“American Clouds” by Paper Route, Thursday, July 20, 2023

I have many fond memories of my first Cornerstone in 2007, seeing a lot of the bands that I loved for the first and only time. There was a lot of effort to see as much as possible--looking at the pamphlets mailed when you purchased your tickets, trying to synchronize them with friends, and inevitably being unable to see everyone you wanted to see because of scheduling conflicts. But there was one stage that took the least effort--The Gallery. 

SCATTERED IN AMERICAN CROWDS. In the back of The Gallery stage was the coffee shop, or I should say the coffee canteen. Depending on the year, it was hot and dusty or wet and buggy, but cheap refills if you bought that year's mug early in the festival before it sold out and the music in the mornings just quiet enough to have a conversation made the stage my favorite. The evenings got a little crowded with some of the mellower hippy crowd or sometimes a CCM band that wasn't quite big enough for the main stage. But in the morning, crowds were small and the emphasis was usually on the coffee. Sometimes the morning music was forgettable, but in the case of Paper Route in 2007, the music was anything but ordinary. While not many people were at the early morning show to see Paper Route, they quickly drew the audience in with how each band member played multiple instruments. Sometimes they would incorporate electronic elements, and that's when they got more and more radical, pushing the acoustic instruments to the limit to compete with the electronics.  After the show, I bought all of their music, which at the time was a combined 2-EP set of Paper Route and A Thrill of Hope. I also started following the band on MySpace, and sometime between Cornerstone '07 and '08, Paper Route changed their sound from acoustic Americana to electronic Americana. 

FASTER THAN THE FALLING RAIN. I can't remember the timeline to be sure, but sometime before releasing their 2008 EP Are We All Forgotten Paper Route released the title track and "American Clouds" on MySpace. These tracks sound much more like the band that would go on to release three LPs between 2009 and 2016 before taking an indefinite hiatus. In fact, Are We All Forgotten begins the band's streamable discography. Cornerstone had introduced me to Paper Route before this shift in sound and before their peak --touring with Paramore on one of the legs of the Riot! tour appearing on Seth Meyers. And while they never got the love that I think they deserve, they certainly are a band's band. Perhaps one of the reasons they never got big was because of JT Daly and Chad Howat's involvement in many other projects whether in production or graphic design. While it may be easy to dismiss Paper Route's music as another electronic '80s-influenced band, today's song and "Are We All Forgotten" maintain elements of their original heartland Americana. The jamming on "American Clouds" gives way to a harmonica at the end of the song. The band frequently played their songs from Are We All Forgotten acoustic with guitarist Andy Smith playing harmonica in the introduction and Howat playing accordion. I think that the sounds that Paper Route recorded for Are We All Forgotten and Absence were based on experimentation from processing the instruments that they used to play in acoustic shows like Cornerstone. I base this on the videos (now lost or deleted) that I watched from before Paper Route signed to Universal Motown. Please don't take this as fact, but just a fanboy theorizing about one of his favorite bands. 

Read “American Clouds” by Paper Route on Genius.