Paul Siebel

By Ellen Geisel

From Dirty Linen #64 [June/July 1996]

 "Come gather all around me friends, I'll tell to you about the minstrel band; Of children in their witches hats and painting pictures with the pipes of Pan..."
-- Then Came The Children

Wasn't it a time! Wasn't it a place! The mid-to-late 60s, Greenwich Village, New York City. Music was heard coming from popular locations -- West Third, MacDougal and Bleecker Streets -- the names of these hallowed byways quickly becoming ingrained in the collective consciousness of an aware and rebellious generation. The folk revival was in full swing with clubs like Gerde's Folk City and the Cafe Wha being frequented by players and fans. Basket houses, such as the Four Winds, where a rudimentary form of the collection plate was passed around to pay the evening's act, were the order of the day. If you were a musician on this scene your contemporaries were the cream of the crop -- Jack Elliott, Dave Van Ronk, The Lovin' Spoonful, John Hammond, Richie Havens, and Tom Paxton. It was a nearly indescribable era when Bob Dylan could walk into a room with a commanding presence so profound that heads would immediately turn his way. Elsewhere on the musical front, the Beatles were making headline news every time they landed at an airport or arrived at a hotel, something that has never ever been duplicated by poor pretenders to the throne. Existing as an incredible artistic talent amid these magical, mystical goings-on was Paul Siebel.

Described by some as a "songwriter's songwriter," Siebel had a way with a tune, a strong sense of melody, an imaginative streak when it came to lyrics, and a hard-edged, intuitive tenor voice that handily delivered pictures, poetry and points of view. Siebel's music easily withstands the test of time on the Philo/Rounder Records reissue Paul Siebel. Released in late 1995, it includes the acclaimed Woodsmoke and Oranges (1970) in its entirety, and five songs from the much-praised Jack-Knife Gypsy (1971), both originally released on Elektra Records. Speaking of the project in a phone interview from his Maryland home, Siebel said, "I like it. I was pleasantly surprised. Let's say I've had so many disappointments with the industry. Not the performers. The performers have always been wonderful, but the industry itself, I don't know..."

A portrait quickly begins to take shape of Siebel as an artist who was a great influence on others from the standpoints of both music and friendship. Critically-heralded performers -- Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Waylon Jennings and Jerry Jeff Walker -- have recorded his material. His "Then Came the Children," a melodious and lilting piece with a flower-child ambiance that evokes images of beat poets and mystics, was inspired by the Incredible String Band and was later used by a charitable children's organization for promotional purposes.

Robert Zachary, Jr., former production manager for various rock and roll acts and current manager of the Turtle Island String Quartet, represented Siebel in contract negotiations with Elektra Records in 1969, and eventually ended up managing him. "At the time," Zachary laughed, "he didn't have a telephone. He lived on Thompson Street in the Village, so I used to have to send him telegrams. You know, to get him to come uptown and see us and talk to us or sign a contract or whatever.... This guy was real influential in my life. He's a real close friend. This was the first record (Jack-Knife Gypsy) I ever produced and I learned a lot by working with him. There are very few artists out there that have the kind of integrity that Paul Siebel does, which is one of the reasons, probably, he doesn't play anymore. I was honored to work with him and still honored to be a friend of his."

Peter Siegel, the producer of Woodsmoke and Oranges, is equally forthcoming with his praise. "I thought he was just a great, great singer and a great songwriter," he said. "I just really loved the music." Over the years, a shroud of mystery has developed around the subject of Paul Siebel and there were hints in past press that he was a reclusive character. "I don't think I would say he was reclusive," said Siegel. "He was not a person upon whom the agenda of the record industry was easily superimposed."

Siegel went on to describe Paul Siebel as an artist, and one who was heavily involved in the traditions and ideals of his music, but not necessarily in the business side of things -- the touring, the rehearsals, the publicity events -- that are part and parcel of the successful operation of a commercial record company like Elektra. For Siegel, who continues to produce records today, his association with Siebel has proved to be one of the high points of his career. "I always thought it (Woodsmoke and Oranges) was one of the best records I produced," he said.

Is Paul Siebel, in 1996, able to look back and be aware of the impact that he's had on the lives of others? Does he know that picking up the reissue introduces a younger crop of music lovers to songs of unusual substance? "Presented that way, no, I don't think I'm aware of any such a thing," he said. "The way I look at it, I think these younger people always are interested in researching folk music in that era; and so, since I was in that period I can understand why there'd be a certain amount of interest there. Back when I was doing that kind of thing I researched. We all did. But as far as influencing other people, I stagger with that one a little bit. Maybe I'm too close to tell, but I don't feel as though I've noticed anyone imitating my style of singing, for example."

