Paul Cauthen on New Album, Fatherhood & Montana Tour Stop

Country-rock artist Paul Cauthen joins reporter Taylor Inman ahead of his upcoming show at the Majestic Arena in Kalispell, Montana, offering a candid look at life on and off the road.

Speaking from a motorcycle trip through Big Bend National Park, Cauthen reflects on turning 40, preparing to become a father and the momentum behind his latest album Black on Black, released April 3. He breaks down the creative process behind the record, from years of songwriting and collaboration to staying grounded in his Texas roots while refusing to be boxed into a single genre.

The conversation also dives into his connection to Montana, his relationship with fans and the evolving sound that blends country, rock and beyond. Cauthen shares how his upbringing in gospel music shaped his artistry, why authenticity matters more than radio play and what audiences can expect when he hits the stage in the Flathead Valley.

This episode of Side Tracks highlights one of the most dynamic voices in modern country music just days before his Kalispell performance.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hey everyone, Taylor Endman here with the Daily Interlake. We wanted to share this phone interview I did with musician Paul Coffin ahead of his show at the Majestic Valley Arena on April 18th. Paul spoke to us from a motorcycle trip in Big Ben National Park where he was celebrating his 40th birthday with friends. We hope you enjoy our conversation. More information about Paul's upcoming show can be found on OutridersPresent.com. Well, I kind of wanted to start with. I was just gonna ask about what life has been like lately, what you've been up to. It sounds like you're on a really fun motorcycle trip right now, so Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

I mean life's been good. I just finished up the Tonkin and Tejas tour, which was a big time hit. We knocked out about eight or ten shows right up right around the record released, some of my favorite venues in Texas. She's got the band real tight with the new materials so that we're gonna be ready for summer. And uh, you know, we are uh super pumped. Uh you know, the band the band is this most amazing crew of guys that I've worked with. And uh, you know, and obviously the biggest thing in my life, my wife and I are pregnant, and we're about to have a baby boy here pretty much any day the next within the month or a little under. So she's about ready to pop, and uh, you know, so I'm gonna have about two or three months home, be able to relieve her of some nighttime duties or whatever I've gotta do. Pipers and all the stuff, you know. I'm just getting into dad mode for the first time, so this is a whole new adventure.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Oh, that's so fun. What's your wife's name?

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Elizabeth.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Elizabeth.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah. Elizabeth like the queen, but she's just uh actually just a Panama City girl.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Oh fun. We love those.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Oh, heck yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Yeah. It's so nice to hear a southern accent too. I'm from Kentucky, so I don't get that much up here in Montana.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Yeah, no, no doubt. No, I mean, shoot, I've been people just say you can't you just can't change it. Maybe if I lived in like Scotland or Ireland for a long time, I would be talking like this or something, you know, like but uh yeah, let's have another drink of the ball, Howie. But uh not uh not now, you know, it's just taxes it can be. Yeah, it's it's funny how when you're around a lot of like when you're up in New York, like go park the car, you know. All of a sudden you say, Did I just say that?

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Yeah, so like a Canadian up here sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Umadians.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Oh my gosh, yeah, there's a ton up here.

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Um and I Johnny Shockey's one of the best.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Oh, I didn't know he was Canadian.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Big time.

SPEAKER_01 3:00

I heard you guys are buddies. Do you guys get to hang out when you come into town?

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Oh yeah, man. He's one of my dearest friends up there. I've got a good crew of friends up there.

unknown 3:10

That whole Outriders crew uh is just amazing.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

They're my favorite, uh favorite crew I've ever worked with. Most solid actual friends. It's not just a business transaction, transactional relationship, you know, that you get, which is fine in business because you can't just be friends with everybody, but you can't uh you can't help it, you know, with that team. They're just too kind and they just honestly care about you. Help build your career. They're uh some of the best.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah, is that what keeps bringing you back to Montana?

SPEAKER_00 3:44

All that and all the you know, the ugly landscape and no good fishing and terrible outdoor things to do, and just it's just I don't know. You know, no, it's the most amazing state. It's my it's Texas, and then it would be Montana for me if I had my my two in the country. Those are my people.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Well, we love you up here too.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Oh, well, I love you back.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

So you just put out a new album.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

Yeah, Book of Paul dropped on April 3rd and did really well. It's my best response yet. We had so much uh, you know, so many people just loving it and just thankful that all the listeners are gravitating to it and enjoying it. That's the main goal, you know.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

So yeah. I mean, you're coming off of like a few years of just like a lot of success and big wins. I mean, now you're about to have a baby. Like, how are you feeling right now?

