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Video Premiere: Paula Cole Tackles Johnny Cash’s ‘God’s Gonna Cut You Down’

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Like most artists singer/songwriter Paula Cole has had an interesting route to stardom. A one-time aspiring jazz singer Cole began writing and producing her own material, Cole exploded onto the scene with 1996's This Fire, which spawned the smash "Where Have All The Cowboys Gone" and earned her a Grammy award for Best New Artist.

But, as she tells me, Cole never gave up her jazz singing dreams. So a few years ago, in 2017, she channeled those aspirations into the double album Ballads. But not satiated, Cole is back with the powerful and gritty American Quilt, out next Friday (May 21).

The album finds Cole tackling some of the timeless American classics that infuse her musical upbringing, such as "God's Gonna Cut You Down," which she first learned via Johnny Cash.

Cole and her band recorded a COVID-compliant live version of the track December 5 of last year in Massachusetts, which is premiering here (there is also a studio version out today as well).

I spoke with Cole about the video, how Kate Bush inspired her to produce her own material, being introduced to new generations through the her song "I Don't Want To Wait" being the theme song of Dawson's Creek and more.

Steve Baltin: Was there an early inspiration for you in wanting to produce yourself?

Paula Cole: I only knew Kate Bush, who produced. And to me her hands were all over that console. Her music was so liberated, so eccentric, so intelligent, fierce and she was a role model to me I guess in claiming that voice. So I just stopped what I was doing, stopped the co-producing, or non-producing, and just said, "I don't want this anymore." Which meant throwing away a perfectly good beginning of an album and a record company being annoyed with me for that and saying, "I want to produce this myself." Finally we finished the album, the first single was out of the gate big, like top 10 hit, all over MTV, second single even bigger, just going great. And then the Grammys happened and that's when they announced me as Best Producer nomination, the first time a woman without having co-producers was nominated. I was told that and I was like, "That's why this is so difficult, because it just wasn't done." And I'm glad I didn't know that. I'm glad I was kind of naively bungling about in the mud while searching for my diamonds as Nietzsche would talk about. I knew the diamonds were there. It's like honoring the quiet voice inside, which you sense to be true, even when it's highly unpopular and difficult and not part of the landscape du jour, I was doing that and I was pushing for that. And I'm so glad I did cause it feels like that's more in play now. There are more women doing that now. And I'm really happy about that. And I encourage my young women to think like a producer, be a voice all the way through.

Baltin: Looking back on the Grammys now do you have an understanding of that success because when it happens it is a whirlwind and you are just in the middle of the vortex?

Cole: That's right, the vortex is confusing and nothing is going right. And if we're talking about the making of my second album, This Fire, that had "Where Have All The Cowboys Gone," it was just that nothing was going right. It was really going wrong and I just needed to stop and get off that train and come to my truth, which required some meditation and sense of quiet to hear that voice inside. I just enjoy being a producer so much. I don't think I would even be here today if I were at the mercy of working with other producers. I enjoy that part of my expression. And there are times when I've wanted to co-produce again and that's been enjoyable and I've learned things from other people. But really I'm kind of n all in one DIY musician.

Baltin: And yet as big as "Where Have All The Cowboys Gone" was when you have a song like "I Don't Want To Wait," which became the theme song for Dawson's Creek it will seemingly live forever.

Cole: (Laughs) Who knew? It's like, "Okay, a pilot, we'll see how it goes?" Of course several of my songs have been used for different purposes at times — licensed, sync capacity, this or that — but this one, my lord, it lives. It lives and it lives and it triumphs. It's enormous and it's brought in a lot of new listeners. There's like a whole younger generation and a whole digital generation where we stream.

Baltin: Coming onto the new album when did you decide you wanted to go this route of these American classics?

Cole: Honestly I started as a jazz singer and I wanted to be an improvisational jazz singer. And I was singing the standards. My first gig ever was with a swing band and I was a jazz singer. I wanted to improvise like Chet Baker or Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald. It was hard for me to continue that path because a lot of the songs were very old-fashioned and ill-fitting to my truth, written by a lot of men in the '50s. The lyrics weren't fitting to my life and also there was a racial component. I had imposter syndrome, I was a white singer in an African-American art form and that was hard to navigate sometimes. Although I have to say my experience with the African-American music world has been so overwhelmingly positive and generous, it's amazing. But I decided to pivot and I started writing my own songs in my 20s and it felt like an a-ha moment, "This is it, I'm writing my truth." So I kind of abandoned jazz even though it informed me musically and I always kept a real book of standards on the piano. I sang on like four Chris Botti albums, collaborated with Herbie Hancock. So I'd be on other people's jazz albums, but it was this part of me that was hibernating and wanting to come out. I always wanted to make my jazz album. And the way that I heard my jazz album was much more raw and raggedy and folksy, more guitar based rather than pianistic or slick. And a couple of times when I would try and make that album it wasn't right. So I just waited until I was an independent artist, off a label many years later. And I made it myself and produced it myself and made it the way I wanted it to be. I blended the folksy Americana and made it guitar centric, I put in the standards where the lyrics felt authentic, recorded one of the only standards written by a woman, Ann Ronell, "Willow, Weep For Me," song by Bobby Gentry, "Ode To Billy Joe." So it's because I always was a jazz singer, I never gave up on the dream. That album became Ballads, we recorded 31 songs in five days. I had so much material because I was so pent up that we released a double album called Ballads in 2017. And I still had so many songs left over that demanded to be heard. And "God's Gonna Cut You Down," that was from the Ballads session. But I felt like it wasn't quite complete and I needed to go back in the studio, so I did right before the pandemic hit. January 2020 we went back in and we cut some more folksy tunes, traditional songs, like "Wayfaring Stranger" and "Shenandoah" and "Bye, Bye Blackbird," where I do improvise, and "What A Wonderful World" and "Black Mountain Blues," which I learned from Bessie Smith and Janis Joplin. So I could kind of patchwork all that I am. I'm this weird, beautiful American mixture in my heritage and my musical heritage.

Baltin: Where was the live video for "God's Gonna Cut You Down" shot?

Cole: The live video was shot at this awesome theater in Beverly, Massachusetts. It's called the Cabot. The Cabot is a hundred years old, so it was built to give people hope out of the last pandemic, the Spanish Flu. Then it became a silent movie theater, then a magic show theater and it's lived with people all these decades. And it's just gone through a renovation and it's this beautiful gem of our North Shore, supporting live music and in the pandemic and recorded on their stage. We recorded that safely, everyone was wearing a mask until the cameras rolled, this was pre-vaccination .

Baltin: How did it feel to be back on the stage?

Cole: We were all kind of giddy. On the stage before the cameras rolled we all kind of stole secret glances at each other like little kids with their hands in the cookie jar, like, "Yeah! We're back at it." It was just so wonderful. They're my brothers and sisters.

Baltin: What was it about that song that made you choose that one to record live for this video?

Cole: The version I know best is the Johnny Cash version, and Odetta. I love the Johnny Cash version and we listened to Johnny Cash in our home growing up. I like that it's a morality tale. And we need morality now. We need our morality and it's nice to hear it coming from a woman's voice. So I just felt some connection with it. So I'd go even slower than the Johnny Cash version and I had these gospel background vocals. And it's slow and it's ballsy. That's what I aimed for (laughs).

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