Local musician Chris Black releases “Carl Winslow Sessions” on May 13

Paducah-based musician Chris Black has had a prolific career both as a solo artist and in local bands like Oh Yeah Dakota! His latest release is a three-track EP distilled into one track, titled Carl Winslow Sessions. Black talks to Tracy Ross ahead of the release of her EP.

Black explains that mixing the three tracks into one cut was partly an experiment, partly a necessity. “A, I’m a little poor,” Black begins. “I was supposed to do an album with my cousin playing drums. He played drums on the first song. So that’s what sparked the Carl Winslow story because of Family matters.”

When Black’s cousin had to focus on his own band out of town, Black decided to continue doing the EP solo. “The second song was just me alone in my studio. The third one, I just put it together and I was sitting there thinking about it and I said, what if I release all three in one song?”

“A, when I pay to have it distributed, I’ll only have to pay for a single and not a full album. I thought it would be cool to do that because if someone liked the third song, it’s like a digital recording in a You can’t live without it, you know what I mean? You have to listen to it all, or you’ll have to scroll through one of them.

“Nowadays it’s so easy to record something, get your hands on a distribution company, and put it on Spotify. The guy who’s got my stuff talked to me over email last summer, and I think I released a few singles in a row. And he was like, well, it’s a singles world now. It was just something different.

Black credits his extensive original catalog to songwriting being his “favorite thing to do”. I’m getting to the point where if I haven’t written a song in a month, I’ll start to feel useless. I feel really unproductive if I don’t write, so I guess that’s it.

by Chris Black Carl Winslow Sessions is now available on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon.

Listen to the full interview here: