Teen Beat: Paula Cole

0:06Speaker 1:I'll never leave your filthy bed. I'll stay the night and one night weekend, two or three years. The kids are not all right, but that's okay cause no one here is.

0:27Speaker 2:Welcome back, my fan-yell-dishels.

0:30Speaker 3:It's a new episode of Teen Beat, a podcast where I sit with interesting people who've done interesting things in hopes that digging deeper into an origin story will give us a glance into who they are today. Not everyone had their puberties televised across America at a lower day rate than their male co-stars. No, that was only a few of us. And now I see it this way. I gave you my childhood.

0:56Speaker 2:It's time we hear yours.

0:58Speaker 3:And this week, I get to sit with someone who played an integral part in the soundtrack of said TV childhood, a singer-songwriter who found an opportunity left on her answering machine to join Peter Gabriel on tour and days later was in Mannheim, Germany, performing in front of over 15,000 people and has never looked back since. Her self-produced sophomore album, This Fire, spread like one, with singles Where Have All the Cowboys Gone and I Don't Wanna Wait, not only hitting the Billboard charts at the time, but becoming pop culture mainstays and undeniable bops for exactly three decades. She won the Best New Artist Grammy in 1997 and was the first solo female ever nominated for Producer of the Year.

1:44Speaker 3:She was also a pioneer of the groundbreaking Lilith Fair tour and released her 11th.

1:49Speaker 2:Album in 2024.

1:52Speaker 3:With the 30th anniversary of this fire upon us, she's hit the road to celebrate and play the classic album in its entirety for fans across the country. Sure, you know her from Dawson's Creek, but she was socially conscious way before it was cool, constantly addressing issues ranging from sexism to reproductive rights, to environmentalism and racial inequality in her music. But yes, also Dawson's Creek.

2:18Speaker 2:Please welcome to Teen Beat, Paula Cole.

2:22Speaker 1:Hello. What a beautiful introduction.

2:26Speaker 3:Well, thank you so much for being here. It is such an honor to talk to you.

2:30Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. I just love you right off the bat. Oh, thank you.

2:35Speaker 3:Like I said in your intro, so much of your music has addressed vital social issues over the years. A critic once noticed that you were the first mainstream artist to take a public stance against the Iraq War. So I'm wondering, that is such a heavy and noble responsibility. Have you ever wanted to just sit down and write something like, I don't know, like the thong song or smash mouths all star.

3:08Speaker 1:I love your references. I mean, sure. I have my, I probably have more love songs than anything, but I don't know. I mean, that's like, that's great when you're young and now I'm getting older and, and there's just so much more to life than that. There's like your long-term relationship and how does it develop? There's, Climate change. There's having children. There's just like looking at the political landscape, although that doesn't usually make it into the lyrics too much because that could be kind of boring and pedantic.

3:43Speaker 1:But I just think that my favorite artists are the ones that dared to speak out and use music as a platform. And it's no coincidence that the Everlasting Greats did so. I mean, from Nina Simone to Billie Holiday to John Lennon to Joni Mitchell to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young to Tracy Chapman to Kendrick Lamar.

4:03Speaker 2:Yes, yes.

4:03Speaker 1:And on and on and on. And on and on and on. Because they give a voice to those who don't use their voice or have a voice. And it unites us and it makes us think. And I think a pop song is a perfect delivery song. It's perfect. Yeah. So it used to be done more like in the late 60s. You know, Neil Young, he went when there was like that bloody rebellion of students in Kent, Ohio. He he wrote about it. And like or, you know, Nina Simone, when black schoolchildren were killed in Mississippi, she wrote Mississippi goddamn. Right. So I think like the boomers heard about it a lot, maybe less so in my generation, although there was through like some punk movements. Right. And some riot girl kind of movements, but, and Lilith Fair a little bit. Yeah. Like, you know.

5:12Speaker 2:For sure.

