Art Notes: Bradford musician hopes new album takes off
Published: 10-30-2024 6:01 PM |
After building a music career in Portland, Ore., Hunter Paye moved back to the Upper Valley in 2018. His mother, Tish Paye, who had raised him on her own, needed his help.
Paye had made regular trips back here to play shows. “I told her one time, ‘You know that if the time comes and you need me, you know that I’ll move back,’ ” he said in an interview.
That move set Paye’s life and work on a new trajectory. His mother died in May 2021, and Paye, consumed with grief, planned and then executed a long trip around the Mediterranean.
He has poured these experiences into “Blueprints for Flight,” a new album he released on streaming platforms on Wednesday. In 11 songs that alternate between soaring alt-pop and intimate roots music, Paye is opening a new chapter in a life characterized by movement.
After his trip, Paye set up a recording studio in his Bradford, Vt., apartment, where much of “Blueprints” was recorded. In a sense, having a place of his own where he can make music has grounded him.
But a word like “grounded” cuts both ways. Because he has some health issues of his own, Paye won’t be able to tour to promote his new record. At the end of an ordinary day, his muscles and joints often ache far more than they should in a man in his early 50s. As much as music and movement have gone together in his life, they now seem to have been decoupled. It makes the music even more important.
“Losing mom, that made it not OK anymore for life to overshadow the music,” Paye said in an interview in his apartment in Bradford. A row of guitars lined one wall, next to a bedroom that also serves as a recording room. A small living room closet is now an isolation booth for recording vocal tracks.
His mom had raised him after fleeing an abusive relationship in Rhode Island and landing in Haverhill. Hunter was 5. They lived some of the time in Lime Kiln Camp, a commune at the foot of Black Mountain.
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They moved to West Newbury, Vt., so Hunter could go to Oxbow High School, where he excelled at soccer and had no involvement in music beyond listening to his mom’s record collection and recording songs from the radio on a tape deck.
A partial soccer scholarship took him to Champlain College, in Burlington, where he found music, both in the form of the city’s music scene, then fizzing over from the success of Phish and a host of other bands playing at clubs like Toast and Metronome. Nectar’s, the celebrated Main Street watering hole, offered live music seven nights a week.
“Here’s the big thing that happened,” Paye said. In his sophomore year at Champlain, a fellow soccer player came back from Christmas break with a guitar he’d been given. He had no interest, and eventually he told Paye he didn’t need to ask if he wanted to borrow it.
“I could take a guitar and bring it to my room and just practice,” Paye said. “I did that for endless hours.”
Paye trickled out of college and into music. A pair of cross-country trips took him to California, his first sojourns outside New England. All the while he’d been practicing, writing songs and starting to play at open mics and on sidewalks as a busker.
“That really sharpened my teeth,” he said. While living in Santa Barbara for a couple of years, he went from performing seated, because he was too nervous to stand, to performing on his feet.
During his second stint in Santa Barbara, he had started a trio, and when the partner of the ensemble’s guitarist got pregnant and wanted to move to Portland to be closer to family, Paye followed.
That move made his career. Portland’s vibrant music scene meant he could hear bands nearly every night. “I was getting this constant inspiration and turning that inspiration into songs,” he said.
Soon, he had enough material to take on tour, usually in a van with a few other singer-songwriters, but also as an opener for Michelle Shocked and Train.
“Blueprints for Flight” is Paye’s sixth studio album, but it’s the second he’s released since his mother’s passing. “Arrows in Orbit” came out at the end of last year.
His mother’s death, at the age of 72, brought home to Paye the fleeting nature of the time he has left. He had always talked about setting up a home studio and about making videos for his songs. Now, he’s just doing it.
Paye has an older brother from his mother’s previous marriage. But he was especially close to his mom, who remained his biggest supporter. Tish worked for 18 years as a substitute teacher at Oxbow, where she showed a flair for aiding kids who were struggling at home or in school.
Paye spent six weeks with her at DHMC before she died, then had to attend to all the details. He was in a kind of fugue state as he talked to community members and friends and cleaned out his mother’s small home. He planned his trip that winter, and wrote big chunks of the record while he was traveling.
As much as Paye feels he’s at home, he also feels like he’s starting over. He has landed on his feet, thanks to a new occupation as an in-demand pet sitter in the Upper Valley. But he feels cut off from the musicians he’s worked with in the past, many of whom are in Austin, Texas.
“In the bigger picture, it’s tough to feel like I’m starting from scratch,” he said. Even so, he found plenty of collaborators for “Blueprints,” including Senayit, a singer-songwriter who grew up in Orford, and Gil Assayas, who plays keyboards in Todd Rundgren’s touring band.
His next record is mostly written, and he plans to start recording soon. In the meantime, he hopes that “Blueprints for Flight” lives up to its name and takes off.
Hunter Paye’s new recording, “Blueprints for Flight,” is available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming platforms. For more information, go to hunterpaye.com.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.