Paul Sanchez

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Offbeat Magazine Jet Black and Jealous

Paul Sanchez, Jet Black and Jealous

May 1, 1992
Offbeat Magazine by Rick Coleman

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, fans blowing cat hair, and spilling chili in the French quarter-everyday things that trigger purple emotions, but at the same time, stress the impermanence of experience that makes memories worth remembering."I will tell you a story", sings Sanchez in a remarkable tribute to his father, "and if it's not told it will disappear."

"...My mom and daddy met when they were still 18/moved into the city and had a family/he worked the river every day and every night/came home to my mother and this was their life.

Weekends they'd dance on thee river boats/walk to save a nickel to buy themselves a coke/they were young it was 1923/thirty years before they would get to me

He was a gambler and he was a drinker/but every single sunday no matter what you think/he'd be in church he never missed a Sunday/me i haven't been since he passed away.

My father passed away when he waas very young/eleven children he and my mother they had/he'd been an orphan and all he ever wanted was a family... when he died it was all he had."