PAUL ROCHA

I tried to present this album as a two-sided LP. That’s why High Society Girls isn't listed on the cover. It's supposed to be a hidden track meant only to serve as an aural palate-cleanse between sides One and Two. If you have to ask, it probably didn't work. But I do miss the gift of the two-sided LP. It was often two very different listening experiences. I have a whole spiel about that. I'll tell you sometime.

ABOUT THE SONGS: 

I Gave It to You - I wrote this in 2014-15 in Warren. It's a movie song. I see it playing out in front of me. Especially the second verse with the Fellini scenario. I've often used 'hookers and midgets' as a punchline of sorts so it was inevitable that I would use it in a song. That moment reminds me of a scene from the movie High Fidelity. It's that low-hanging fruit that we use in order to torture ourselves by picturing our recent ex-partner having the most amazing sex with the guy she dumped you for. Self-Love's prick brother.

Lorelei was the first psychedelic song I ever wrote. One night, I was in the studio, dosed, I created a psychedelic drum pattern and proceded to play every Beatle song that worked in that feel. There are so many. All while singing through the speakers with a lot of reverb. My hands just went where they were supposed to go and I was definitely channeling something. I started singing about this fictitious girl, Lorelei. I was in a zone and this song came through me. Did I mention I was tripping?

Land of No Weather I originally recorded a solo acoustic version of this song in 1994 and put it on a collection that I gave to friends called Breakfast Epiphanies (1994). This song just flowed out of me. It wrote itself. The unemployed weathermen causing 'wild in the streets' is a reference to an absurd joke between a close friend and myself. 

SomeDay/OneDay - 90% was written on the last day of 2015 and recorded quickly in the span of about about two weeks at the very beginning of 2016.  I like this one because there's just enough to hold on to. It's the closest I will get to being a Cowsill in 1966. Definitely a modern day fable. Its sudden appearance was the finger on the scale that determined the kind of pop record Stingy Alley was going to be.

Stingy Alley - I knew I was going to write a song with this title the moment I saw the name on the monolith by the church. Had the chorus for a couple of months when a musician friend mentioned Stingy Alley in conversation. I was worried he would use the phrase in a song first, so I made it a point to finish this and record it. Its sound is based on the Nashville guitar tuning. Recorded over the course of about 3 years. This one, like some others, plays out like a movie in my head.

High Society Girls - Acapella piece I had been singing to myself for a couple of years for amusement. Very campy. Tried to sound like a cross between Bing Crosby and some doo-wop guys I've heard along the way. Recorded during the Crayons sessions with Matt Cullen. You may recognize his fellow finger clicks. Very distinctive. 

Wuddaya Think of That? is the first real recording I did on my own using Pro Tools. Aaah .. new love with an old flame. It was begun in 2011 at Poncho del Rio, a little building by the Warren River that I used on weekends for about six months in the winter/spring of 2011. I think I can safely say that this is the only recording originating in that studio that will ever see the light of day.  

Lookin’ for You is probably my personal favorite on the record. It's playful. The melody came while in a restaurant. Had to sneak off into the bathroom and sing it into my phone so I wouldn't forget it. Made my jaw harp debut on this recording. This is yet another fable. We're all trying to get home.

Your Hopeless Heart was an acoustic instrumental guitar piece, written in 2010-11 in a different key and at a much slower tempo before I turned it into an actual song. I remember often writing words to this in the shower on Bright Street in Northampton, MA for a while. This is the original fable of the entire lot.

Acacia Tree- I wrote this song in 2007 about my crumbling marriage. It was removed at the last-minute from Crayons because it was the only song on the record that was personal. I felt out of place amidst all the whimsy. I said, “Look kid. It's not your night. You'll have your day. I promise.”

Like a Foreign Movie - Each verse is a different secret infatuation in Northampton. Spanning years. It is a slowed-down version of an old song by R Complex called Lassie Is Gone. R Complex was a favorite early 80s band of mine/ours from Northampton. Very good friends of ours. Ernoid F. Quebec wrote it and Jimmy Weeks played this great arpeggio lick off that F#7/add4. It's that F#7 chord position with the open E and B strings. I had the first verse to this song for years. Always had trouble writing the chorus for it, so eventually, I gave up and pirated one from a song called When the Lights Go Down that I wrote and recorded in 1993. Wrote the bridge during the Crayons sessions when I was hoping to shoehorn this song into that project, to no avail. Put a bunch of things muttered into the microphone during the final fade out and throughout the song if you listen closely.

PR 2021