Song Premiere: Paul Cebar, “You Owe It To You”

Eclectic musician Paul Cebar has made fans out of artists like Bonnie Raitt, Nick Lowe, and Joe Ely, who calls the Milwaukee singer-songwriter an “American original.” According to Lowe, he’s “the real thing — a proper soulful cat with the tunes, the chops and the voice to swing this epoch back to its senses.”

Want to know what all the fuss is about? Listen to Cebar’s ‘”You Owe It To You,”  a tasty stab approximation of classic Philly soul  from his upcoming album Fine Rude Thing, due in January.

Cebar took some time to break down the song for us.

“Willy Porter and I semi-regularly reconvene our songwriting shop in the kitchen of my downtown Milwaukee apartment. Rubbing off on one another, we tend to write tunes that neither would likely arrive at in our own notebooks. ‘You Owe It To You’ started with a chord sequence that Willy had been prodding around and that rang either Gamble and Huff or Memphis bells for me. We started with one of our patented, extremely modest protagonists and began to imagine how he might fool himself into ‘testifying’ in some sort of soul sense, ‘We gotta make the bus, we gotta find where I belong….’ With a resolute chord cycle underpinning something of a chorus, his community suggests he’s got love to give while he quietly urges her to give him a shot.

“Verse two begins with our mild fellow wondering whether one can ‘mend the broken hearted’ or ‘heal the wounded wing’ before asserting, ‘I ain’t got nothin’ but I could bring you special things…. ‘ Then bringing the song back to it’s literal humble environs, ‘I got some loving in my kitchen, that’s true. ‘Wonder what we might find there for you?’ Then, nervously, ‘Not that you’re looking, not that you need anything…’”

Catch Cebar when he goes on tour January, which will include a stop at 30A Songwriters Festival.

Paul Cebar Tour Dates:

1/10 – Milwaukee, WI @ Turner Hall
1/11 – Madison, WI @ The Harmony Bar
1/17-18 – Destin, FL @ 30A Songwriters Festival
1/22 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Ballroom & Tavern
1/23 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Club Café
1/25 – Vienna, VA @ The Barns at Wolftrap
1/26 – Annapolis, MD @ Rams Head On Stage
1/28 – New York, NY @ Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2
2/6 – Minneapolis, MN @ Cedar Cultural Center