SPEAKER_00 4:41

I'm feeling great, you know. Uh God is good, you know. He I'm very, very blessed. And my uh my life, you know, it didn't come easy. Um, it was hard work, keeping your head down, trying to stay out of jail as much as possible, you know, trying not to be a drunken idiot and trying not to, you know, just let myself get in the way. That's the biggest problem that I've always had, you know, on this whole thing, even success and all, you know, just you know, it's in between my two ears, you know. Just want to spin off or go crazy, and now I'm just kind of more subdued. And it's just like, hey, this is just a gift and take it and give it back to the people. That's the only job I have, you know.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Yeah. Well, I definitely noticed, like, I I I was listening to a few of the songs off the album this morning. And I mean, like, the the title track is like I mean, very catchy, very cool, but you know, I mean, I know you from cocaine country dancing, you know, and oh yeah, um, your big hit, and uh it it definitely seems like I I'm interested to learn what inspired this album in particular, you know.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

You know, I wanted to just bring back uh come back the full circle to my roots and uh just really focus on what brought me to the dance and try to just give the people what they have loved, you know, the types of uh songs that really make them dance or you know, make them cry or make them feel, and songs that are honest from my upbringing to this point, you know. Once you become successful in the music business, uh your job now is to sustain and just to put out quality, quality music. Because uh if you don't, I mean you'll be kicked out to pasture pretty quick.

unknown 6:41

And I've uh been lucky enough to have some of the best fans in the world, you know.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

They just uh come back and they just want more and they they ride with me when it's a little weird, or I do a song that sounds maybe like a hip-hop song or a trap beat or something different from country. I'm a rock and roller, you know. I'm not a uh I I am country because I'm from Texas. I'm southern and I I do country stuff, but you know, I rock and roll and and letting it just fly and letting Big Velvet just come out on stage is the job for me. And this album has a little bit for everybody, so I'm very, very proud of it.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Yeah, I I I'm interested what you said, and um, you know, once you get successful, there's like all this pressure to make sure that you can um continue to put out quality music for your fans. Um I guess like over the course of like writing this album, like what were the elements of it that you're like, we can we can elevate this, we can take this to the next level.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

I think that the next level is just my my trajectory is just a constant one degree climb over a span of 20 years, and that one degree starts adding up, you know? And uh trying to, you know, the I've just gotta be honest to my timelines. Like you know, when I was room 41, it was the wildest times of my life. My gospel was kind of coming of age, and have mercy was follow up. Um you know, everybody walking this land while everybody's all divided, these songs that I wanted to say while all this hell was breaking loose around us. And then now Book of Paul is like my chapters, my scripture, my verses, you know, my thing that I wanted to write. If I was in a in a book that somebody wanted to read and had a book, this is like if you listen to it from front to back, it's kind of got a an ebb and flow of just this wild life of my 20 years, it's kind of a little bit of everything in between. And so just trying to sustain and uh trying to just keep the quality up is always on my mind, but I know that if I'm just honest to self and honest to the song and serve the song that's a gift from God and whatever it is, you know, was I think I'm doing my job.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yeah, definitely. Uh when did you start getting this album together?

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Shoot, I'm I know it's been years and years and years of work. A lot of these tunes, a lot of these rips, a lot of these hooks, a lot of these titles have been around. And then I just knew that when I get around these certain songwriters, I kind of pitch certain things to allow them to elevate themselves into a realm with me, and we just serve the song at that point. And so it's been a it's been a long process but really crunching down on it a couple years, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

So yeah. And you I mean you mentioned uh your collaborators, this album are really special to you. Um, did you know like these songwriters previously? Um, and also maybe like another question is like, was the band um had are some of these guys new or have they been with you the whole time?

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Uh the band was just really we just you I used about five different producers, you know, about 15 different songwriters. And I knew of a lot of them. I was great friends with most most of them, and then some of them I'd never met before. But it was just an awesome connection and a common goal between us. Um they knew my body of work, they knew what had worked for me in the past. Um, it's really cool to be in a position where you get to write with a bunch of the cream of the crop writers, you know, and uh uh that was my first time in my career that that's been the case. And it's because I am becoming older in this business, and I am still still around. And that's kind of you know, I don't know whether it's clout or ha having a uh having uh the writers having more desire to want to write with me instead of just wasting their time. So they knew that maybe if they write with me, that maybe the song could really have some waves and be heard. And that's all we really want in the end.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Yeah. Definitely. Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna go way back. Um I was interested in how you got into music in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Well, my grandparents and my mom, my dad, my family always sang a lot, sisters, and we were in the church, grew up in the church of Christ and sang a lot of gospel and heavenly highway hymns and all that stuff, and then we'd come back home and listen to Patsy Klein and Johnny Cash and and uh Marty Robbins and a bunch of old classic WSM Opry stuff, and you know, just really, really, really wholesome upbringing in music. And it was always pure, and we always served song in the beginning and now still for the Lord and the light, and that's kind of what the gospel is. And so singing is so mo powerful, whether you're a believer or not, song can bring a a tone can bring a tear to your eye, and that's power, and and and then to be able to do it is a gift. So being raised up in that and listening and listening to all these old records and a common thread of just really appreciation of the songs of the past and trying to correlate maybe what you have learned from those songs and re mold and shape your own uh vase yourself per se, you know, and redo your own art in your own form. And that's kind of where it it all happens. You take all those things that you heard all the way from Patsy Klein to take, you know, uh Biggie Smalls. So was my you know, I started listening to Biggie when I was a kid. My buddy down the down the uh street, his older brother had all these vinyl and all these records and listening to all that, all that changed my mind, you know, listening to Nevermind but Nirvana, like all these things that hit me in certain times of my life is what created and sculpted me as a singer, songwriter, musician, whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Yeah. Why is it important to you as a musician to not put yourself too much in a box with like the country label? Like you're pulling from all these other influences, you know.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

It's because how boring must it be to listen to one genre.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

I agree.