5:13Speaker 1:I just think there's a whole lot to say about, We can do it kindly. We can do it lovingly. We can wrap it up in poetry. Right.

5:22Speaker 2:It can even sound fun.

5:25Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Like where have all the cowboys gone? Exactly. You know, it's really like a gender role examination. Like, oh my God, let's be cheeky about the fact that we're not limited to these gender norms. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And do people, will people get the irony and the humor? We shall see. A lot of people didn't.

5:45Speaker 2:A lot of people did not, yeah.

5:49Speaker 3:You were raised in a very artistic household. Your mother was an art teacher and your father was in a polka band. Your sister also played piano. So what did your parents do to encourage you to dive into the arts and to find your passion?

6:08Speaker 1:It wasn't, like any kind of conscious decision. They just were living music. My dad being a bass player in a polka band, he also played piano. So he'd play, you know, like a Duke Ellington standard on the piano. And then he'd go over to the banjo and he'd play a folk song or a guitar, like a blues song. He'd play harmonica. He was just this multi-instrumentalist who loved music, lived music. So it was alive in my house every day. And being of the pre-internet generation, we just, And I grew up like at the tip of an island of Cape Ann, like a northernmost island of Massachusetts. Okay. Where like the FM radio dial didn't even come in. Like I didn't find the Beatles until my 20s. I sound so ancient, but it was also just because of my lack of exposure, just growing up in a very sheltered way. Yeah.

6:56Speaker 1:And my parents made music. So it literally was like after dinner, you know, my dad would pull out the guitar and he'd be playing a blues. Okay, Paula, take one. Take a verse, you know, come on, just improvise something. And I'd be like, okay, dad, I'm singing this song. I really didn't like dinner tonight, you know, or whatever. Yes.

7:17Speaker 2:Oh, I love that. It was like a way of life for you.

7:20Speaker 1:Totally. It was like my first language. Like I literally was making up songs to fall asleep to or sing in the baby stroller before I was plugging into the English language, you know? Oh, so beautiful. It just was.

7:46Speaker 3:When we talk about teenage political, we cannot gloss over the fact that you were both your high school's class president and its prom queen. Were you just an overachiever or what?

8:02Speaker 1:I think I was a repressed cootie two shoes. Yeah.

8:08Speaker 2:I love that.

8:10Speaker 1:And, and an overachiever and a perfectionist. And I had a thriving father who was like his valedictorian for both his bachelor's and master's at UConn.

8:19Speaker 3:Oh, wow.

8:20Speaker 1:Oh my God. Yeah. So it'd be like, what's with the A minus, you know, that kind of household. So, and, and, you know, that was tough. And so I, I tiptoed around eggshells and my father's large personality who was amazing, but also, you know, like a lot. And he had anger. And so I was careful and I just didn't make any waves. And so I was excellent at everything. They had to be. And then I had the great decompression around this fire. You know, my first album, Harbinger, I was writing a lot about my growing up and my storytelling of being a repressed goody two shoes. Yeah. Like that song Bethlehem off of Harbinger is like trying to be class president and get straight A's, but who gives a shit about that anyway? I just want to be a dog or a lump of clay. Like I don't want to be here. The perfectionism is too much. And I didn't have the space or time to rebel against that until my twenties. And that's when this fire was like, oh man, I am bursting. I'm going to rebel. I'm going to be a bad girl. I'm going to try everything now. Yeah. And it all came out in the music.

9:34Speaker 2:Boy, I relate to that so much.

9:37Speaker 3:And do you feel now in this part of your life that you have moved past some of the perfectionism or do you still actively have to fight against it?

9:49Speaker 1:I still have to fight against it. It's there now. And it's like life is a spiral. You do the emotional, psychological work. I've been in therapy a lot. I've lived in the self-help book section. for sure. And also like relationships. I'm almost married now, or I've been with my life partner now for almost 20 years. And that's incredible. Like my first marriage was a disaster and divorce and single mom and the whole deal. But like that, Living in relationship is also a form of therapy. You must be your best self. You must evolve with someone. It's the yoga of a lifetime. So all of that has helped me walk what is a spiral so that I'm visiting the same kind of deeply unconscious issues that I have.

