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T. Pauls' "So Alone"
CD
is Now Available!
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1. Do you ever Think of Me
.
2. Mama Said
.
3. So Alone
.
4. Son of a Baptist
Preacher
.
5. I Said You
.
6. Little Miss
Heartbreak Can
.
7. Last Chance
to say Goodbye
.
8. Let's Get It
On
.
9. I Would Love to Love You
.
10. I Won't Fall
Down
.
11. Baby Please
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1. Do you ever Think of Me
As each person knows, the end of any relationship is painful and sends you
on a roller coaster of emotions.
After time, the pain seems a little more bearable but from time to time we think of the person that at one time
was a very big part of our life and wonder to ourselves, "Do you ever think of me"?
I wrote this song a few moths after ending a relationship. I found myself reflecting on my past and wondered if
any of people that I had once been in love with ever thought about me. I took it a step further by wondering out
loud if the things that made me think of them in turn made
them think of me.
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2. Mama Said
"Mama Said" talks about how my mother taught me right from wrong when I was a boy so I would make the right choices later in life when she was not around to help me with
life's challenges. As is the case with
most boys, their mother is in a special category that no one
can come close to. I loved and respected my mother more than can I can
possibly express in written text.
As already outlined on my MUSICAL INFLUENCES page, my mother loved music and left this world too soon. A month after her death in November of
2000, I wrote and recorded "Mama
Said".
Mothers are the cornerstone
of our society due to the morals and ethics that they either do or do not pass on to their children by the example they set with their own lives. Everything
I am, for good or bad, is due to the example of love, kindness and tolerance that she taught me. While my mom was
proud of my music, fame and
fortune were things that never appealed to her and I have to believe she would be happy with my choices to focus on assisting other people who
are struggling with cancer rather than getting caught up in the entertainment industry.
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3. So Alone
This song is dedicated to and
written for anyone that has lost a loved one and is still struggling to fill the void left after the death of their
loved one.
When I started writing "So
Alone", I was feeling
sorry for myself after ending a relationship and decided to write a song about how I felt. I had written the first 2 verses when we received
news that my Uncle had died and that my Aunt, who had been married to him for over 60 years, was now going to face
life alone without him. I
suddenly realized that my situation was nothing compared to her loss. The third verse of the song was written from
her perspective of coming home to the same house they had shared all of those years and how hard that must have
been for her.
SPECIAL NOTE:
Several years after recording this song, I met a woman named Betty who had lost her husband in a head on collision. My friends told me about her husbands death so I was reluctant to give her a copy of "So Alone" when she asked to hear my music because the song
would be so personal to her situation. So, I gave her a copy of some of my other songs instead. Over the next year, we developed a close bond. One night, she seemed very sad and I asked her if
she was OK. She mentioned to
me that it had been 3 years since the death of her husband and that she was lonely without him. Chills shot down my back because what she said described
the 3rd verse of "So Alone". I told her that I had a song that I wanted her to listen to but that I didn't
want her to listen to it by herself. I
took her outside to my truck and held her hand as I played her the song on my truck stereo. It was a very special moment for me as a "NEW"
songwriter & as a caring human being to be able to give this gift to her.
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4. Son of a Baptist Preacher
As noted on my BIOGRAPHY PAGE, I
grew up the son of a Baptist Preacher which by the way, I DO NOT REMCOMMEND. I
can joke about it now but, for my older brother, Gary, and I, it was not a bucket of laughs. One day while living in Hollywood California, I
started thinking about what my brother and I went through and realized there was a very humorous side to the whole
experience. So, I wrote this song about it. When I played "Son of a Baptist Preacher" for my friends and saw their reactions, I realized that anyone, who has been exposed to any strict religion full of rules and regulations,
would identify with the lyrics in the song. As a side note, my friends were glad to see me write a song about a lighter topic rather than the
darker brooding songs I normally focus on.
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5. I Said You
This song deals with the realization
I came to several years ago about a girl I had dated 12 years prior. I met her right after getting out of a very
unhappy marriage at the age of 25. She
was wonderful in every way but she wanted to start a family and get married. Due to my past experiences, I wanted to stay single and avoid any commitments. After
2 years, I ended the relationship because I knew we wanted different things.
Fast Forward 12 years to the inspiration for the song.
One night, I was talking to a friend of mine about past relationships and my friend asked me out of all of the
women I had dated which one would I choose if I had to pick just one of them. Without hesitation, I responded who would be my choice on all counts. A few months
later while reflecting on that conversation, I wrote the song which details what a great friend she was too me when I was going through one of
the toughest periods of my life.
.