Five minutes into a conversation with Paul Siebel and that mysterious bubble that has floated down through the years, encircling thoughts and remembrances of the man and his music, has suddenly burst. He was quite comfortable talking about his time on the music scene and he was particularly intrigued and flattered when someone not of that era confessed to being a fan. Sometimes Siebel minced words. He said that the comments from Siegel and Zachary make him feel "pretty good." At other times he was eloquent and elaborated in such a warm and friendly way that anyone bent on the research of which he spoke would have an easy task at hand. Siebel defined his active career as occurring during an approximately 10-year period from the late 60s to the late 70s, with a bit of extension into the 80s. "I wasn't getting anywhere," said Siebel. "So I stopped. Folk lost its popularity possibly a little in the early 80s. It's picked up again since. In fact, it's quite popular nowadays, the number of young people in it supporting one another and the Irish influence is very strong. I'm impressed at how big it is now. Not with the same intensity that there was in the late 60s, the Dylan era, Joan Baez and those magic concerts at Newport...." Siebel remembered how the audience was hushed when Mississippi John Hurt performed and how Johnny Cash received an unprecedented standing ovation at the legendary festival.

"...I gotta love so true that nothin' you could do could change me/I'm gonna let it shine, just like a blinding light...."
-- They Made Me Lose My Blues

Born in 1937 and raised in the ethnically-diverse Buffalo, New York area, Siebel came from a European family in which he studied classical violin and heard Strauss waltzes, "Santa Lucia" and "Tales From the Vienna Woods." He attended the University of Buffalo, but, unlike Boston University which spawned Baez, it did not prove to be a strong source of inspiration for the free 'n' easy country folk that he soon would create. In 1962, after a stint in the Army, he began to play the folk clubs in Buffalo. Siebel's arrival in Greenwich Village in 1965 coincided with a period when thoughts turned into art faster than you could light a cigarette in a dark coffeehouse. Dylan was an influence, as was Hank Williams, who Siebel said, "...were constantly in the forefront of my creativity. I suppose, this is what I was drawing on and this is what was inspiring me. I always kind of just fluff it off and say it was the era when that was just happening; all these new ideas flying around."

"It's a long way to Nashville but I've seen that road before/Here's hopin' that she knows me when I stand outside her door/but some wind came up this evening, all the stars have gone away/And there'll be a storm before the dawn, but I can't turn back no more..."
-- Nashville Again

Siebel was no stranger to dues-paying, having held a day job at a baby carriage factory in Brooklyn for a time, but gradually the paying gigs came and with the positive reaction to Woodsmoke and Oranges, he began a touring schedule that continued for the duration of his active career. The list of musicians that appear on Siebel's recordings reads like a Who's Who of country, folk and blues -- David Bromberg, Buddy Emmons, Russ Kunkel, and David Grisman, among others. Fans of Gram Parsons and Woody and Arlo Guthrie are bound to revel in the sweet and natural melodies and the easy flow from one song to another.

"They all said Louise was not half bad/It was written on the walls and window shades..."
-- Louise

Siebel created some memorable characters in his songs over the course of just two original albums. There's "Uncle Dudley," an appealing liar who "had a suitcase full of places he'd never been. Shanghai and Wales, great ships with sails, naked ladies." Singer-songwriter Christopher Shaw chose "The Ballad of Honest Sam" for inclusion on his Adirondack album because of the song's oldtimey-backporch-stringed-band feel. Honest Sam is a broadly accepted character. He could indeed inhabit the Adirondack Mountains of New York State, the Old West or a modern urban city. "Well, it's an American figure," explained Siebel, "but for the part it's America itself or the president. 'Foiled again, you sad-eyed loser. Foiled again by Honest Sam.' It was that idea, too. Did I write that through Nixon maybe? A very American character who's some kind of a ruffian, you know, fly-by-night preacher or whatever, comes into your life, a very American kind of thing to do, like our presidents are, and things go wrong, and possibly makes pacts with the devil and that kind of thing."

Bob Zachary offered, "You know, you can walk in a bar practically in any spot in the country and hear a tune called 'Louise.' His influence is kinda still out there."

"Everyone always asks did you know anyone (like) "Louise?" God, no!" responded Siebel emphatically. "But there were these truck-stop places in the mid-South and in my army career in which hookers worked from. It was something that a lot of the literature in those days didn't talk about, you know. Burroughs didn't mention it, but it was quite prevalent. You'd see these greasy spoon truck stops with a motel or hotel arrangement kind of thing and women would be working out of there, and that's, I guess, where that all came from, but there was no one specifically in mind."