10:41Speaker 1:I still face them, but I'm in a slightly different place because of the work. I've done. So it feels like a spiral rather than a circle.

10:49Speaker 2:Oh, I love that.

10:50Speaker 3:And I can, it's visually perfect because I can absolutely picture the spiral and seeing how you're in a different spot, but you still address the same issue just in a different plane.

11:00Speaker 2:Love that. Thank you. That was, it feels like therapy for me.

11:06Speaker 3:We are talking just a few days after the announcement of Miss Dolly Parton's death. And beyond just being a big fan, you wrote and produced Heart Door, a song that became a duet with her for the Sweet November soundtrack of 2001. And you wrote something beautiful on Instagram. And I just wanted to find out what it meant to you to be able to work with her.

11:32Speaker 1:Oh, I was a fan before. When my father, we didn't have very many LPs growing up, but he bought Dolly Parton's Here You Come Again. And that was one of her first crossovers from country to pop, that album. And that wasn't even her single, her composition, Here You Come Again. It was a cover and she knew it was a great song. So I was introduced early to Dolly. And I think by being young and discovering her, she almost was some mother figure to me symbolically. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I've always loved her and I, I was at the height of my fame or whatever you want to call it.

12:11Speaker 1:Cause I've never signed up, you know, being famous that in fact was like anathema to me, always very challenging, wickedly introverted. Um, so I was there and I wanted to use my platform to reach out to a heroine of mine. That's Dolly. And she was in a quiet place, um, in her career. it was before things really started coming back for her. It was before her, the, the grass is blue album that she released with a return to her, her blue grassroots. And she wanted to record with me.

12:46Speaker 1:I was just so blown away and so humbled and honored. She brought her two grand nieces who were like family. It was everything. Let me just tell you that like, she's always been a hero. I've always had a, A photo of her up in my workroom. I just could tell that she was an angel incarnate, basically. And working with her was, let me tell you, I've worked with a lot of people. I've met a lot of famous people. And there's really only one person that has blown me away, and that's Dolly. Just, you know, usually it's a little disappointing, to be honest.

13:23Speaker 2:Yeah, we've all heard, never meet your heroes.

13:25Speaker 1:Yeah. Right. Right. And with Dolly, I mean, I think she was really just questing in her lifetime to find the goodness in every person and connect in that way. Not bring social political issues into the... Well, let me correct myself. Not to bring political issues into the work. She brought social issues into the work. She brought the gender divide into the work. Yes. And she fundraised and... created consciousness for LGBTQ rights and women's issues. But she did so always very lovingly. She didn't isolate people. Yeah. Well, we were all part of her family and she was this loving maternal figure. She couldn't have children. So she was everybody's mother in a way. I mean, the tape machine, because I was working with two inch tape that was still analog, this giant tape, Studer tape machine, two inch reel to reel tape broke down during our studio session, which meant maintenance had to be called. An engineer had to come and repair the machine, which meant I got to hang out all day. Oh, a hero. And we were in the vocal isolation booth, just kind of lying down on the floor for a while and just sharing. I,

14:43Speaker 1:I treasure that day so dearly. I'm so grateful for it. I was having a hard time dealing with my own loss of anonymity at the time. And she just made me feel loved and safe and to keep going. I love her so dearly.

15:00Speaker 3:I feel like everybody who's ever known her or worked with her has come away with some words of wisdom that you're just amazed she came up with in the moment or that she had it all.

15:12Speaker 2:Like she just... I've never met anybody who has anything bad to say about her.

15:17Speaker 1:No, no, never. Me neither. Never. This person just touched everyone like with a little bit of fairy dust. Yeah. Yes.

15:24Speaker 2:That is what it feels like.

