CMJ - May 25, 2007
Q&A With Eli Paperboy Reed
By Paul Barretta

At the Continental Club in Austin, TX during SXSW 07, I had the pleasure of hearing Eli Paperboy Reed and the True Loves. I’d like to say I stumbled upon the show by accident, and perhaps twenty years from now, when Eli is more commonly known, I will say just that to make the story more interesting. But for now, while Eli is still paying the bills by delivering flowers, I’ll confess I’d heard an MP3 of the band as part of my preparation for the trip, and knew for certain I wanted to see them live. Eli’s strong vocals were complimented by his band The True Loves, and his own ’56 Gibson Hollow Body, proving to be what was probably the best set of music I witnessed all week, a tremendous combination of Soul, R&B and Gospel.

Eli has an album coming out this summer on Q Division Records, and is about to embark on a two-week tour, bringing him from his home state of Massachusetts to as far West as Chicago, and as far South as Maryland. Do yourself a favor and try to get to one of his shows if you’re even remotely close to any of his locations. You can check Eli out at www.elipaperboyreed.com, or at his MySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/elipaperboyreed where you’ll find the tour schedule.

Eli was kind enough to make himself available somewhere between delivering Roses and Lilies for a Q&A about his music, his album and his tour.

Tell me about the new album.

The new album is going to be the first real album I’ve done because it’s going to be all original music and all our own arrangements … it’s more of a meaningful project for me. I’m pretty excited to put out an album of all my own stuff with my own band that I really worked hard to put together, so I’m psyched about that.

How is the tour shaping up?

The tour is shaping up well. It’s not going to be too long… probably 2 and a half or three weeks toward the end of June. The exciting thing for me is that (for) two shows on tour, we’re going to be opening for and backing up this guy Roscoe Robinson, who is a favorite singer of mine. He was a lead in the Blind Boys of Mississippi, and then he went on to make solo records for Atlantic and a whole bunch of other labels… We’re going to back him, and open the show for him. We’re going to do that in New York and Chicago. That’s going to be a big deal for me, that’ll be really fun to do.

And … I think it’s going to be great to play outside of Boston. I just want to get out on the road and play as much as possible. Hopefully when we start going out, the band will get hooked and we’ll start going out on the road a lot more.

How did you assemble the True Loves?

There’s been a lot of different combinations of people over the years… well, it hasn’t even been that long. It’s mostly just been friends of mine and people I’ve gotten to know through other band members. The original line-up was just friends from High School and then a few other people we just put together … People had other things they wanted to do, and finish school, so I found a new drummer and a new trumpet player. Some members have side projects, but luckily it’s worked out that everyone that’s in the band has been awesome, and we’re all on the same page musically. (At the same time), everyone has their own taste and flavor that they bring to the band. Like my one saxophonist is in a free jazz kind of band that he writes all the music for, and everyone has their own style which I think is really cool.

Is the line-up on the album the same that was in Austin for SXSW?

Pretty much. On the record we have a kind of expanded horn section, there’s going to be five horns. And (for the tour) the bari- sax player that played with me in Texas is from New York so he doesn’t play every show but he’ll play as much as he can. (Also), the drummer that played with us in Texas was a fill-in, but our usual drummer is still on board.

Your SXSW set was probably the best set I heard during the entire festival. Has your appearance sparked any noticeable impact?

Yeah, I think so. I’ve certainly gotten a lot of feedback saying that people really liked it. I think that it’s definitely sparked some interest from managerial types … and I think it’s going to help in the long run. It was our first time going down to South-by (Southwest), and we had some really good exposure leading up to the show, but I think that next time when we go, we’ll probably have a better crowd… it just kind of feels that way.

Going back a ways, what brought you to Mississippi for nine months?

