Paul Carrack plays Brighton and Guildford

Paul Carrack is back on the road with dates including Brighton Dome on February 10 and Guildford’s G Live on March 17, hot on the heels of his latest release, his lockdown album One On One.
Paul CarrackPaul Carrack
Paul Carrack

After more than 20 years of running his own record label and touring operation, Paul was ready for the challenge when lockdown cast its unwelcome shadow over the music business.

One On One is a new addition to a body of work that now runs to 18 solo studio albums packed with signature songs – all on top of his work with Mike + the Mechanics, Squeeze, Ace and more. Creating it from his home studio base, Paul not only wrote, played and recorded the whole thing, but this time, trusting his instincts, he even mixed the album himself.

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“I haven’t let the time go to waste. Basically we should have been on the road all of 2020 so January, February, March, everything was going great. The shows were selling out and we were due to go to Europe, the USA and Australia.

“By mid March, I started to get the vibe that things were going to be shutting down, and we thought it would probably be only a couple of months, so we rescheduled a lot of the shows. It soon became apparent that the situation wasn’t going to change any time soon. I started going into the studio, initially to keep my chops ticking over, but I found that it also helped to keep my mind occupied and acted as a kind of therapy at what was a very anxious time.

“I have never done absolutely everything before in its entirety but I’ve done quite a lot by myself, predominantly just me. That’s how tracks evolve. It is not that I don’t want to play with other people but in this case it was a question of needs must and I do think it means that the album has a certain something about it. I had no songs. I had nothing I just started coming into the studio to take my mind off things and it’s surprising how time just disappears. It is a very long-winded process doing it like that, but I do think it’s a good album. I think it has worked out well. There are good songs. The sound is authentic. It’s a rootsy and lyrically engaging sound. Maybe it’s the fact that there was so much intensity around the world at that time with people not knowing what was happening and some people being scared. And I was worried too, but I don’t think that that angst comes across in the recording. It’s quite a positive upbeat album but I still had momentum and lyrically there are some good things happening.”

Now he’s back out on the road: “You have to be confident. I did a couple of shows last week in Guildford with Paul Jones, with a charity event that he puts on annually. Van Morrison was on the bill as well, as was Kiki Dee and we didn’t know what to expect to be honest but both nights were full. We also did three shows last October which were shows that had been rescheduled and they went well and I was in the USA in September playing with Eric Clapton in the southern states and that was all fine. With the UK I think we will just have to wait and see but I do think there is an appetite for people to be out there and just to live their lives especially if they’ve done everything that has been asked of them in terms of vaccines and isolation. And I think that’s my feeling too, that we need to get out there and just be living. I have done all the things that have been asked of me. I am triple vaccinated and we have been testing all along and I think you’ve just got to do it. I think it is now or never. It has been crazy and it has been very difficult. Musicians are renowned for rolling with the punches but this was hard. You could say that I have had a good run and if I stayed at home forever then that would be OK but I’ve got a band that are younger than me and I can’t maintain that band without getting out there to work.”

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