15:27Speaker 3:I want to talk a little bit also about you getting that call to join Peter Gabriel on tour. They needed a replacement for Sinead O'Connor and someone suggested you.

15:39Speaker 2:You're in San Francisco. They leave you a voicemail.

15:42Speaker 3:And then a day or two later, you are on stage in Berlin performing for a sold-out arena.

15:49Speaker 2:Were you nervous at all?

15:52Speaker 1:Of course. Of course, yes. I had made my first album, my debut, Harbinger, with Kevin Killen. And Kevin Killen is responsible for taking the unreleased Harbinger tape to Peter's band leader, basically, David Rhodes. And David Rhodes is Peter's best mate and runs the band and was really into the album. And, you know, that, which was just sitting on a shelf as I was, my record label Imago was kind of figuring out a release plan. Yeah. And I was touring coffee houses, like for 10 people, driving around the United States in a rental Cadillac because the boot is big enough to put a PA in. And so I, with my boyfriend at the time, Jerry Leonard, who was a guitar player. And we just drove around the country hitting coffee houses, setting up a PA and singing to people, whoever was there.

16:44Speaker 2:Whoever would be there.

16:45Speaker 1:Who would ever be there. And that's how it started for me was that personal connection with people. But then Peter heard Harbinger and felt it and left me this voicemail in his soft English accent and asked me to join, just point blank, no audition. I was already a deep fan, so I knew his music inside and out. And they gave me board tapes from the live shows. I just listened to what the other musicians were doing, who would go to what harmony. I would fill holes. I would try to just add whatever I could to it. And I flew to Mannheim, Germany on Halloween of 1993. And we had like half a rehearsal, which Don't Give Up was...

17:34Speaker 1:It was actually soundcheck. It wasn't even a rehearsal. Soundcheck was the rehearsal. So, yeah, and Don't Give Up was first on the docket. And I sang this song that I love so dearly. I love that song so dearly. I always felt in my bones it was part of my life. And there's an end to the song, like, Cause somewhere there's a place where we belong. That ending... It moves from a time, like a 12-8 field or a 6-8 field to like a 4-4. Don't give up, don't give up, don't give up. And the vocal lead, you know, portrayed by the females, so that would be Kate Bush and Sinead O'Connor. And I might add that Peter asked Dolly Parton first. be the female duet partner on the recording, but she said no. Oh my gosh.

18:35Speaker 1:I know. And see, everybody loves Dolly. Yeah. But I, you know, I sang that bit and he came over to me after the song was done and he said, you're the only person besides Willie Nelson who got the timing right. Because you have to feel both time meters, like the six, eight and the four, four. And I know I'm getting technical, but Like I'm really a musician, you know, I play instruments. And so I think everything was going to be fine. And yeah, I hit the stage that night for 16,000 Germans in Mannheim and it was sink or swim. And I was 25 and that was my first tour, my first big tour. So I would go between arenas in Europe and fly to the States and play coffee houses and kind of build like that.

19:29Speaker 3:So when you were back in the States, did you still tour to, you know, play for 10 people in coffee houses? Or did some of that work you were doing in Europe start translating over into the United States and now you were playing for bigger crowds?

19:44Speaker 1:It was slow because we didn't have internet. Right. It's strange to say. I know. saying you didn't have telephone. But anyway, you know, that was slow. I was still playing to very, very small organic audiences in coffee houses. And then my Harbinger album came out, which was a critical success. And, you know, like Rolling Stone was talking about it. Then other artists began discovering me. So I opened for Counting Crows in 1994. And I was opening for Melissa Etheridge in 95 for her Yes, I Am tour.

20:21Speaker 1:And I opened for Sarah McLachlan for her Fumbling Towards Ecstasy tour in 95 as well. And that's what cemented our friendship. And she heard of me because of Peter Gabriel. So by then he at least released the live tour album, the Secret World live album. And a lot of Gabriel fans are musicians, so I have a lot of musicians that are my fans, and they found me through Peter. That's how Sarah found me. And I was playing a little date up in Vancouver, and her drummer, Ashwin Sood, came.

