Paul K - Clippings - Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone September 30, 1993

NEW FACES
IN PAUL K'S VIEW, debating and songwriting are exactly alike, and he's earned the right to that opinion. A dozen years ago, Detroit student Paul Kopasz won a debating scholarship to the University of Kentucky; over a recent 14-month span, the intense singer-guitarist issued no fewer than five inspired albums of his songs, the most recent being Blues for Charlie Lucky.
▪ The intervening decade spent on a roller coaster of drugs, crime, jail and poverty helps explain the radical career change. "I'm not sure I was ever in sync with the world, but it just got uglier and uglier for a while," he says. The literate, lived-in tales on Paul K's albums are strong, dark and personal, romantic film	Paul K
noir scenarios played as either acoustic country folk or rugged underground electric rock. "There are only so many happy things in this world inspiring enough to make me write about 'em," he says. "Songs about the darker ends of things, that's getting crowded, too, but there's still a little more room, more descriptive possibilities there." ▪ One of those inexhaustible got-to-let-it-out creative fountains, Paul K began spewing out cassettes of his songs in 1983. His sixth release, tentatively titled Garden of Forking Paths, is due out sometime this fall. A longtime favorite overseas, Paul K is holding out hope for a domestic deal soon: "At least then I'll be able to get a car and have a kid and try to re-create some semblance of a normal life." -- IRA ROBBINS