That’s a very strange story. I basically (had) just graduated from High School, and I didn’t really want to go to college, that wasn’t in my plans. I had gotten in touch with this guy somehow who was planning on re-starting this radio station in Clarksdale, Mississippi called WORX. It was kind of a famous radio station that at that time had been an all satellite station, and he wanted to restart it as a live radio station. So we got in touch somehow, and he wanted to get my music collection over, and I said how about I just come down and work for you.

I went down there and it fell apart. He lost his financial backing and so I ended up just going down with no money and nothing really to do. I figured I’d stay around as long as I was there.

How do you feel the experience of being down there and playing has influenced you?

I feel as a performer, just by watching the way a lot of those guys would interact with crowds, and stuff like that was really (influential)… just having the stage presence they had and how to basically work a crowd. That was really important to me. And, as a guitarist I think I learned a lot down there just from playing.

After listening to the new tracks, I couldn’t help but think “Otis Redding,” and an article from the Austin Chronicle made the same connection. Do you like or dislike the comparison and why?

Good question. I’m not going to turn down anyone who compares me to Otis Redding because I love Otis; I think he’s a brilliant singer. I feel like I’m coming from a little bit of a different place… There are lot more singers that I feel like I sound like, but if someone wants to say I sound like Otis Redding, I think it’s there.

Who do you feel you sound like?

I think that I sound a lot like O.V. Wright. I listen to a lot of gospel music. … I think some of my biggest influences come from there. People like Johnny Jones of The Swanee Quintet. Also, Sam Cooke obviously. But I can’t say no to an Otis Redding comparison. I love Otis, I think he’s unbelievable.

Is there anything you’d like to add?

Not really, just come see us on tour….. The first show with Roscoe Robinson is June 15th, and that’s at Southpaw in Brooklyn. That should be our first or second show, then we go to the end of June.

NORTHEAST PERFORMER
Eli "Paperboy" Reed
By Catherine Tung
Photos by Anthony Tieuli

Eli "Paperboy" Reed has recently garnered a local infamy-in part for his music-but also for his vintage sound and production quality. Reed, a Jewish Brookline native, and himself of recent vintage (he's 22), has put together an old-timey rhythm and blues album, Walkin' and Talkin', a celebration of robust horns and crooning vocals that not only sounds convincing, but has been mistaken by at least one area journalist for a Sam Cooke record.

That Reed's recordings are dead ringers for his heroes has turned out to be something of a double-edged sword. Even as he demonstrates his love for-and deep knowledge of-southern soul music, at a certain point the boundaries between admiration and mimicry become blurred. Indeed, it is sometimes unclear where the influences end and where Reed himself begins.

Much of the ambiguity surrounding the record, however, falls away when Eli Reed and his band, the True Loves, take the stage. Reed, dressed in a suit with his hair slicked back, is a sturdy-looking frontman who leads his seven-man ensemble with the assurance of an old veteran. The playing is sharp, the energy is high, and Reed's wailing vocals fill the room. Most striking, however, is the sight of the True Loves: a handful of fresh-faced, mostly white Bostonians swaggering through the Delta blues. The live band confirms what the record cannot, that it really is those people playing this music-and it works.

Just don't call it a revival. "It's a dirty word," Reed insists. "I'm writing new songs. We're all in our early twenties. We're playing passionate, exciting rhythm and blues. That's music-we're not reviving anything."

In fact, the oddity of Eli Reed's music may not be so much a question of revivalism as it is of context. The True Loves hail from Boston, but their music is clearly rooted elsewhere, reminiscent of a sound that dates far back on the American music spectrum.

BROOKLINE BLUES
As a boy in Brookline, Reed (born Eli Husock) grew up in a house filled with records. His father, Howard Husock, wrote music articles for the Phoenix in the '70s, and the sounds of another era-Howard's gospel, soul, and country favorites-were always in the air. "He definitely has a lot of records," Reed says, in that tone of understatement unique to children talking about their parents. Of all the family albums, however, it was one in particular-the Ray Charles Atlantic box set-that Reed, around age thirteen, would hear, fall in love with, and eventually come to idolize.

