Biography Paul Sanchez

After 16 years with the popular rock band Cowboy Mouth, Paul Sanchez has stepped out on his own. He is a cat with eight lives used up and he's damn glad to be here. Paul is a troubadour from New Orleans. He is a storyteller, his own as well as ours. He is a student and a teacher. A traveler that finds home in a thousand different faces every night.

For more than 16 years, Paul and the other members of Cowboy Mouth embraced, embodied, preached and shouted at the top of their lungs the joys of their hometown, New Orleans. Together, they shared a slice of Mardi Gras heaven with fans around the world on 11 recordings and at their legendary live shows. To date those shows have been witnessed by more than 8 million people and described best by Cake magazine when it noted: "...on a bad night they’ll tear the roof off the joint and on a good night they’ll save your soul." Now he embarks on a solo career, spinning his tales and singing his songs from the heart on new CDs, and in clubs and living rooms across America.

Paul writes songs the way your grandmother might have crafted quilts, painstakingly sewing the pieces together to form a blanket that will keep you warm when it's time to rest your head. Paul entertains and provokes. He holds your hand and he slaps your wrist. He's lived a thousand lives, but he wakes up everyday with the wide eyes of a new born babe.

Paul has a skewed vision of the world that comes only with an existence based in New Orleans, a city rampant with celebration and despair. It's beyond colloquialisms and language. It's more of a slant and feel. It's in the words he loves, and the friends he writes. It's in the pain of having known a welfare Christmas, the joy of having known a welfare Christmas, and the joy of having toasted fine wine from a grand European chateau. Cut him, it's in his blood.

Paul's songs have appeared in The Accused starring Jodie Foster, Homicide: Life On the Streets, The Underneath, by Steven Soderbergh, and on CMT"s Travel America series. His song Hurricane Party is a feature on NPR every storm season, and a staple of every Cowboy Mouth show. Paul was also Music Supervisor for, and appeared in, the independent film, At Last, starring Martin Donovan and Kelly Lynch. (to be released in 2007). His song, At The Foot of Canal Street, appears on the critically acclaimed Shout Factory New Orleans musical history boxed set, "Doctors, Professors, Kings and Queens, a Big Ole Box Of New Orleans. Co-written in 1999 with New Orleans legend and dear friend, John Boutte, the song eerily foreshadows the aftermath of the flood that was to come.

He has been busy since leaving Cowboy Mouth. His CD, Between Friends (his 7th solo release) was, released in November 2006. It features 13 songs written by Paul and performed by his friends, including John Boutte, Susan Cowsill, Darius Rucker, Jim Sonifeld, Theresa Andersson and many others. In October 2007, he entered the recording studio with Soul Asylum’s Dave Pirner as Producer. to record his latest CD Exit To Mystery Street. Special guests on the CD include Ivan Neville, Raymond Weber (New Orleans Social Club, Dumpstaphunk),Craig Klein (Bonerama, Harry Connick Jr), Shamarr Allen, James Andrews, Big Sam (Big Sam’s Funky Nation) David Torkanowsky and former Cowboy Mouth members Sonia Tetlow and Mary LaSang. Paul has also released Washed Away, a compilation of tracks from his first 6 solo cds, all lost in the flooding after the levees failed.

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