Interview: Christopher Paul Stelling Comes Back to Providence to Perform at Askew
Not many singer-songwriters have as genuine of an approach to music like Christopher Paul Stelling. He has a way of telling stories through his songs while never being afraid of getting personal and wearing his heart on his sleeve. His seventh album Forgotten But Not Gone & Few and Far Between, which came out earlier this year, is his latest example with most the songs processing heartbreak and the direct aftermath of a long relationship ceasing to be. As part of an extensive tour in support of the release, Stelling is going to be performing at Askew on 150 Chestnut Street in Providence on April 26. Both Brooklyn folk artist Mary-Elaine Jenkins and Queens Americana act Youth in a Roman Field will be starting off the show at 9pm.
We had a talk ahead of the show about the making of and the release of his latest full-length record, taking more time to look at things and looking forward to coming back to “The Creative Capital”.
Back in February & March, you released Forgotten But Not Gone & Few and Far Between in unique fashion with four sides of the album being released on separate dates. What gave you the idea to put out the album in this particular way rather than having all the tracks come out at once?
To be honest with you, I don’t know. It’s a long record and it was kind of like a happy medium between releasing singles, which never feels like enough, and releasing the whole album at once, which felt like a waste. By breaking it up and doing it side by side as four EPs, it seemed like a good move. With that being said, that’s just for streaming, the album is available for anybody who wants to buy it on vinyl. It was also a bit of a way to entice people to participate in a physical product, which we all know is more beneficial for the artist.
Yeah, absolutely. You just mentioned that the album has a lot of songs, 20 to be exact. What inspired this prolific output for the record? How did the songwriting process come about?
The format and the length of the record really has more to do with the subject matter. Not to be too specific, but I went through a pretty sudden separation from somebody I was with for a very long time. I found myself living alone for the first time in my life and I had just come out of COVID while beginning to come back on my feet. Then to be confronted with a separation and an eventual divorce, all I really had was my craft to help me out of it, so I ended up with a lot of material. Having a craft when times are good is fun, but I think having it when times are hard is necessary.
It must have been a very cathartic experience for you.
It was a painful experience, but now it’s become a cathartic experience because now I get to go live in it.
That’s great. What inspired the cover art for the album with you standing underneath a giant tree with your guitar?
That tree is in my backyard where I currently live in Atlanta and everything that happened to me happened while I was overseas, so I came home to a very different reality than what I had left previously. It’s a crape myrtle tree and what happened was I came home to my person having left in May of 2021 and come July as I was trying to put myself together, which wasn’t easy, I was unaware of that tree being a blooming, flowering one. All of a sudden, in this new home that I thought was ruined, that tree kind of exploded into these beautiful fuschias and flowers. I felt like that was somewhat representative of me kind of getting back on my feet, so when you ask what it means to be standing under that tree, that tree has kind of taken on a life of its own sort in my own personal mythology. Also, flowers are very representative of grief, but also of celebration, and I found myself really gravitating towards plants in an interesting way.
As a child, my mom was a horticulturalist and a gardner. I’d just kind of rediscovered the beauty of flowering plants in this new way that broke me open and I don’t really know how to explain it, but I take more time to look at things.
It’s awesome that you have this perspective now. What are your thoughts on returning to Providence to play at Askew? I know you have a bunch of connections to the scene here and I remember when you played solo at Local 121 ages ago.
I fuckin’ love Providence, it’s the best! If you recall, I made Labor Against Waste there at the Columbus Theatre and Providence has always been a home away from home. It’s the one place I’ve never wanted to live in because it was almost too special, but I always kind of feel at home there. The upcoming show will also feature Mary-Elaine Jenkins and Youth in a Roman Field, which is led by Claire Wellin, and I’m really excited about it. They’re both very talented people and just fantastic.
I’ve seen them both play and they’re both great.
Absolutely. I just really wanted openers who make me want to play better.
After the upcoming show, you have a ton of touring going on for the rest of the year which includes a run of shows in Europe. How have your experiences performing across the Atlantic been compared to what you’ve experienced while performing in America?
I guess the benefit of playing overseas is that you get to be kind of exotic. In a different way, people can sometimes appreciate it when you make the journey. Other than that, I’ve done 15 tours overseas and the more I do it, the less of a difference I feel. These days I’ve been concentrating more on community and how special it is that people even support live music coming out of COVID. It’s really renewed my sense of how important live music is.
In order to make Culture Beat’s content available to everyone, we decided to stop utilizing a paywall. With this being said, we are utilizing the crowdfunding service Buy Me A Coffee in order to have our readers support our endeavors, which they can do so right here.
