Artist of the Week: Paul Duncan

Hometown: Longview, Texas
Why he’s worth checking out: His graceful rhythms are pleasing to the ear and his lyrics offer stories and realizations about life’s basic frustrations, making a complete package for any listener.
Fun Fact: Duncan‘s modest; he walks out of Clem’s in Brooklyn whenever his bar-owner friend plays his music—which happens more often than Duncan’s comfortable with.
For fans of: Jim O’Rourke, Nick Drake, Iron & Wine

You can take a man out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of a man—something Paul Duncan realized after growing up in tiny Longview, Texas, and settling in Brooklyn to pursue music far away from the small towns of his past.

Now in the studio with musician Jonathan Kane, recording an album for experimental label Table of the Elements, Duncan seems to have come to grips with his background when he proudly calls Kane’s album “very Southern.”

“You get to a certain age and realize you were being stupid about trying to lose your roots,” he says. “It’s really idiotic to regret where you grew up.”

His most recent solo album, Be Careful What You Call Home, reflects his feelings of impermanence and discontent after relocating so many times. But he says the title is a general statement, meant to be “hollow” in a way so it can be open to interpretation. There are also many layers to dig into, musically, on Home. On the surface, Duncan’s graceful, mellow tunes flow delicately from the speakers. Look deeper, though, and you can hear his harsh frustrations, all contrasted by tiny bells and soft whistles.

“I want people to get my process,” he says. “It’s more than just a pretty album.”

Duncan says he only records at home, but that he laid down tracks for Be Careful What You Call Home in three different homes in both Atlanta and Brooklyn. He says he only writes and records when he’s in the mood. What gets him there? Bourbon, he says.

Next on the songwriter’s agenda is an album he calls “invitational,” meaning he chose a group of five people who appear on every song. He describes the music as noisy ’70s radio country with stings and horns—an album that’ll be “more weird” and “more avant-garde” than his current release.

But he doesn’t seem to care if fans listen for either the comforting melodies, the underlying meanings or both. “If somebody gets something out of it,” he says, “then mission accomplished. Even if they hate it.”