Paul Sanchez

Paul Sanchez, Loose Parts (Paul Sanchez Music). Such is the intimacy of Paul Sanchez's solo recordings that it's easy to imagine him right there, in your living room, serenading with his acoustic.

Before Sanchez joined the bombastic Cowboy Mouth as one of its two guitarists, he was an aspiring folkie with a wealth of slice-of-life ballads - mostly down-and-out, mostly autobiographical. He has continued to walk those same side alleys via three solo albums released during his tenure with the Mouth (if you ever come across a copy of his hard-to-find first gem of an album, "Wasted Lives and Bluegrass," snag it).

His new, self-released, mostly solo third outing, "Loose Parts," contains more of what made his first two discs so charming.

The sound throughout is clean and bright. His...

Paul Sanchez breaks away for a simple, un-plugged session that makes up the package called Loose Parts, a folksy work produced by Peter Holsapple. The songs here are quiet ballads, each telling what seems to be a very personal story and Sanchez tells them well.

The duet with Susan Cowsill is positively enchanting, the two exchanging lead vocals easily and creating quiet harmonies without ever hurrying.

"Shotgun In my Soul" is the most electric of the cd's 14 cuts.

Loose Parts is like Sanchez came over to your house, pulled up a chair and played all his favorite tunes just for you.

Sunday night at Carrollton Station, Paul Sanchez turned in a solo acoustic set full of warmth and humor...

Like Jet Black and Jealous, this record is an airy affair, done mostly solo on guitar. He ruminates on life and love, pain and passion. There's a lot of cigarette smoking and coffee drinking.

Yet, as with the previous LP, Sanchez just doesn't have a torrid album to offer.

This simple placidity of "Still in Love" and "I Dreamt" is his greatest strength. He's no folk protest singer in the mode of Seeger, Guthrie or Dylan; he's a lover not a fighter.

Strictly speaking, Sanchez has a voice that's a little too sweet for rock music too. It's almost Tim Pan Alley in its unforced naivity; almost showy in its easy world-weariness.

What Sanchez does to cure that on "Wasted Lives and Bluegrass" is bring in a harp player named John Herbert, which gives the proceedings a stern, honky tonk...

Paul Sanchez was sitting on the cold concrete sidewalk outside the Howlin' Wolf, a Warehouse District nightspot, when his friend Caleb Guilliotte walked up.

"Hey," Sanchez said by way of greeting. "I've got a new song I want to show you."

Guilliotte handed him an acoustic guitar. Sanchez, who, like Guilliotte, often straps on an electric guitar and blasts out power chords with a rock 'n' roll band (Cowboy Mouth in Sanchez's case, Deadeye Dick in Guilliotte's) strummed out a gentle jazz-blues tune and crooned the results of a day's work: "She Won't Let Me Be Sad."

Guillotte just smiled. He knows Sanchez well enough to know about the love story that inspired the song, and to be unsurprised that his pal had written yet another fine melody. Besides, Guilliotte had his own new song to...

Just when you think no one could have worse luck with women, along comes Paul Sanchez.

Judging by these 13 short songs, women are either walking Ginsu knives ("And your tongue, to my surprise, was a razor in disguise" and, from the title track, "But you beat my arms with your slashing tongue") or they just ain't around ("Another night alone in bed/I wait in vain to hear the door" and "When I woke up I was divorced"). Lucky for him, Paul has something that most of us can't fall back on -- an ingratiating singing voice and a storyteller's ease.

The Louisiana-born Sanchez reminds me of a folkier Peter Himmelman or maybe Luka Bloom, with New Orleans often taking the place of Bloom's Ireland or New York City (both men's home away from home). He uses a cranked up, chunky, Bloom like...

Except for one brief flirtation with CBS Records, Paul Sanchez has been on the outside looking in since the age of 15, when he debuted at Fat City's Gateway Lounge, where his best friend's mother was a bartender. His compensation was a whole $5. "I thought, 'Wow, this is really cool. This is a good way to get $5.' I didn't realize the pay scale wouldn't chnage much over the years." --- "People ask, 'Are those songs from your real life?' And I go, 'Unfortunately, yes.'"

Paul Sanchez is a talented songwriter, musician and singer. A veteran of new york's "anti-folk bohemia", Sanchez displays a remarkable lyrical gift in this all-acoustic collection of personal vignettes of loves and loves lost.

The Cowboy Mouth connection is apparent in two hard-edged songs that are performed in concert by the group-'Louisiana Lowdown and Blue' and 'Light it on Fire'.

'Picture of You Wearing Bones' and 'Jet Black and Jealous' resemble classic folk polemics. Accompanied by only a guitar, Sanchez croons like a Spanish balladeer in 'Maria' and breathes softly through the pop-jazz ballad 'In My Dreams'. but Sanchez's lyrics are equally powerful.

His fine, high tenor reaches for edgy emotions as he sings about waking up in panic in a strange bed, choking on conversations,...

Paul Sanchez is a rocker whose percussive acoustic guitar is effective as a backdrop to personal, vivid songs about experiencing life one relationship at a time. At times it's an attractive picture, other times not. When not singing of old lovers, infatuation and jealousy, Sanchez relays a facet of his family life. It's Sanchez unplugged, but the power still flows.

In the lead-off song about onetime love affairs, "Confidential Dance," his images sizzle from the first lines: "I reached my hand under her black sweater / Buried my face deep in her blond hair." He doesn't get much more graphic than that, but that's only because the relationships end before they can get started. Sanchez was raised in New Orleans, so it follows that influences of that city would emerge in the rocking...