SPEAKER_00 14:44

I mean how how boring. So and it's like I've always hated being told what I am genre-wise. That's what people can't. That's what country, it's been tough for me to be played on radio forever, but I haven't really cared about any of it because I've been true to myself, true to what I like in music, and that's what kind of separates me from a lot of different people. Most people that are the most successful in the world, their entire team around them says, This is not broke and we're not gonna fix it. We are going to stay our lane, stay our course, and we are gonna print money. And they do. But, you know, it's one it is their dimension, which is great because it's so successful. But you know, country music is so it's it's brought in, there's so many different influences to that genre. I mean, shoot, even now, what Cowboy Carter did, what post Malone did to country, what all these people have done to country music nowadays, well it's not even country. But guess what makes it country? That these folks are singing from their heart and you know, and singing songs that might have a banjo in it, but you know, banjo is is a was a uh was a uh an African American uh black delta instrument before the folk took it, you know? And it's like all this stuff is just we're all pulling from the same sky, you know. The sky's been there way longer than all of us. And w you know, Woody Guthrie was influenced by the stars too, and then Bob Dylan, you know, and then you know, it's just like all these different types of genres and different types of things are all cross-contaminated. So I just think loving all types of music and appreciating all different types of art forms maybe makes you a more diverse artist, right? I'm not gonna be put in a box. I'm gonna I'm gonna drop a heavy ass rock record one day. I'll I'll drop a bluegrass record. I'll drop a you know, I'd love to do a big band like Frank Sinatra vibe, full on, Tempany, and the whole thing. I'd like to do, you know, something uh Middle Eastern with sitar and a bunch of cool tones from that part of the world. I mean, there's so much to tap into. That's what's fun about music. Or I'd be bored and be done with this already.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay, well while you're rattling all those off. I'm excited for the rock album, I'm excited for the bluegrass album. Sign me up. Um are you a fan of uh Tyler Childers?

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Yeah. Did you like his uh his last album had a really cool Indian inspired where there was a lot of sitar and stuff on it?

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Yeah, it's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Yeah, he really did, yeah. So you got some touring coming up this summer, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Oh yeah, about to get heavy with it, so it's gonna be a big one and we're not gonna stop for a while. So it's gonna we're about to go show the the people in a big way what we've got to say.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Where all are you heading?

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Everywhere and in between. Um on an east coast, west coast. We're doing obviously Montana. We're gonna come back and probably do a few nights at the old saloon, an immigrant, and I'm on a, you know, I'm just gonna really when I get up in that part of the world, I always talk to Shockey and the Outriders crew, and we always work with something together because we are uh loyal like that to one another. And uh we like to help each other out. And I'm gonna be putting on a music festival myself with the with some people, probably on Fort Worth, maybe. And then we're gonna be doing I'm gonna be doing some stuff out here in big bands. I'm gonna um, you know, we're gonna try to get to Europe Q1 next year. Next year we're gonna try to get over to Australia too. And you know, hopefully Japan. And I mean, we're just gonna keep working. You know, my baby boy and my wife are gonna come join me on this crazy and wild adventure. So we're gonna probably follow the tour bus in an RV like the Dead Gum Henderson's or something.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Yeah, you guys really are gonna stop if you're going all the all the way to Europe and then you're gonna do Australia after the US tour. That's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

This is all this is all just kind of you know about to be locked down, but these are the conversations I've heard. Yeah. So, you know, don't don't hold it to me when uh if I say Q1 and it'd be and it's actually Q three or something. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Fair enough. Um oh I also I guess I wanted to ask because you I mean you guys seem to have a fun time when you come up to Montana. And you mentioned fishing. Are you guys fishing when you get up here? What are some activities you guys get into?

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Oh, I love we love going on hikes, uh getting out near the lake, uh, and you know I go and we've done some fishing. I've done we've done I'm probably gonna be doing some hunting when it gets becomes season again. I do wanna harvest an elk so that I can fill up the fridge for the wife and baby. Um we love the outdoors. I mean it's hard to be cooped up inside Montana.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Definitely. Well that where you guys are down there is so beautiful too. Big Bend is I haven't been down there myself, but I have been through that part of Texas kind of generally, and it's it's just so pretty down there.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Yeah, we we uh it's a it's a lucky, lucky situation for Texas, you know? The biggest national park in the country and the least visited. Isn't that crazy? So when you get out on a wild road, you are actually under the stars by yourself. And then if there is something around you, you better watch out, it might eat you.

SPEAKER_01 21:26

Yeah, might bite you. Yeah, very cool. Well, thanks so much for it.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Um, yeah, I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip. That sounds so fun.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Well, I appreciate you and thank you to everybody up in Montana, and we're gonna be playing the uh the arena there in Callisville on the 18th.