Fri. July 10

    Eli “Paperboy” Reed might best be considered Boston’s entry into the new wave of blues/R&B/soul-influenced singers that include Amy Winehouse, Duffy and James Hunter. Reed’s playing the Middle East Downstairs Friday July 10. The following is a version of a story I wrote on Reed for the Boston Phoenix  ….
    Reed and the True Loves are rehearsing at Q Division Studios in Somerville, picking songs for an upcoming gig. Reed, in his impassioned tenor, is scream-singing, ‘”Come back, I need you!/I love you!/I want you!” The band is ripping through a classic-sounding R&B/soul song. Reed digs it, noting, “It allows me to work the crowd.”
      Does it make the cut?  They vote. Six yeas, one abstention from guitarist Ryan Spraker. “It sounds too much like we’re playing an old song,” he says. Well, it is an old song. It’s a cover of  "Oo Wee Baby I Love You,” cut by R&B singer Roscoe Robinson 42 years ago.

    Fact is, a lot of Reed’s songs – he’s got 11 on “Roll With You” – sound like old songs, if by that you mean classic  ‘60s soul and R&B. Think Al Green, James Brown, Otis Redding. There are pumping Stax/Volt-like horns, crescendos galore. Songs of hurt and desire, pledges of love everlasting. Of Reed, Nick Lowe said, “It’s so exciting to hear someone so young playing old-fashioned R&B. … Could he be the male Winehouse? Why ever not?”
    Reed, 24, was no more born on the Delta than John Fogerty was born on the bayou. Reed was born and raised in Brookline and lives in Allston. His father, former Phoenix critic Howard Husock, exposed Reed to blues and soul as a kid, giving him a harmonica at 13. Reed later taught himself guitar.
     He apprenticed down South. “A series of bizarre coincidences,” says Reed. After high school, he’d been scouting colleges around Memphis, planning to study sociology. That didn’t quite work out, but he ended up on the North Mississippi Delta, in Clarksdale. He’d talked with a guy on a message board who was going to re-start a blues radio station. Reed was to join him. The financing dropped out, but Reed stayed and found kindred musical spirits.
     “I didn’t even go there to play music,” says Reed. “I found there was this thriving blues and R&B scene. I knew a lot of songs, I was eager and I didn’t care that much about money.” The first band he played with asked Reed to be their singer-guitarist-front man. That, incidentally, is where “Paperboy” entered. “I used to wear a scally cap all the time,” says Reed, “and everybody’s got a nickname down there. I don’t wear the hat anymore. But I liked the nickname.” He spent nine months in Clarksdale.
     In 2003, Reed moved to Chicago, enrolled in the University of Chicago (that sociology thing) and sang gospel in several churches. He came back to Boston during spring break. “I got together with some friends from high school.” Reed says. “I was starting to write songs, and I had become more of a performer. We recorded ‘Walkin’ and Talkin,’ in 2004.” (The album was a mix of covers and originals.) “We put it out, thought we’d play around here, so we did.” School was out.
    Q Division producer, Ed Valauskas had been hearing about Reed from musician friends. He invited him to a barbecue in the summer of 2006. Reed sang a Sam Cooke song with the band Furvis. “As soon as he opened his mouth, I was laughing my ass off,” says Valauskas. “He was that good. Someone who could really sing. From there, it was ‘Come in and record.’” Valauskas was CD’s primary producer.
     There have been several versions of the True Loves. It’s solidified with Spraker, bassist Mike Montgomery, drummer Andy Bauer, trumpeter Patriq Moody and tenor saxophonists Ben Jaffe and Paul Jones. Nothing fancy about what they do. “The Satisfier” is a horn-driven boast; “She Walks” is a breakup ballad with the singer down on his knees, begging her please.
     “A lot of today’s music is a little bit ironic,” Reed says, “and I don’t have any of that. It’s not about irony.”
      His aim? “Something catchy,” says, Reed. “Something you can wrap your mind around. I wanna make records you can dance to and some that make you cry. To me, the best song in the world is a boy-girl song. And those are the songs that end up being timeless.”

 Tickets: $10. With EJ Labb - including full band and DJ - Jenney Dee & The Deelinquents, Labb (reunion) and Boston Molasses Disaster. Doors at 8. 

472 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, 617-864-3278 www.mideastclub.com