the REAL DEAL The Gospel According To PAUL CAUTHEN
In country music, “the real deal” is a title reserved for those who not only possess iconic voices, but who live the lifestyle they sing about. Or, at the very least, make you believe they live it.
Cash never served time in Folsom Prison, and while Merle indeed “turned 21 in prison,” he wasn’t “doing life without parole” like he says on “Mama Tried.” But you believed them both when they sang about it.
Paul Cauthen’s got the voice. His rich, smooth baritone voice earned him the nickname “Big Velvet.” As far as the outlaw country lifestyle goes, when Cauthen sings about going to prison for getting caught with “the devil’s lettuce,” he’s not playing a character.
His art almost always imitates his life.
“I turned 20 in prison,” Cauthen, now 34, told me as we sat down at a picnic table on the porch of the Blue Store outside our shared birthplace of Tyler, Texas.
But Cauthen is much more than a rebellious outlaw wringing the most out of life. He’s also a deeply spiritual man walking the fine line between the sacred and the profane.
Profane
The weed’s under your seat, so if we get caught it’s yours,” Cauthen says as we wind down East Texas back roads in his 1989 Dodge Ram Charger on the way to spend an afternoon on Lake Palestine.
There’s a reason Cauthen sells shirts that read “Country Band With Contraband.”
He was arrested in high school for possession of marijuana and after parole violations in college was imprisoned on a six-month sentence. After his release he moved to Colorado where he says he began building on both his music and his outlaw careers.
“I started getting into that bluegrass hippie scene, taking a lot of acid and mushrooms and experimenting with my life,” Cauthen says. “I was just floating by the seat of music — and selling a lot of f--- ing weed.”
He says he was part of a larger operation spread out across several states, but instead of splurging with the money he made, he began investing it in his music career.
After several years in the Americana duo Sons of Fathers, Cauthen went solo. His 2016 solo debut, My Gospel, was an old-school country effort that shot him into the conversation with other non-Nashville country stars like Sturgill Simpson and Cody Jinks. But instead of riding a wave of success and fame brought with his breakthrough, Cauthen had a breakdown.
A broken engagement sent him into a downward spiral. He lived for two years out of a suitcase at the Belmont Hotel in Dallas, driving himself into the ground even as he worked to create his next album, the brilliant Room 41, so named after the room where he almost died.
“I bought a Harley and I would drive it 120 mph over the bridges in Dallas,” Cauthen says. “I would wake up in the morning with songs in my voice memos that I had no memory of recording. I was having to relearn my own s--- during the day.”
The result was an album that was an extreme departure from his first. has funk, disco, and even some hip-hop beats with Cauthen’s undeniably country voice. The lyrics are sometimes personal, often vulnerable, and, like on the hit “Cocaine Country Dancing” sometimes pure, hedonistic fun.