In conversation, Reed cuts an acute figure. His eyes, face, and voice all convey a razor-sharp concentration, and few things, it seems, ever draw his attention without becoming intense points of interest. Throughout his high school years, the Ray Charles box set led to a collection of vintage r&b albums, and the records, in turn, grew from a hobby into a challenge. "I never really gave it a second thought," Reed says of his transition from fan to musician. "I listened to Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke. They can do it; I must be able to do it, too."

Even as he took up odd instruments, learning by ear-"There was always a guitar around, so I just picked it up and started figuring it out," he recalls-a considerable portion of his musical experience also took place in a slightly more structured setting: the Brookline High School band room.

Reed remembers long hours in the band room with his teacher, Carolyn Castellano, talking about "music and philosophy and stuff like that." Reed admits that he wasn't "the best saxophone player," but adds that Castellano, the school's jazz band director, was an important source of early support. "The original band developed out of our jazz band-friends of mine who we'd play music with," he says. As Reed sharpened his skills and honed his chops, the prospect of singing like Jackie Wilson or Sam Cooke began to seem like more and more of a reality.

The distance between Reed and his 1950s and '60s southern influences, however, remained a bit too wide to bridge while still in Boston-which is how Reed, at age 18, in a kind of reversal of the historic American northern migration, ended up driving down to Clarksdale, Mississippi: the heart of the Delta. "My parents took me down and they gave me a little bit of money," Reed recalls. "They found me a place to live, they stayed for about five days, and we got some furniture at Wal-Mart. And then they left."

"IT'S NOT YOUR NIGHT! GET OFFSTAGE!"
So how did the Boston-bred Reed enjoy his first Mississippi summer?

"It's nice," he says, the old fondness for Clarksdale still fresh in his voice, "You go out and swim in the river and relax. Drink iced tea."

The Clarksdale of Reed's account is a town of opposites; at once idyllic and exciting, peaceful and dangerous, friendly and threatening. Clarksdale, in many ways, is no different from any other poor city. Drugs and desperation are as much a part of the streets as the sweet tea and sunshine. "You remember all the great stuff," Reed says, "But it was very hard to be 19 years old and living on your own in a rough area."

Still, the "great stuff" that Reed remembers sounds truly remarkable; gigs at the local clubs every other night, informal teaching sessions with legendary blues drummer Sam Carr every weekend. "He would play me stuff and sit me down and be like, this is how you ought to do it," Reed says. "I'm forever grateful to Sam Carr. He's one of the most wonderful, caring, genuine human beings I've ever met."

Reed's time in Clarksdale-he lived in Mississippi for about nine months-was a day-to-day educational experience, a process of learning-by-doing that covered everything from paying the bills to playing the blues. At the clubs where he cut his teeth, audiences and owners alike often gave their opinions bluntly. Terry "Big T" Williams, who ran one of the clubs, would get Reed offstage with a simple "It's not your night! Get offstage! Go home!"

"He was a big guy," Reed says. "We got in shouting matches. I'd work on it, come back. ...It got to be that every weekend he would call me up to play."

By the time Reed decided to leave, he had a piece of Clarksdale on his back to take with him. Reed had been accepted into the University of Chicago, and, as he puts it, "my parents wanted me to go to school," so he enrolled for the fall semester of 2003. Whatever academic expectations Reed's parents might have had, however, seem by his own account to have been eclipsed by the musical experience he had there. Reed quickly got his own college radio show (where he played endless r&b), found a gig playing piano at a black church in the city's south side, and used the $30 a week that he earned there to buy more records.

The records-and the gospel music that he found at the church-outlasted his interest in college. "I came back [to Boston] in June of 2004," Reed says. "Chicago was a great city, but the school wasn't for me."

THE TRUE LOVES
As much as Reed professes a debt to his time in Clarksdale and Chicago, he seems eager to focus on the present. "I think what I'm doing now is more important," he says.

Certainly, it is more difficult. It's one thing to play rhythm and blues with the locals in Mississippi, where many of these songs were born, or even in Chicago, which, by virtue of its heavy southern immigration, has inherited much of the Delta's rich musical legacy. It's quite another to bring that music to a New England band. But Reed, in a characteristic display of tenacity that seems at times almost foolhardy, is not one to back down from a challenge.

To be fair, the task is not overwhelming. Reed is back home, after all, and he has the comforts of familiar surroundings-and of old friends-to help him. The True Loves have undergone a number of incarnations since Reed's return to Boston in 2004, but the current lineup includes a friend from Brookline High (sax player Gabe Birnbaum), as well as friends and acquaintances culled from shared projects and neighbors. Critical response to Walkin' and Talkin' has, within the local press, been generally positive (the Weekly Dig reports that the True Loves have been "slacking unlikely jaws all across town"), and the crowds at Reed's shows are all too ready to dance and cheer.

The main danger, it seems, is less likely to be a lack of appreciation than a lack of understanding. Reed, in looking to the future, expresses concern that labels might "pigeonhole" his music, and the same Dig article that praises his record's "youthful nerves" also drops the dreaded r-word, urging readers to "Get your cross-cultural soul revival on!"

HISTORY LESSONS
In truth, listeners of this new generation of rhythm and blues may have trouble understanding a type of music that Reed himself says is "all about southern-ness" without taking a pilgrimage-be it literal or figurative-similar to its creator's. The dialogue between the traditional south and the contemporary north can be a difficult meeting, one that may not be quite complete even in Reed. Even as he avoids the "revivalist" label, the influence of Reed's more than two thousand r&b records-judging by the vintage flavor of his album's production and artwork-seems to be heavy indeed. The True Loves, too, seem a few steps shy of coming into their own. Their posture onstage, though assured, at times carries the vague shadow of a high school jazz band.

In conversation, Reed attributes his love of vintage to a desire for a much-needed sense of musical history.

"You look at what people call r&b today," he says. "There's no blues. It's not rhythm and blues. Black music, especially, in America has lost a sense of history today. I say that and people get really upset. But it really bothers me. Most popular music that you hear on the radio doesn't look back to anything before 1979 at the most. Maybe you'll hear a little bit of Al Green in some of the r&b songs. Those are the better ones."

Reed chases after this sense of history by seeking out teachers-veterans of soul and gospel-to help him bridge the gap between the thousands of records that he collects and his own music. "I'm singing with this gospel group right now," he says. "They've been around for sixty years. They're all in their seventies and eighties, and I'll come in and they'll really try to pass it on. There's stuff you can't learn from records."

Perhaps it is partly this recognition of the limitations of recording that makes Reed such an enthusiastic live performer. Each show is a chance for fun, experience, interaction-all the things that bring music to life, things that his record collection (however vast) can't offer. It is, perhaps, a chance for Reed to try and convey that all-important sense of history to audiences while, at the same time, deepening his own understanding.

"Playing live is really natural to me," he says. "I've never gotten nervous about it.
"If I could tour 365 days a year, I totally would. I'd like to go back south. It would be really cool to go back to Mississippi with the band I have. I'd like to go back to Chicago. I'd like to go to Japan. I think that'd be great. If they take me, then I'll play there."

BOSTON METRO
"Every Day the Paperboy Brings More"
Authentic delta blues from Allston? You bet.
May 23rd, 2006, by Selene Angier.

"This is what my room looked like in high school," says Eli Reed. In the bedroom of his Allston apartment, there are press kit glossies of Little Man Willie, a Time magazine with Martin Luther King Jr., bottlecap folk art, a diddley bow, a signed Otis Rush 78 and wall-to-wall black-and-white clippings. Alphabetically-ordered 45s, more than 3,000 Reed estimates, are shelved in the corner and stacks are waiting to be filed.

