'Les Paul's' (The Paul's) Interview

 

Alternative music duo, 'Les Paul's' (The Paul's) 

Who all makes up Les Paul's (The Paul's)?
We are called 'Les Paul's' as it means 'The Paul's' in French as we are both called 'Paul', hence 'Les Paul's' (The Paul's)! We are basically a song writing duo of singer songwriter, composer and producer Paul Odiase and myself, song lyricist Paul Robert Thomas.  

Where did you grow up? We both are from North London in England, I, Paul Robert Thomas, went to school a stone's-throw away from The Beatles Abbey Road Studio in St John's Wood in the 60's and Paul Odiase grew up in Islington, literally a few miles away, but we never knew or met each other while we were living in London and only after we had settled in foreign lands did we make contact and start our musical collaboration together. 

How did you get together as a band? I had started writing lyrics in 1996, at the request of a German singer songwriter, Stefan Pauleit, who had contacted me via an advert in the Dylan magazine Isis (Dylan was and still is a major influence on my work) and I progressed and opened music sites such as My Space and Reverbnation, and eventually my own web site at www.paullyrics.com. One day, multi-instrumentalist Paul Odiase, who had been in various bands including a Jimi Hendrix tribute band, had built a home recording studio and was looking to work together with a lyricist to create and release songs, and so he contacted me and we immediately gelled together musically and we released two albums a couple of months apart in 2014 called, 'Holy Land Revisited' and 'P.O.P.' (Paul on Paul), and since then we have now released 19 albums together, our current album being called 'Rise Up' that was released in April 2023. 

Do you write and produce all of your music? We have a Elton John/Bernie Taupin method of creating our songs, I send Paul the lyrics and he composes, performs and records the songs in his home studio and then I get them released! 

What is a songwriting session like for you? In my teens I started writing poetry, I would give folders of my poems to various girlfriends I had while staying as a volunteer on a kibbutz, and from 1996, when I was asked to write lyrics for a German composer, I adapted to writing song lyrics and I am now writing all the time and I always have spare lyrics that I am looking to turn into songs. Paul Odiase and I create themed albums and so I write or already have lyrics suitable for the genre of song or album that we want to create, and so I send him lots of sets of lyrics in that genre and Paul will choose those that he feels are suitable and that he can make good songs from. Our last album Reincarnation 420 (for Tuff Gong), was a decidedly Reggae album with Bob Marley as its influence and our latest album that was released in April 2023, Rise Up, also has a Reggae influence on some of the tracks, but we deliberately made the last track called 'Patty Batty' a heavily Rock influenced song, as our next album we are already working on will be a purely Rock album! 

What is your local alternative scene like right now in London? Although we are both Londoners, we moved away from the UK some years ago and Paul Odiase relocated to just outside of Bern in Switzerland, and I now reside just outside of Tel Aviv and the music scene here is vibrant and most major artists come here to perform, I saw Robbie Williams a couple of weeks ago in concert and Guns & Roses performed a few days later although I also will travel to London for special concerts, like the 2019 Hyde Park concerts with Neil Young and Bob Dylan. 

Your website is well made with a ton of information, who put it all together and maintains it?
My son went to a London university to study computer related studies and gained a BSC with honours, and so when he returned he built and also maintains my music web site at www.paullyrics.com, and as well as songs and albums it contains interviews and stories about my meeting with Andy Warhol from when I used to sell hot dogs outside The Roundhouse, in the early 1970's, as well as the letter that Robert Johnson's grandson wrote to me as a result of hearing one of the early songs I made with the German composer, called 'Sold My Soul To The Devil'. 

Do you perform live often? I myself am a non-performing song lyricist, but did sing on stage one time when I went to visit a German band I wrote for called Guitavio, we performed Dylan's 'Knocking on Heaven's Door'. Paul Odiase occasionally performs in a couple of bands, his latest project is making and performing with a homemade matchbox guitar, but he can play almost any instrument from guitar to saxophone.  

Tell us about your latest project. Our latest and 19th album together as 'Les Paul's' (The Paul's) is Rise Up! The album was released on all download platforms by my net label called Swiss Cottage Recordz, with the Publishing by Studio City's UL Sounds in conjunction with Budde Music Publishing. We have released two promo videos, the Rise Up song samples video at  https://youtu.be/HgQrapGtyd8 and the Holy Land Shuffle video at  https://youtu.be/1oxSiH3o6_Q. You can listen to our latest album, Rise Up, on the album's web page at https://www.paullyrics.com/album/rise-up-2, on Reverbnation at https://www.reverbnation.com/riseup90 (where it's currently No.5 in London's Reggae charts), and on Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/paulrthomas/sets/rise-up. 

What can we expect from you in the future? We are already working on our next 'Les Paul's' (The Paul's) album, which will be a Rock album and I wrote about 20 new sets of lyrics that I sent over to Paul to choose from and our songs do and always have contained messages or themes, like the new album could cover subjects such as domestic violence, gun control, global warming/5G, discrimination and empowerment, among other subjects!