20:56Speaker 1:She came, and they asked me to join the tour, and of course I said yes. And that was a very important friendship, and it still is in my life. She's just a beautiful human being, kind, a natural leader, generous. And it was unheard of at the time for women to be opening for women. So for me doing so with Sarah and Melissa was radical. And I would thank Sarah every night in my opening set and tell the audience, you don't understand, this doesn't happen. We are actively dissuaded to have women open for us. being told that we don't sell tickets. It's like being told to be small, being told to be unsuccessful and being told to follow this social order, which is bullshit, bullshit. And that's really, it's always a lesson, no matter who you are. Or if someone is trying to make you feel small, it's like, you just do it. You just do your way. Be entrepreneurial, make it happen. Follow your path. Listen to your little voice inside. So Sarah did that. she realized there was a zeitgeist because when I would talk about this with the audiences, they would erupt into applause. Right. They would give standing grations because they knew it was so wrong.

22:15Speaker 1:So like we were incentivized to keep touring together. Yes. And then had pilot test runs of Lilith Fair in 56. So that was like just coming on fire. And then she had her surfacing album out in 97. I had this fire out at the same time. And we just kind of, grew together right and it became Lilith and she invited more incredible female artists so yeah what a time.

22:44Speaker 3:What a time what a revolutionary time I mean just I mean hearing you talk about it like that it's just like it's so it's just so exciting so Part of that run included Woodstock 94. It was an absolutely insane lineup. The Cranberries, Primus, Bob Dylan, Green Day, the band with Bob Weir, Santana, and Peter Gabriel, with the young and green Paula Cole headlining the North Stage and closing out the festival. What do you remember from that historic weekend?

23:28Speaker 1:Oh, it was beautiful. It was very muddy. We were helicoptered in, you know, here. Yep. I'm, you know, like my parents used to call me like little Paula and my name Paula even means little. So I think I've been overcompensating for that my whole life.

23:45Speaker 2:You're little, little.

23:48Speaker 1:Little Paula, I'm being helicoptered into Woodstock and it was very muddy and the porta potties were overflowing and like sliding around. And there was, it was tough. It was tough for all those concert goers. And, and yet there was this interesting energy backstage, very male. you know, very rock and male. And I guess I'm used to that because I've always toured with men. It's like being in the military or something. I just got used to it. I think there were over 60 people in Peter's entourage.

24:19Speaker 1:So only four were female and I never saw the other three. So welcome to the music business. And then I've just, anyway, I digress. Like Woodstock, it was thrilling, intimidating to look out at quarter of a million people, but also incredible. And Peter was the perfect closer for that event because he, his music is about peace and betterment. And he closed with the song Biko, which is about Stephen Biko, a South African, a black South African who was incarcerated for years. And he gave voice again, another social political writer who was, course is not a nobody he's somebody with lasting uh greatness because he's writing for other people so um bico we closed with bico which sometimes we would do live if like the audience just demanded a second encore and we would go out and um all of the audience you know like lit their lighters it was dark it was just gorgeous and meaningful and it united everybody peacefully leaving what was a very turbulent festival with some peace in their heart.

25:38Speaker 2:Beautiful.

25:40Speaker 3:What do you think the responsibility is of an artist when it comes to songwriting to raise political awareness or social and economic issues that need attention? And I'm asking that specifically because It feels like we've entered a culture now where everything feels so 50-50, like there's almost two Americas. So it seems like every facet has pledged their allegiance to one or the other side. So what do you think the responsibility is of artists to raise awareness for those things?

26:18Speaker 1:I think it's incredibly difficult negotiating these times of division. And I find myself... moving around in my opinion about it, because on one hand I don't like, on one hand I am the camp of Dolly Parton who I want to love. I want to see the love in every eye to quote myself. Like I, and as she said, she looks for the God light in everybody. Like I want my better self wants that. I want to love people. I want music to unify people, but sometimes I'm like, I'm a discerning reader of the news. I'm, I'm, Awake in my lifetime when I feel too passionately about injustice or for me, like the environment and the Anthropocene and the extinction of species. That's the one that really gets me. Yeah.