Like most of his kind, Reed is a soul purist. Unlike most of his kind, he is 22 years old.
His 2004 debut, "Eli ŒPaperboy‚ Reed Sings Walkin‚ and Talkin'" consists of lost soul cuts and two originals - the 50s jag title track and organ-steeped dipper "Don't Let Me Down." A follow-up, consisting of mostly originals, is due this fall.

"Musically, I grew up in a bubble," says the Brookline native, owing much of his formative-year influences to his father. Family vacations were spent in Nashville, not Disneyland, and Merle Haggard and Ray Charles, not Nirvana and Dr. Dre, were his taste. "It wasn't that I disdained popular music, it just wasn't around," he says.

"That's the Delta"
His storied journey began in 2003, when he skipped college to move to Clarksdale, Miss., to work at the revamped WROX, home to Ike Turner and the first black DJ, Early Wright. "[The new owner] lost all his money and things fell apart. But that's the Delta," he quips.

Reed spent nine months down South after being taken on by Shine Turner, who ran the Delta Blues Education Program. He sat in with the house band at Red‚s Lounge and toured upper Delta jukejoints.

For a fish out of water, they liked how he swam. "There's a set repertoire of 100 or so songs, and I knew a good amount of them," he says of the regional hits and obscure R&B songs he had come to love.

"I learned a lot and people gave me sh-t. The audiences were tough, the musicians were tough. But it was good. I'd play six hours and get paid, like, nothing, but that's OK... I'd just buy more records."

Sunday schooling
After a quick stint in London playing for indie doll Holly Golightly, Reed upped to Chicago to try college. While hosting the University of Chicago radio‚s Sunday night blues show, he learned Chess Records soultress Mitty Collier lived nearby.

"I called her up and I told her I was a musician and she said they were just starting this new church," he recalls. "She came to my dorm and there was a piano there and we sang and played some gospel songs and she said, 'Sure, come and play in my church.'"

"The black church is the most accepting, loving institute. They were certainly demanding. But once they saw my intentions were true, they thought it was great."

He received $75 a week playing organ at the More Like Christ Christian Fellowship, Collier's tiny Storefront church on the south side. "More money for me to buy records," he says.

WEEKLY DIG
ELI "PAPERBOY" REED - Get your cross-cultural soul revival on!
by Michael Brodeur - August 17th, 2005

At a robust 21, Eli Reed is a little older, a lot louder and responsible for spreading much more good news than your average paperboy. The wide-smiling Brookline native has doggedly followed a crooked path that started at the Ray Charles’ Atlantic box set; veered South to the plywood floors and sawdust of Clarksdale, Mississippi’s juke joints; up into a stint at the Storefront More Like Christ Christian Fellowship Church on Chicago’s South Side; and back to Boston, where his seven-piece Southern soul band is slacking unlikely jaws all across town. His debut full-length, Walkin’ and Talkin’ , could have been recorded 40 years ago—it’s got as many old bristles as youthful nerves. It’s a throwback thrown forward, and it’s really fucking good. We got a couple of cheeseburgers the other day and talked about how he came back home.

You typically don’t hear much about authentic R&B or soul coming from Boston.

As far as an indigenous rhythm & blues scene in Boston, it’s there. Skippy White was kind of at the helm of it. In the ‘60s, he put out a lot of records and he ran labels and did distribution for all the Southern record labels. There weren’t a lot of Southern migrants in Boston. They came from South Carolina, but not really from the deep South—whereas a big city like Chicago is full of deep South migrants.

You went South after high school, right?

I went to Mississippi to visit; I was looking at one school there. While I was there, I was listening to this station, WROX out of Clarksdale. The guy ended up randomly getting in touch with me on some newsgroup and said “I just bought this station, I see you have a big record collection—do you want to come sell me your records?” or something like that. I told him, “I don’t really want to go to college, so how about I just come down and work for you?”

And what was his name?

