Paul Sanchez

It’s been 15 years since New Orleans was left for dead after Hurricane Katrina. Officials from the lowest to the highest level of government looted what was left of the city while its population was being shipped all over the United States. Social media as we know it today did not exist; there was no way for violently separated families to find information about each other, no means to return unless you had money. It was so bad that if you didn’t live through it yourself you probably can’t even believe what happened. People talk of how the city remade itself, but the truth is

Paul Sanchez keeps turning out classic albums like its 1966. Sanchez may be the perfect example of how New Orleans musicians have dealt with the collapse of the music industry. No corporate label would let a musician put out records with the frequency Sanchez does—there is not enough time to promote one effectively before the next one is released. But if you crowdsource funding, as Sanchez has done with the fan-operated Threadhead Records, or finance the record yourself as Sanchez has done here, you can release them as fast as you write ’em.

One More Trip Around the Sun has only one song Sanchez wrote by himself: “Live Like Laura,” an exultant tribute to a friend who lived a spectacular life before dying at age 28. The rest are co-writes—some recorded with producer Mark Bingham at the...

For a lot of New Orleans musicians, the flood and forced depopulation of the city after Katrina was a slow motion train wreck that piled disaster upon disaster and either ended in tragedy or still hasn’t stopped. You didn’t have to die immediately in the flood to be killed by it.

Some musicians and artists in other disciplines have managed to sublimate this tragedy into their work. Their art flourished even as their lives fell apart. It’s an old story, familiar to the people whose ancestors were brought here in chains or arrived as refugees fleeing religious persecution. When all else fails, music has the power to sustain the spirit and bear witness to the horror of history.

Paul Sanchez is one of those New Orleans musicians who found deep strength in his work even as the comforts of...

What are you getting?

I’ve been on the road a lot this year, so I wanted to come someplace really New Orleans. I’ve been coming here since the 1970s, since I was a young man. Napoleon House has the best warm muffuletta in the city and it’s a cold day, so I wanted a warm muff.  

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In "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," Paul Sanchez notes that he always spends more money than he makes when he stops in New York City. That was certainly the case last week at Hill Country. Paul accidentally booked the show during the final presidential debate, second-to-last Cubs playoff game, and some basketball game. So there were only seven of us stalwart souls there to soak in the music. Paul gave his check to the waitstaff to cover the tips they should've made...

Songwriters need stories and much of the time it’s the story of their life that ends up getting told. A storyteller with a dull life doesn’t have much to work with. So a storyteller with a hard life is actually blessed.

So it is with Paul Sanchez, whose seemingly endless trove of tales encompasses a world of grief and heartbreak, hope and redemption. A New Orleans story. It might be a hurricane, a death, the end of a marriage—it’s all material for a teller of tales who grew up studying the likes of Bob Dylan, Steve Goodman and Bruce Springsteen.

Thanks WWOZ!

"Sanchez pulls from a surprising mix of genres to create a unique singer-songwriter album that combines music and storytelling. Sad tales, humor, pure entertainment, and hope are interwoven throughout twenty solo acoustic songs... "

At the Sheraton New Orleans Fais Do-Do Stage Friday, local singer-songwriter Paul Sanchez played with not one, but two bands during his one-hour set.

Paul Sanchez knows how to bring the party at Jazz Fest. Holding down the mid-day slot (1:40 p.m.) Friday on the Sheraton Fais Do-Do stage, the popular local singer-songwriter surrounded himself with a whole lot of rockin' women.

Called the Minimum Rage – with the fabulous tagline "Minimum Rage, Maximum Fun" -- the lineup included Sonia Tetlow on mandolin and guitar; Mary Lasseigne on bass,Lynn Drury on guitar, Jamie Lynn Vessels on electric guitar; Beth Wheeler on mandolin, and Linda Bolley on drums -– and just about everyone on vocals. (For one rollicking cover of Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues," Bolley tag-teamed, playing  lead guitar and drums — at the same time.)

Tetlow and Lasseigne, like Sanchez, are Cowboy Mouth alums, all schooled in high-energy crowd-pleasing rock,...

For the past century, New Orleans has been known as a place of great instrumentalists and great singers.

The emphasis has been on live performance and there has been a virtual absence of music-industry infrastructure, particularly in the most lucrative aspect of the business, publishing. It’s not surprising that without a publishing business the art of songwriting was not well served.

Of course, there have been some great songwriters...

Paul Sanchez’s transformation from corporate rocker in Cowboy Mouth to one of the most distinctive New Orleans songwriters was among the happiest post-Katrina storylines in a city struggling to rediscover its identity. Sanchez made several excellent solo albums and collaborated with some of the city’s gifted songwriters and musicians in a collective creative renaissance that reached its apogee in the still-in-progress production of Nine Lives: The Musical.