27:14Speaker 1:That I feel like I need to be a voice. And sometimes I just, and I do, I release say my album revolution, which definitely had lower sales and got, And I'm accused of whatever, you know, it happens. Amen got backlash. Revolution got backlash. But you can't, you can't like be floated up to the surface of a river in your ego with praise and success. And you can't sink to the bottom with depression for criticism or being forgotten. You have to swim this middle path. And it's difficult to do so in the river of life of making art and its reception so that you don't float to the surface and die or sink to the bottom and die.

28:07Speaker 1:You continue swimming and you're in the middle of the river and you maintain your ideals. And so sometimes I speak out and sometimes I'm writing about highly personal things. And I try not to think about what how it's going to be received or what people think, because that's the death. Yes. That's the death of an artist. It just is. Then you're going to write shit.

28:30Speaker 2:Yep, exactly.

28:33Speaker 1:So you have to listen to that small voice inside. It's so hard sometimes. We are beat over the head to deny it and to conform.

28:43Speaker 3:Yeah.

28:44Speaker 1:Listen to it. It's unique. Embrace and lean into your eccentricity. That's what's interesting. That's what's going to keep you forever and and maybe sometimes unpopular, but those people who loved you during those unpopular years are going to be your lifetime fans. Right.

29:02Speaker 2:Right.

29:03Speaker 3:I know you grew up, you mentioned already, without much exposure to pop culture. You barely watched TV. You didn't get very good FM radio reception. And yet a teenage soap opera has made one of your songs truly immortal.

29:19Speaker 2:Did you ever.

29:20Speaker 3:Think the licensing request for Dawson's Creek would become such a defining moment for your music?

29:29Speaker 1:Never, ever. Of course not. Never. I mean, my music has been used for pilots for television shows and usually they would just die. Yeah. usually they go away yep and um then Kevin Williamson the creator of Dawson's Creek called me very passionately got my phone number explained the premise of his drama and said he was a fan, really wanted this song. He knew what he wanted. And that made me feel more trust about the usage. I said, yes, it became so much bigger than me. And that it coincided with a time in my life where I stepped away from the music business. I really needed a reset.

30:16Speaker 1:I took almost an eight year hiatus. I had my daughter, I got my life right, you know, moving force and all of that. So, Coming out of that hiatus, Dawson's Creek took a life on its own and it surpassed me. Sometimes I hated that. Sometimes I felt frustrated by that. But it's something you can't control at all. Just like you can't control who will be your audience. You can't choose your audience. They choose you. And after getting over my ego about that, I'm very moved now. I am very moved, especially at this point in my life. And I went to the set and I met James and Michelle and Katie. I met everybody and they were dear hearts, especially James. I mean, again, like an angel incarnate, I felt.

31:19Speaker 1:Why is it that they go early? I don't know. He was such a good man. And he sincerely loved, like, all of my music. I was very moved by him. So this song that was originally written for my grandfather who fought in World War II and the Battle of Okinawa and came home with PTSD and that affected my family and it made me think a lot about how I want to live. I wrote that song about my family and me. But it became... Everybody's song.

31:56Speaker 2:Yeah.

31:58Speaker 1:It doesn't belong to me anymore. It's everybody's song and it's beautiful. How fortunate I am to have this evergreen piece of music that makes people cry and it touches hearts. I'm so blessed.

32:12Speaker 3:What do you think it is about such beautiful hit songs that can do exactly what that song did? Like you mentioned, the song was originally about your grandfather and how trauma gets passed down to generations. What is it about hit songs that make it transcend beyond that and make it something everyone can relate to, even if their grandfather didn't have PTSD from World War II?