"My town was fathered by orphans, praise God, who came from across the sea/Time gave them plenty of nothing, so why do they wish more from me..."
-- My Town

Shanachie recording artist and Woodstock, New York musician Artie Traum first became acquainted with Siebel during the Greenwich Village years. "He developed quite a reputation as being one of the best craftspeople who could write songs," said Traum. "He would be in the same company as a Joni Mitchell or an Eric Anderson or Dylan or John Herald or any of the singer-songwriters that were highly respected at that time. The quality of writing has not been matched since. From the very start when I heard his songs, I thought he was amazingly focused as a writer and had an ability to capture very interesting messages and stories in just a few words, which is a very unusual trait. So, I was very attracted to him as a person." By the late 60s Siebel had relocated to Woodstock which was developing a scene of its own as an artist colony-cum-musician's haven. Siebel was a frequent participant in what Traum characterizes as "living-room jam sessions," which were occurring all over the community.

Artie Traum began to round up the formidable musical talent that populated the Woodstock area into an informal group which eventually became known as Woodstock Mountain Revue. Among those involved in the project were Rory Block, Jim Rooney, Eric Kaz, Paul Butterfield and Pat Alger. Siebel appeared on the aggregation's second release, called Woodstock Mountains (More Music From Mud Acres).

Artie's brother Happy Traum, musician and owner of Homespun Tapes, also recalled Siebel's songwriting genius. "It was very particular to him," said Happy. "It was a very unusual kind of style; and very evocative. You really felt you were listening to what could have been almost traditional music; but yet you also knew that it was written by a contemporary person. The other thing that struck you immediately was that voice which was very unusual, that sort of knife-edge kind of hard-sounding voice that just came cutting through everything. The person that comes to mind when I think of him singing is Iris Dement because there's a similarity there in terms of just that raw, bare, un-pretty kind of singing, but that somehow gets into you on an emotional level that prettier singers don't necessarily do."

"He (Siebel) knew enough about the music world to not take it all that seriously," said Artie. "I think he realized early on that the music scene was really difficult and really painful. I think he understood that this was a world that he didn't really need."

Happy Traum says that Siebel did not bring one of his own compositions to the 1977 Woodstock Mountains recording, which included both original contemporary and older traditional material. "It didn't mean much to us that he didn't choose an original song," added Happy, "but it became clear around that time that his Muse kind of left him. We had spoken a bit around that time about the fact that he didn't feel he had any more songs in him. I think so many people were taken by the fantastic originality of his music beforehand. To me he could have sung the phone book and he would have been great. I can remember having a conversation with him and trying to convince him that it didn't matter that he wasn't writing songs. He sang other people's songs or traditional songs so beautifully that it would be in everybody's interest if he kept singing other songs. I think he felt for whatever reason insecure about that. That was the impression that I got, that he just didn't feel that he was being creative and giving people what they wanted."

In a strong moment of introspection, Siebel looked back on that difficult time. "I wasn't moving," he said. "I wasn't going forward with it and I was finding that, well, it was bumming me out. It got to a point of where I was disliking going out there and not coming up with new material. I was too uncomfortable knowing that I was gonna have to go off stage and meet people who were gonna ask me that question. And I couldn't blame them. When they said, 'When are you gonna come out with the third album and have you written more songs?' and to come up with a negative night after night was something that I was becoming very uncomfortable with, to a point of either go forward with this or stop. And I stopped."

These days Siebel, 58, listens to the radio to keep up with the music scene "as it goes through its revolutions, and convolutions, evolutions and all of that," he remarked. He numbers among his own personal favorites from his well-regarded repertoire the intriguing narrative "Jasper and the Miners" and the cynical "Chips Are Down" in which he sings "Beautiful people they make me sick/ It's a trick/ They're a drag...." And, of course, "Louise."

He works as a bread-baker in a cafe/store in Maryland and has a keen interest in wooden sailing ships. But he misses New York. "As I'm getting older," he lamented, "I'm finding out that even though I like sailing and I like ships and I want to have a working wood shop and that kind of thing, as I get older, the things that happened in New York I'm missing more than I want to do those other things. When you get used to a city as powerful and glamorous and all of that as New York is, it's a hard thing to step out of. You know, when you miss it, you really miss something pretty big."

And how does he think he'll be remembered? "Well, 'He was a guy who wrote a couple of pretty good songs,'" he said succinctly, " 'What ever happened to him?' I guess it's gonna go down something like that."




Paul Siebel Selected Discography



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