Artown Monday Night Music Series: Eli Paperboy Reed

Artown Monday Night Music Series: Eli Paperboy Reed

“Country and soul music have always been two parts of the same stream,” says Eli Paperboy Reed. “The influence flows in both directions.” Take a listen to Reed's exceptional new album, Down Every Road: Eli Paperboy Reed Sings Merle Haggard (Yep Roc), and you'll hear exactly what he means. Recorded in Brooklyn with longtime collaborator Vince Chiarito (Black Pumas, Charles Bradley), the record finds Reed reimagining a host of vintage Haggard tunes as classic soul rave-ups, tapping into all the hurt and heartache of the country legend's iconic catalog and channeling it into explosive, high-octane performances fueled by punchy horns and ecstatic vocals. Reed's guitar playing here is more Pops Staples than Roy Nichols, and the production more FAME than Bakersfield, but there's an obvious reverence underlying the whole project, a deep well of respect and knowledge that allows Reed to inhabit the songs and make them his own without sacrificing an ounce of honesty or integrity. He changes little in the way of melody and architecture on the album, instead recasting the arrangements to present Haggard's tunes in an entirely new context, one that blurs the lines of genre, geography, and race to reveal the common, distinctly American threads tying them all together.