I don’t even remember. As soon as I got down there, he lost all his money and I never really heard from him ever again.

Crazy. What was it like there?

It was a small town, you could get to know everyone really easily. I would just walk around and people would just be like “Hey! Who are you?” and I’d introduce myself. There’s a substantial scene of little joints down there, so I got to know that. My first gig was a week-and-a-half after I got there—I ended up fronting the band for some reason, I think the other guy was drunk. We ended up playing from 9 to 3 in the morning. I got eight dollars from the door, it was awesome.

Were there songs that you couldn’t get away with not playing?

The thing about Clarksdale was that there was a set of about 50 or 60 songs that everybody knew, so you basically worked within that repertoire. We played a lot of soul blues; lots of Tyrone Davis, Joe Simon, Obie Wright; it’s really how I got into Southern soul. We’d also play Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf—it was a pretty wide variety of stuff and some obscure stuff, regional hits, stuff that I knew and that they were surprised I knew.

You were there for nine months; what made you leave?

It was hard, man. You remember the good stuff when you look back. But there was a lot of times when I’d be doing nothing—I’d just be lonely or scared. I mean, I was 18. I got to have good friends, but it was still a scary and desperate and hopeless place. You could see that people knew they weren’t going to get out of there. Clarksdale was really poor, lots of crack, lots of gangs. A lot of murder—I heard gunshots on a regular basis. I saw a guy get stabbed.

Where?

In the club I was playing at. They were playing pool—guy stabbed the other over a game of pool. My friend, the owner, just yelled “Keep playing!” and went over and threw them out. He was a big guy.

So, soon after, you went to Chicago and played organ at a church for a year?

Yeah, that was amazing. Every Sunday. I got to sing and play—I was the only musician.

You must have been sweating your ass off that first time!

It was scary. I don’t know how I get into these situations, but I kind of just do it with equal aplomb. I can only do what I can do, and I knew how to play gospel piano. It was one of the things I was really into. So if I could do it, they would accept it. Playing a church is the most demanding performance experience in the world—if you feel the spirit, you can’t stop. It’s the same song for 20 minutes.

And it’s probably not about being Performer X doing his thing.

The church is the only place where you have the most amazing musicians, but nobody cares. It’s got nothing to do with the musicians at all, which is so cool. You can just be off in your own little world, and everybody else is, too.

Winner 2005 Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll
Best Blues/R&B Performer
by Brett Milano, July 2005

Any town that loves garage rock is bound to embrace soul music sooner or later, and that's borne out by Eli "Paperboy" Reed's Blues/R&B win. What Reed really does is a rock-informed version of Stax/Volt soul - a sound that Boston seems to have rediscovered lately, what with the weekly soul-vinyl nights at ZuZu, new bands like World's Greatest Sinners, and the popularity of out-of-towners like Sharon Jones. Gotta be a good thing.

"Blues in Britain" Magazine
Rating: 9 / 10
by Mick Rainsford, June 2005

This set is loaded with compelling soul vocals, like a downhome Sam Cooke, underpinned by raucous sax and a thunderous backbeat (“Walkin’ and Talkin’”); ballsy 50’s styled r’n’r ballads (“The Tips Of My Fingers”), and gutbucket stomping blues replete with clanging discordant guitar and heavily amplified harp (“Fat Mama Rumble”).

Paperboy plays guitar, harp and organ, and is backed up by Jake “K.L” Leckie (upright bass), Andrew Fenlon (rhythm guitar, trombone), Ben Jaffe (saxophone) and Eli Kessler (drums); young musicians who could easily be mistaken for Jimmy McCracklin’s Blues Blasters (ca. 1958) as anyone who listens to “I Just Got To Know”, with it’s clanging guitar, baying sax and moaning vocals will testify. Paperboy delivers “bucket of blood” juke joint blues replete with perfunctory harp, eerie falsettos, trashcan drums and strident guitar (“Cool Drink Of Water Blues”); heartwrending gospel backed only by reverberating guitar (“A Dying Veteran’s Plea”); gutter, gospel inflected, soul with anguished vocals that sound like a meld of Sam Cooke, Fillmore Slim and Louisiana Red (“You’re Gonna make Me Cry”) and Chuck Willis styled R&B (“The Poor Side Of Town”); whilst his rendition of Chris Kenner’s “Something You Got” is as lowdown and greasy as you can get, replete with “dirty” sax and guitar. This guy is a revelation who is trapped in a musical time-warp that ended some twenty years before he was born.

