Paul Thorn – What the Hell is Goin’ On?

by Chad Campbell, senior producer

This is the third appearance on our program for Paul Thorn, and every time the conversation is a joy for me to produce and a joy for you to hear on the radio. I know because every time Thorn is our guest, we get several emails about him, his music and the show. Hopefully today’s show will expose a whole new batch of you to his music. Thorn, the son of a Pentacostal minister and the nephew of a pimp (a recent CD was called Pimps and Preachers), testified himself how important and valuable his appearances on this show and other public radio programs are to his bottom line and to building his fan base. Thorn believes in builing up slowly, making two or three fans a night at his shows and he performs a lot. Click here to check out his insanely busy tour schedule (seriously, check him out if he’s coming to your town). He says new fans come up to him all the time and say they first heard about him on our show. This instance will no doubt continue that trend. I laughed out loud several times while putting the piece together, Thorn is a natural storyteller and his music is great as always. This CD is a cover album of some obscure songs, but they are some of Thorn’s favorites and written by some of his favorite and most respected songwriters. The important part is that they all SOUND like Paul Thorn songs.  The CD is called What the Hell is Goin’ On?

Here’s a video for the title track, written by Elvin Bishop.

And since they discuss the album cover in great detail, here is the original painting by Paul Thorn.

And click here to read our blog post from the first time Paul Thorn was our guest, don’t forget to scroll down to the comments section…