From deep inside the hectic electricity and streetlight sidewalks of Brooklyn New York, flowers grow. Those wise enough to tend their gardens will cultivate a lush bed of colors that stand in stark contrast to the grimy brick walls and dirty gutters of the city in which it dwells.Paul Weinfield of Tam Lin sows the seeds that make those flowers grow. Flowers that live to be so beautiful, to see them prospering in such a harsh environment makes you a little sad. Composed with a very delicate touch of acoustic guitars, drum machines and blippy little keyboards, Tam Lin makes the music that steps out of a dream and wonders whether it should have stayed there. It’s a very open and fragile aesthetic that crafts songs like “Porcelain Boy” and “Floating World“, with lines like “who made you so frail/is my body just a jail/that keeps your soul from moving on?”
I recently talked to Paul about a few of his songs and whether or not he felt there was an underlying theme to any of his songs.
“It’s not specific theme. I think a lot of them are love songs but they’re working with a type of love that’s trying to discern 
between the difference of unconditional and selfish love. That’s a big theme, whether unconditional love is possible.”
Indeed, in Porcelain Boy he tells of a failing relationship, singing “you and I have tried so much/to keep alive so little”, “There’s nothing left to fake/we’re just waiting for it to break”. It’s right there in those lines that he’s put himself and the listener in that dark place we’ve all been in on the cusp of a really lousy breakup.
There’s something important in that. There’s something really important about someone who knows how to put themselves in that place, because if you can’t make your audience believe you’ve been there, they won’t feel like they’re going there with you. It would be pointless for someone who has never been through a heartbreak to sing a song about it. There’s no frame of reference. It would be like me telling you what it was like to be the first man on the moon, all speculation and no true emotional attachment. Tam Lin has been there and back, and the songs are the postcards to prove it.
“There’s so much that gets lost in all parts of the process. Its about being okay with how much gets lost, between your head and the paper and with other musicians, its about the humility of being okay with that.”
The song Floating World sounds like a daytime soap opera, all dramatic organ and tight production. Tam sings of people and places that seem to be drifting farther away from him and his points of view, finally surrendering with “There’s nowhere to go in this floating world/except back into ourselves again”. This line reflects on the importance of being independent before anything else, a fitting piece of verse considering Paul does most of the music for Tam Lin. I asked him whether or not he thought it was easier to fly solo when you’ve got a musical vision, and whether or not working with other musicians attributed to losing some part of the message in the music.
“There’s so much that gets lost in all parts of the process. Its about being okay with how much gets lost, between your head and the paper and with other musicians, its about the humility of being okay with that.” In response to being asked whether or not some musicians might not be on the same level lyrically, Paul said “A lot of musicians are just that, musicians aren’t so worried about the lyrics, So I have more autonomy in Tam Lin.”
Paul has said that his songs are like children in that you spawn them but eventually they leave you. The idea of giving birth to a song that eventually wanders off to make a life for itself stems from the notion of folk music, songs that eventually become standards, to be played by anyone. Lord knows The Man in Black understood this, having made records of old folk legends like “The Ballad of Ira Hayes” and “John Henry”. It seems in the past few years, folk music has come back into style in a modern incarnation. But is a song with a story at its core still folk, or is it more than that?
“My parents are folkies i heard it a lot growing up,” says Paul. “And i feel like the whole word folk had resonance when the
song could be shared and done by a lot of other people. I want to write songs that could be separated from me and played by other people.” It’s a great thought to love your songs so much that you’ll let them go, in hopes that someone will appreciate them so much, they’ll take them in as their own based on that unconditional love that Tam Lin is trying to peg down. In short, just by making these songs and being so willing to part with them when it’s necessary, He has created an unconditional love. It says to me, sure, I’ve created you, you’ve been nurtured and worked on and taken an amount of effort that knows no amount of time, but in the end it isn’t about me, or what I’ve done, it’s about how the song comes out in the end.
Tam Lin has let me into the garden, and what’s more, allowed the listener to pick the flowers they want, to take home and plant themselves.
You can stream Tam Lin’s music here
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August 8th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Make sure you check out Paul @ World Cafe Live - 3025 Walnut St. Phila PA on AUGUST 18th!!!!!!! along with The New Motels and Kunkek