ELI ‘PAPERBOY’ REED (USA)
“It’s been twenty years since I’ve had a real job”, laughs Eli Paperboy Reed from his Brooklyn apartment. In some ways, he’s not joking, though those two decades have been chock full of the round-the-clock hustle that it takes to make a career in the fickle music industry. Indeed, Reed has found a way to maintain a famously high standard for both his critically acclaimed albums (nine and counting) and his notoriously sweaty, searing and soulful live sets. None of this was a foregone conclusion.
In 2015, the music industry, and major labels in particular were in freefall and Reed fell victim to the death rattle. Some fans balked at the poppier sound of “Nights Like This” and without the support of a major label, Reed returned to his homebase of Brooklyn, NY to regroup. He was down, but not out. In a span of six weeks, he wrote an entire LP’s worth of material that became the album “My Way Home.” It’s an album that’s both back-to-basics and startlingly current and it began Reed’s relationship with famed indie label Yep Roc Records, a partnership that continues to this day.
Reed was one of the very first of the new wave of singers and songwriters to embrace unabashedly soulful music and he’s still doing it his way, two decades on. He’s celebrating that milestone with a 20th anniversary reissue of the album “Walkin’ and Talkin’” from 2005, this time on vinyl. “Listening back to those songs and my 21 year-old self” he says, “is a strange sensation.” “I can hear the wheels turning, the speed picking up, taking me in the direction I wanted to go, but I didn’t know where it would lead me or how long it might take to get there.” Twenty years on, Reed is still singing, playing and writing his heart out, heading towards the next stop.
https://www.elipaperboyreed.com