"Minister of music"
Boston Phoenix : Best Music Poll Results
Winner, Best R&B / Blues Act
by Will Spitz, July 2005

Eli Husock is a Jew from Brookline born in the 1980s. This seemingly ordinary fact is rendered extraordinary about 10 seconds into his debut album, Eli "Paperboy" Reed Sings Walkin' and Talkin' and Other Smash Hits! (Double E). A quick blues riff - recorded in mono with a retro sound that practically belies the existence of stereo - gives way to a pleading voice that could belong only to a man who's been done wrong a few too many times. He may not have been victimized by an oppressive society or an unfaithful woman, but he can play and sing old-school R&B, gospel, and soul - music he discovered as a child through his dad's extensive vinyl collection. After graduating from Brookline High in 2002, he left for Clarksdale, Mississippi, spending the next nine months playing primarily with black musicians and for black audiences throughout the North Mississippi Delta. Following a short stint at the University of Chicago, he acted as "Minister of Music" at a small church on the South Side, playing gospel music for black churchgoers. Upon returning to Massachusetts with a new name - some folks down South thought his scally cap made him look like an old-fashioned newsboy, and he chose Reed because it sounds "racially ambiguous" - he decided to pursue music full-time. The story of Eli "Paperboy" Reed and the True Loves is just beginning.

The Boston Phoenix
January 7, 2005

“Eli “Paperboy” Reed is a gifted young singer, guitarist harp-blower and wise-beyond-his years interpreter of mid-20th century gospel, blues and soul obscurities with a crack seven-piece backing band (including upright bass, keys, tenor sax and trombone) who brings serious chops to the table. Jack White’s pal Holly Golightly was so taken with Reed that she brought him up to play harmonica with her at a gig last year at the Middle East.

"This Soul Man Delivers"
The Boston Globe
by James Reed, February 3, 2005

When Eli ''Paperboy" Reed (ne Eli Husock) sent me a sample of his music, my e-mail response was, ''Thanks very much for your note. PS -- I liked your cover of 'Walkin' and Talkin', ' " which I was convinced was a Ray Charles tune. Only later, when Reed's CD arrived, did it become clear that it wasn't a Ray Charles song at all, but rather an original soul stomper that Reed had written.
I had an even more embarrassing moment listening to the CD, ''Sings Walkin' and Talkin' and Other Smash Hits!" The first song, ''I Just Got to Know," began with a fierce blues guitar lick, followed by a voice, lithe and supple, that wailed, ''I want to know, I want to know, I just got to know/ Why you always stay around." The production quality was either refreshingly vintage or woefully undercooked, and I had to check the CD to make sure Reed hadn't mistakenly sent me a Sam Cooke album. He hadn't.

Both anecdotes should give you an idea of how authentic and sincere Reed's music and vision are. Reed, who plays a Tuesday-night residency at ZuZu! this month, is a consummate musician whose interests aren't limited to a single genre or time period, though he does gravitate toward Southern soul and gospel from the 1960s and earlier. He doesn't just like music: He lives it and shares it and talks it nearly to death.

A healthy dose of skepticism usually greets Reed. For starters, he's 21 and Caucasian. But along with his six-piece band, comprised of fellow 20-somethings, he wants to turn his generation on to old-school soul music. ''The way to do that is to play with a lot of energy. Kids want to see that energy and will respect that," Reed says over a beer at the Model Cafe, his neighborhood haunt in Allston. ''We're playing this music the way it ought to sound, and it's very direct music, emotionally direct, too."

