Aaron Burdett’s "Paris" Reflects Yearning and Hope

You might think that a Valentine's Day release titled "Paris" would, in one way or another, trade in romantic tropes - it is, after all, the City of Love - but singer and songwriter Aaron Burdett has, as usual, something beyond the predictable in mind on his latest release for Organic Records.  

That distinctive flair starts with the song's "cold open":

I've got a feeling about Paris
I've always known I'm going to go
Like that city's holding secrets for me I need to know
I don't speak the language I don't know the names
I've got a feeling about Paris and me, all the same

and continues through an intricately structured meditation on restlessness. And though he gets subtle, sympathetic backing from an ensemble that includes award-winning banjoist Kristin Scott Benson, Carley Arrowood (fiddle), mandolinist Tristan Scroggins (Missy Raines & Allegheny) and producer-bassist Jon Weisberger, Burdett - who balances solo work with his job as singer and guitarist for popular bluegrass-plus sextet, the Steep Canyon Rangers - keeps the focus on the song itself.  

"I like shiny things, new things," he confesses. "I always think that a new thing is going to make something different. It does, but just for a few moments, and then I'm the same, and everything around me is the same; there wasn't any real change, I only distracted myself briefly. 

"'Paris' is a song about yearning, and looking outside of oneself, and hoping there's more out there in some exotic place. It might be the next town down the road or the big city two states over, or maybe even somewhere across the mountains and an ocean. 

"I hear a longing in this song now, but I also hear hope. My band-mate, Barrett, said, 'I've got a feeling about Paris' a couple years ago during a sound check at the Bijou Theater in Knoxville, and when I heard that, I did what I do and I wrote it down. That line grew into this tune."

 Listen to "Paris" HERE. 

 

Tags : Aaron Burdett Aaron Burdett Paris