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Musician Paul Sears on his drums.
Musician Paul Sears has never lost his passion for making music.
When Paul Sears was a teen, there were a lot of garage bands. In the mid-sixties, Paul says, “There was very little television, there wasn’t much going on.” Everyone was out on their bicycles or in his case, he says, “there were six or seven bands within the four-block radius of my house.” Many of those musicians who started playing in those bands, over the years, have given up music, but not Paul. At 63, after a lifetime of making music, Paul is still deeply passionate about the music.
Paul grew up surrounded by music. His dad designed and built pipe organs. His father was also a choirmaster, an organist, and a voice teacher. His mother was a singer and played the piano. Paul says, “I grew up very different from most kids. Instead of playing sports or being in the boy scouts, I was in the theater, at the organ concert, at the symphony, or at the Opera.”
As a kid, Paul wasn’t cut out for singing, and he didn’t like playing the piano or organ, instead he found himself playing the trumpet, and the autoharp and the bass. He finally found his calling when, at 14, he started playing the drums. Playing the drums came naturally for Paul. He says to play the drums you have to have, “independence. You have to be able to free up your limbs to do different things.” It helped that he was a gymnast as a kid. Paul got his early rock and roll education by playing in those bands. He goes on to explain that in the late sixties, and early seventies, progressive rock came out of the woodwork. Bands that were borrowing heavily from the music he grew up with. Paul says he would hear a song and realize it had something within it from the Poulenc Organ Concerto.
When he started playing the drums, Paul didn’t have a drum set of his very own. According to Paul, “My parents were church mice, and we didn’t have a whole lot of money.” His grandmother bought him his first expensive drum set when he was 15. The same drum set that sits in his private studio today.
Over the years, Paul has played with 150 bands. For the last 15 years, his main playing gigs have been in festivals over in Europe. Now Paul makes much of the music in his private studio. When he moved to Superior last April, Paul had to become his own recording engineer out of necessity. He doesn’t enjoy the engineer part of the job. He would rather be playing the music. Paul usually has a half dozen projects he’s working on at any given time. Paul doesn’t limit his playing to one style. He plays everything from avant-garde jazz to rock. And he plays a variety of instructions: the drums, the bass, and the guitar. He is even teaching himself to play the bass trombone.
He is working on a music autobiography. It’s going to be all about the different bands he has played with, but a good portion of the book is going to be about one band – The Muffins, a band Paul has been with for 39 years.
For fun, Paul plays at the Besich Park during the town’s Second Friday events. Playing there, he says, is “just a jam fest. It’s just fun.” He plays with whoever shows up. Paul loves to learn new things, and he is still very excited about the process of making music. Paul is not going to slow down anytime soon. He happily declares, “At 63 I’m not stopping. I’m going to bop until I drop.”
You can learn more about Paul and his music on his website: http://www.paulsears.net/
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