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6. Little Miss Heartbreak
Can
The inspiration for this song came quite
naturally while driving down
Melrose Avenue in Hollywood with a friend of mine. A rather attractive girl was walking down the sidewalk and let's just say, "She was working it". She didn't have much on in the way of clothes to start with and she was strutting
her stuff for everyone to see as she walked down the street. My friend commented that she was HOT and she knew it: Meaning she wanted the attention
but probably didn't want anyone to approach her. I made the comment that she must have broken a lot of hearts in her time. Reflecting on this experience caused me to write
"Little Miss Heartbreak
Can" in more of a country
setting.
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7. Last Chance to say Goodbye
Over the past 10 years, I have met a lot of people who have wanted to help me with my music. One of these people
was Kathy Paulin who I met at a Kinkos of all places. She quite simply
walked up to me and asked me if I was a Country Singer. I told her I was and over the next couple years she tried to connect me with people she knew in
Nashville. One day, I went
over to her house and found that the next door neighbors children were playing with her 2 children. These children looked like they had been crying and I asked her what had happened. She pulled me
aside and told me that their
father had died from a Heart Attack the night before. As she told me the story, Kathy started crying. She then told me that the youngest boy came to her in tears and told her that he had gotten into a disagreement with his father and said some mean things to him. The little boy said that it was his last chance to say goodbye and that he felt guilty
for what he had said to his father.
I was overwhelmed with the pain this little boy must have been feeling and wrote "Last Chance to say Goodbye" from his perspective. I went home and wrote this song in only a few hours. I was
so overwhelmed with emotion that the lyrics just seemed to come to me. Once I recorded the song, Kathy gave a copy of the song to the boy's mother. She said that, when he was older and the time was
right, she would play it for him.
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8. Let's Get It On
I have spent a lot of time in Honky Tonks
over the past 15 years and this song is just one of many about my experiences. I have never been a real aggressive
person when it comes to approaching women, while most of my friends will walk up to just about any woman they meet and ask them to dance. Like most people, fear of rejection causes most of us to just watch people instead of asking them to
dance to avoid being turned down and
having our little feelings hurt. This
has happened to all of us!
We make eye contact with someone that seems interested but they are as afraid as we are of making a fool of themselves,
so they don't have the courage to ask you to dance either. This song was written with the intent to make fun of people who are too chicken to
ask the other person to dance.
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9. I Would Love to Love You
Over the period of our lives, each of us will meet people who may or may not become
a big part of our lives. However,
when you first meet these people you can never be sure which category they will fall into. This song deals with
meeting someone that you immediately connect with and the emotions each person feels. The question becomes is this going to last and should I stick around to see if it
does or is this just infatuation and should we both just move on. This song is about one of these situations that came up in my life that initially
looked like it could become a long term relationship but ended up being a brief friendship.
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10. I Won't Fall Down
I have heard it said that "if life gives you lemons you make lemonade".
That would be an appropriate
description of how I came to write this song. As noted on the EMS TOP 4O CHARTS page, I had a rather unpleasant experience with a few bad
apples or bad lemons when I went to Nashville. After practically a year of waiting to receive my recordings from the producer (who was literally holding them hostage until
I would sign an exclusive management agreement with him), I finally got him to mail me my recordings. When I realized he had doubled up the
tracks and ruined most of them, I called him and told him "Exactly how the cow ate the cabbage". For those of you who have never heard this phrase, it is a polite way of saying I said things that I can not repeat due to the tone
and nature of the conversation. After
I hung up the phone, I was so furious that I wrote "I Won't Fall Down". The song was later released on Stuart Cameron's HOT DISC and topped
out at #22 on the EMS Top 40 Independent Charts. Life is what you make out of your disappointments and fortunately I was able to get some form of
redemption from such a disappointing experience.
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11. Baby Please
In 2004, some friends of mine had told
me about the death of a young
boy who was the nephew of their boss.
He had died one night in a car accident and they asked me to write a song about what had happened and to call the song, "Too Soon". A few weeks later I wrote the song and presented
it to them. They were very emotional and played it for their boss who was so moved by it that he wanted to pay for me to record the song with a producer
he knew in Los Angeles named Tim Miner.
I was introduced to Tim a couple weeks later and immediately connected with him. Tim, I would later find out, had been signed to Motown Records as one of the first
Caucasian artist for that label and had worked with Quincy Jones and other leaders in the industry as a performer
and a producer. He asked me
why I wasn't doing something with my music and I told him that life had gotten in the way but that I would eventually
get around to it. From this meeting, I
learned that Tim was also the Son of a Baptist Preacher. We had a lot in common and we both agreed that we would eventually work together.
About a year later, Tim played
a song of his on the piano that had no lyrics but the melody was beautiful. He asked me to put lyrics to the song so I went back to San Diego and wrote the song reflecting on the end of a relationship
that I later wished I had not ended.
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