It was Ray Charles's music that first galvanized his attention. Around seventh grade, Reed's father, who is also a musician, gave him Charles's box set, ''The Birth of Soul," which Reed now calls ''the founding moment of my life. It was just unbelievable. Nothing had ever moved me like that." It was an entree into a world of the masters, particularly his idols, Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin' Wolf.

Like all voracious students, Reed moved on to the esoteric and eventually came to admire and respect gospel, which is no small feat for a Jewish kid from Brookline. ''A lot of people, especially the hipsters, can't get into gospel because they don't believe in the message," he says. ''But I'm Jewish, and I dig it."

When Reed graduated from Brookline High in 2002, an entrepreneur who was about to purchase a radio station in Clarksdale, Miss., offered to buy Reed's record collection, which he had mentioned online. Reed wasn't interested in selling, but he did want to work for the man. Two weeks after Reed arrived in Clarksdale, the deal fell through, but Reed stayed for another nine months and received an invaluable education, a baptism by fire. He played the juke joints for audiences who demanded the best and with musicians who demanded even more. If he wasn't doing particularly well one night, his host (often legendary Delta bluesmen such as drummer Sam Carr) would tell him to ''sit down. It's not your night."

A self-taught musician who plays guitar, harmonica, bass, and piano, Reed already boasts a resume that reads like that of a seasoned veteran: busking in Harvard Square at 16, jamming with R. L. Burnside on his front porch, playing live on local radio stations, and opening for British garage-rock maven Holly Golightly, whom he met at one of her Middle East shows and instantly befriended. (She later wrote the liner notes to his album.) Last week, Reed launched his website, www.elipaperboyreed.com, where you can check out audio clips, his biography, and tour schedule.

Reed says he often worries about how to toe the line between homage and downright imitation. ''Sometimes I feel conflicted about that," he says. ''I don't know what authentic is, but I do know that I'm being authentic to my vision. And we play this music well enough that we don't have to worry about it."

Boston Magazine
by Ted Drozdowski, September 2004

What’s astounding is the character of Reed’s performances, which evoke the sound and soul of vintage recordings. “I really feel this music deeply and know that it can touch other young people, too” he says. This month he will release his debut “Walkin’ and Talkin’”, recorded in glorious mono.”

The Boston Phoenix
January 24, 2005

“During his cover of O.V. Wright’s soulful 1965 tearjerker "You’re Gonna Make Me Cry," the jarring feedback that had been plaguing Eli "Paperboy" Reed and his band the True Loves throughout their set at Zeitgeist Gallery two Sundays ago became too much for him. "Just turn it off," Reed told his trombone player. Mike Montgomery obliged, the PA was retired, and the band hardly missed a beat as Reed took off his suit jacket and hollered at the top of his lungs like a manic Southern preacher. "I’m down, I’m down, I’m down, I’m down on my knees!" he wailed as he slowly fell to the ground. "I learned this one in Mississippi," Reed had announced before the song started. This was a bit of a fib, since the Brookline native already knew the song when he went down to Mississippi — he’d been an avid fan of old R&B, gospel, soul, and country from age 12 or 13, the time he began rooting through his dad’s extensive vinyl collection. But it was in Mississippi that he learned how to perform the tune properly. After graduating from Brookline High, Reed moved to Clarksdale and spent nine months playing primarily with black blues bands, and for black audiences, throughout the North Mississippi Delta. He got his nickname from some men there who thought his scally cap made him look like an old-fashioned newsboy; he chose Reed (his real last name is Husock, and he’s the son of former Phoenix News staff writer Howard Husock) because, he says, "I thought it sounded more racially ambiguous." To be sure, though he moves like the white 21-year-old he is, you could hardly tell that from listening to him.”