Paul Wassif
Encyclopedia
Career
Paul Wassif’s early career included a brief spell Punk/Rock band The London Cowboys. This was followed by various stints in New York bands including the The Ugly Americans with ex New York Dolls members, Jerry Nolan and Sylvain Sylvain. On the 2008 London Cowboys retrospective release 'Relapse' featured the song 'Dragging in the Dirt' with band founder Steve Dior.
Paul collaborated on two Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch
Herbert "Bert" Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, as an acoustic guitarist, as well as a singer-songwriter...
’s albums. On the album 'Edge of A Dream'
Edge of a Dream
Edge of a Dream is the twenty-second album by Scottish folk musician Bert Jansch, released in 2002.The title track is given a rock treatment, and two tracks are baroque instrumentals. The remaining songs are roughly equally divided between bluesy numbers and folky ones. The album features Bernard...
, released in 2002, Paul duets with Bert on 'Black Cat Blues'. This track was subsequently featured on the soundtrack of ‘Calendar Girls
Calendar Girls
Calendar Girls is a 2003 comedy film directed by Nigel Cole. Produced by Buena Vista International and Touchstone Pictures, it features a screenplay by Tim Firth and Juliette Towhidi based on a true story of a group of Yorkshire women who produced a nude calendar to raise money for Leukaemia...
’. On Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch
Herbert "Bert" Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, as an acoustic guitarist, as well as a singer-songwriter...
's most recent album The Black Swan
The Black Swan (Bert Jansch album)
The Black Swan is the twenty-third album by Scottish folk singer Bert Jansch. It was released in 2006 through Drag City. Jansch described the album: "It's been fantastic working with everyone who's been involved on the record...
, released in 2006, Paul co wrote Magdalina's Dance and performs on My Pocket's Empty' and 'A Woman Like You'. In an interview for Acoustic Guitar Magazine Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch
Herbert "Bert" Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, as an acoustic guitarist, as well as a singer-songwriter...
described Paul Wassif as "a fantastic player. He’s got a very, very gentle touch".
Paul plays regularly on stage with Bert. A review on the musicOMH website of Bert's 2007 Somerset House concert that also featured Bernard Butler and Beth Orton described that 'Wassif adds a country tinge to the music, which remains as sweet as ever as their first number ignores vocals to revel instead in these guitarists' undiluted skill'. In August 2010 Paul opened for Bert Jansch playing two nights at the Queen's Hall
Queen's Hall
The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect T.E. Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it was the home of the promenade concerts founded by Robert...
as part of the Edinburgh Festival.
Wassif's debut solo album, to be released in June 2011, features guest appearances from both Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch
Herbert "Bert" Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, as an acoustic guitarist, as well as a singer-songwriter...
and Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...
.
Album
Paul Wassif's first album 'Looking Up Feeling Down' was released digitally on May 5, 2011. The album features guest appearances from Bert Jansch
Bert Jansch
Herbert "Bert" Jansch was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s, as an acoustic guitarist, as well as a singer-songwriter...
and Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. Clapton is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist, and separately as a member of The Yardbirds and Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and...
playing and recording together for the first time on two tracks; 'Please Don't Leave', written by Paul Wassif and 'Southbound Train' written by Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy
Big Bill Broonzy was a prolific American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. His career began in the 1920s when he played country blues to mostly black audiences. Through the ‘30s and ‘40s he successfully navigated a transition in style to a more urban blues sound popular with white audiences...
. The album also features drummer Evan Jenkins from the Neil Cowley
Neil Cowley
Neil Cowley is a contemporary jazz pianist who previous incarnations include Fragile State, The Green Nuns of the Revolution, and the recently formed Neil Cowley Trio that appeared on Jools Holland in April 2008 and won the 2007 BBC Jazz Award for best album, "Displaced".-Biography:Cowley began...
Trio, Dave Watson, James Watson, Robin Clayton, Lynn Glaser, Steve Counsel and Seamus Beaghen. 'Looking Up Feeling Down' was mastered by Tony Cousins at Metropolis Studios in London and is released on Black Brown & White Records, a recently launched label owned by Stephen Lyttelton (son of Jazz musician Humphrey Lyttelton
Humphrey Lyttelton
Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton , also known as Humph, was an English jazz musician and broadcaster, and chairman of the BBC radio comedy programme I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue...
) and Karen Sonego (daughter of Brazilian folk musician, Zé Tapera)