32:40Speaker 1:I heard Dolly Parton talking about this yesterday, you know, as I was deep diving in my grief, that it's not necessarily your favorite song. It's not necessarily the best song. like for her, it was Jolene. And I Will Always Love You, but she said those aren't her favorite songs. Her favorite songs were, I think it's down from Dover and Gypsy Joe and me, like tracks I've never heard of. I had to go look up on Spotify. And I do think I'd want to wait. There's some special and uplifting about it. It plays itself when we play it live. Yeah.

33:25Speaker 1:Some songs are just like that. It's just so easy. It just plays itself. There is something special about it. But I have a lot of songs, and I think a lot of artists have a lot of songs that could be hits, that they're magical and uplifting and melodic. But I think there's a lot of luck. Yeah. I do. I think there's a lot of luck and timing. Yeah.

33:51Speaker 2:Well, do you still enjoy playing it live?

33:54Speaker 1:You know, I do. Yeah. I do. I do. I feel like I've already gone through the process of being curmudgeonly about it. Yeah.

34:04Speaker 3:Yeah.

34:06Speaker 1:I've released that ghost and it's a unifier. Everybody sings. Right. It's like joy. Right. It's just liquid joy and it's flowing through all of our veins and I love it. It's so happy. Yeah.

34:20Speaker 3:Well, speaking of playing live, you are going out on the road to celebrate the 30th anniversary of your sophomore album, This Fire. But I wanted to chat a little bit about the debut album, Harbinger. I mean, we've talked about it a couple of times in this interview, but first it comes out and then the record label folds, which is a brutal introduction to the industry. What did you learn from having something outside of your control completely derail your plans?

34:52Speaker 1:I didn't have a good start. I had some lucky breaks, like, of course, Peter Gabriel. And I didn't have powerful management either. So I am the tortoise. I'm someone who just keeps going. I've been on several record labels, like five. And what I keep coming back to is doing it myself. I'm independent now. And now in this digital age, I just use a distributor and I have my own label. And the magic of I Don't Want to Wait being successful allows me to be like Robin Hood and run my own, take my income from I Don't Want to Wait and run my own record label and be independent. And what that does is I don't have to listen to anybody's advice about what they want from me. Yes. Even the newest release, Sonic Memoir, is a very impractical, weird... it's very different to make a 63 track box set. It's clunky, it's expensive. And vulnerable. And vulnerable. Because these are demos, like pre-digital demos. I cannot clean them up. I cannot fix that out of tune note, you know? Right. Right.

36:08Speaker 1:And I'm just letting it go. I'm letting people hear an artist's process. Like, okay, this is me in the early 90s with like a crappy digital keyboard. And that's the beginning of that song. And that was our process. In order to get a record deal, you had to make demos, which is good because I own the masters of the demos, one. And two, it taught me how to produce, self-produce. So that's the long-term goodness out of it. But record labels, they wanted me to only release the This Fire demos only on CD. And I wanted a bigger vision than that. I wanted to do it for my fans. my long-term fans who know the B-sides and then give them like 50%, like over 30 tracks of music that have never been heard. Like demos from a deep dive from the vault. Like you've never heard these tracks.

37:00Speaker 1:And I just wanted to give that. And it allows me to reclaim my narrative because that's what record labels do. They try to hold the narrative about who you are or, or, you know, any, any media, they try to do that, especially towards, young women. Yeah.

37:18Speaker 2:Oh, yeah.

37:19Speaker 1:So, right?

37:21Speaker 2:Yes.

37:22Speaker 3:No one knows better than a man trying to tell a young woman what's actually best for her.

37:31Speaker 2:So, yeah, so true.

37:33Speaker 1:So back, I don't know if there was a, if I took it out so tangentially away from Harbinger, And I forgot the question. Did you have a question?

37:43Speaker 2:No, I know the question was really, what was that like?

