals.  Some music irritates or agitates me. It makes me uncomfortable. Some music I can only listen to at certain times of day; it’s almost like consuming too much caffeine. The music I write can be frustrating when I’m stuck but mostly it’s healing for me. It’s sometimes the only way I can express something. It becomes my translator. It can take on friend-like qualities.  My number one goal in writing is to be authentic.  That comes before worrying about whether anyone, even me, likes it.  We humans sometimes hear through song what we fail to hear through spoken or written word.  Music is primal.  We all have a relationship with it and so in that way, it is truly a universal language. 

AHC: What are your fondest musical memories? In your house? In your neighborhood or town? On-tour, on-the-road?

Paula: There are many but here are a few. My fondest music memories as a little kid are of my siblings and I performing the Staples Singers “O Happy Day” to family friends and others or me driving to school with my dad and hearing Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” or The New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral” on the radio and knowing all the words. In 9th grade I spent a week in a German castle with other American kids, Germans, Canadians and Brits. At the beginning of the week none of us knew the music but by Friday night we gave a recital of works like Handel’s Messiah and Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. In 9th grade I was chosen by the senior class to sing and play Dylan’s “The Times They are a Changing” at their graduation ceremony and I sang and played an original song at my own.  While living in Berkeley, I attended The Rolling Stones “Tattoo You” concert in Candlestick Park. Hands down, the most amazing experience I’ve had as a touring musician happened in Charleston, SC last June when we premiered our song “Benediction” with the Mother Emanuel AME Choir on the second anniversary of their church massacre.

AHC: You give credence and are dedicated to the fact that the political is personal and that we all bear responsibility for the fabric of our world, our country, our town. As you sing in Sleepwalking, "Every day is a canvas... grab that brush and use it well," do you find music uniquely situated to carry a message that is able to soar beyond our usual defenses and plant seeds, hopefully, of a more open, responsive and sustainable world?

Paula: Music is our best shot at “hearing” each other.  Paul Simon wrote about this in “The Sounds of Silence.” When Paula Boggs Band sings “Sleepwalking” my hope is our music uplifts while also sending the message “all of us must have skin in this game” to make it better.

AHC: Your new record, Elixir: The Soulgrass Sessions, is an incredible mix of themes that I think is unified by love; protest, faith, the struggles and arc of a life, seem tied in to an ineradicable sense of connection that must be rekindled in our age of rapid disconnection and fraying. "I don't have answers and I can't pretend, but I know that we need each other just to mend and reset how the game is played" as you sing in "Peel the Charade," is an important reminder to the fact that no one really goes it alone. Do you find love, universal perhaps because first born on a smaller scale, to be one of the guiding lights on this record? What were your inspirations going into this latest record and your overall feelings about its final form?

Paula: I think love is universal and we need to find paths to empathize with each other within the United States and beyond.  For Earth to survive I don’t think we have the luxury of doing something different.  Life has taken me many places and my journey teaches me we are more alike than different.  There are folks I know who see the world differently in myriad ways.  One of them, from high school, is on the polar opposite end of the political spectrum, but he drove 4 hours to see us play in Philadelphia —someone I reconnected with on Facebook but had not seen in a generation plus. We are different races; he calls me his “sister.” I don’t often “agree” with him but I “see” him. The music I wrote, the song “Two Daughters” our banjo player/guitarist Mark Chinen wrote and our decision to cover Bon Iver’s “Holocene” were inspired by deep “love,” concern and “wonder.” We wanted to create something bigger than ourselves, something authentic, something enduring, something artistically excellent. With the help of producer/engineer Trina Shoemaker and Robert Lang Studios each of us dug deep within ourselves to make this record.  I’ll never forget Trina asking me “where did you go?” after she heard me sing the second verse in “Holocene.” Time will tell whether this work endures and the listener will judge its excellence.  It is though bigger than the sum of our parts and it is authentic.

AHC: Do you have any words of advice or encouragement for other musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are just starting out and trying to find their voice and their way in this world? What are the kinds of things that you tell yourself when you begin to have doubts or are struggling with the creative process? Or what kinds of things have others told you that have helped push you past moments of self doubt/creative blocks?

Paula: A lifetime ago, jumping out of perfectly well-functioning planes, I learned it’s OK to be afraid.  Sometimes fear is extremely rational.  What sometimes separates those paralyzed by fear from others is what we do with it.  Every day I wake up not knowing if there’s another song in me.  Song ideas come to me randomly; there’s no method to it. Sometimes it’s melody first and sometimes it’s prose.  I am very fortunate to have a  life partner who believes in me unflinchingly when others don’t.  It’s a gift to have played with Sandy Greenbaum, Mark Chinen and Tor Dietrichson 10 years.  That stability fuels the creative process.  It’s hard to make a living in music and I’ve learned to augment what I earn in music with other jobs.  Though that mix is different for each member of Paula Boggs Band, we all do it. Things go wrong. A string breaks. Amps don’t work.  The sound guy doesn’t show up.  A member of the band bails.  I’ve now lived through enough freakout moments to know the sun will rise the next day. It’ll rise for you too.


For more visit  www.paulaboggsband.net/