37:45Speaker 3:But you answered it so beautifully that thankfully that happening led you to exactly where you are now and having your independent label. And now, in addition to being able to put out music independently in this era of your career, you have returned to Berkeley, which is a full circle gig for you now as a visiting professor. When you were attending the school, did you ever imagine- you would be on the other side of the classroom one day.

38:12Speaker 1:Oh, no. I wanted to get the hell out of there. And I wanted to get the hell out of my little town that I grew up in. And, you know, life makes you go full circle like a fool's journey. And I was at Berkeley for 11 years, but I've left Berkeley again so that I can recommit myself to what I really do, which is touring. So just tour. And... this album, like I'm, I'm more properly learning guitar at this point in my life. So I'm writing my new songs on guitar, which is like a beginner's mindset. And even though I'm not very good at it, piano is really my main instrument and I play guitar. I've played guitar like in alternate tunings, but I'm practicing in traditional tuning now and it's, it's really hard, but that's where the songs are being born. So I'm, Right now I'm releasing Sonic Memoir. I'm going on tour. I'm learning guitar.

39:15Speaker 1:I'm writing new music and I don't have time to teach anymore. Right. It was a really beautiful lesson. It's again, like I took these times out of my life to raise my family, which is, something that I have very few role models for honestly a woman in the music business that was able to have both things yeah family a long-term successful marriage yeah and a long-term successful career it's really hard to balance those things and I would always say to my, especially my female students, this is really, really hard to do. And I know you're only 22, but if you ever have any questions about this, let's just stop everything and talk about it because it's so important.

40:03Speaker 1:And so I took time away from my career a couple of times to be with family and his family. And I would release an album, but I just wouldn't tour it hard or promote it hard. And I'm really grateful I did that. And so I'm coming back now in my late fifties and I'm touring more than I ever have. Well, not ever, not since the nineties. Right. So I'm, I'm grateful for that. It's possible. It's rare, but it's possible to have rebirth in your career. I saw it with Leonard Cohen. I saw it with Patti Smith, I saw it with Dolly Parton. So you have to keep your work ethic. You have to keep your fans, a relationship with your fans and gratitude and humility with your fans. Love. Love in your heart. You can't get bitter.

40:59Speaker 1:And keep belief in yourself and keep working and making content. So I'm there. I believe in the long path for myself. I am the tortoise. I wasn't lucky with good management. I wasn't lucky with a powerful major label that stayed in business. Right. My, my, my small term imprint label is still a thorn in my side. It's still, you know, so what do you do? You could cry about it, but I, I need to get to work and, and, and keep releasing and keep holding faith, holding love.

41:42Speaker 3:Oh, I it's funny that you had said rebirth, because that's exactly what I was thinking about while you were talking about learning to to play guitar better and to the music or music is being born on the guitar now. And I find it so beautiful that you're experiencing this rebirth of music in a different way for you while also living the nostalgia of the 30th anniversary of this fire. And it brings me right back to what we talked about early in the conversation about the spiral. You know, it all, it, it is, it feels very much like your life is on a, is just in a beautiful spiral all the time in, in all ways. And I cannot thank you enough for sitting here with me today.

42:28Speaker 2:And for all of the incredible music over the years.

42:32Speaker 3:I want everyone to know that you can order Sonic Memoir now and learn more about Paula's anniversary tour at Well, she will be playing this fire in its entirety 30 years later at PaulaCole.com. Please go see her in a city near you. Thank you so much for spending your time with me. I have so loved this conversation.

42:53Speaker 1:I've so loved it too. And you are just beautiful and so smart. Thank you.

42:57Speaker 2:Thank you. So are you. Appreciate you. Bye.

43:00Speaker 3:You too.

43:01Speaker 1:Bye-bye.

43:01Speaker 3:Teen Beat is an iHeart podcast produced and hosted by Danielle Fishel. Executive Producers Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman. Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo. Producer and editor, Tara Sudbach. The theme song is by Mark Hoppus. Yes, that Mark Hoppus. Follow us on Instagram at teenbeatpod.