Paper Route delivers diverse mix

• By JOHN WIRT
• Music critic
• Published: Jul 18, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Dreamy, synthesizer-driven songs are the sort of thing usually identified with Nashville, Tenn. Yet Paper Route, a Music City quartet that recently signed with Universal Music Group’s Motown Records, melds ambient, electronics-filled arrangements with solid, traditional songwriting.

Nashville, of course, is the land of a thousand tunesmiths. Or more likely thousands of tunesmiths.
“Being from Nashville is a great thing,” singer Andy Smith said as Paper Route left town on its way to Orlando for the first show of its summer headlining tour.

“This town is flooded with a lot of great, old American genius,” Smith said. “If we can reflect that through an accent or by using a lap steel or harmonica and then blend it with the synths we like a lot, we’re accomplishing what we’re trying to do.”

Besides singer-songwriter Smith, Paper Route features Chad Howat (bass, synths and programming), J.T. Daly (keyboards) and, the final member to join, Gavin McDonald (drums).

Paper Route’s diverse musical elements just came naturally.

“J.T.’s always been interested in fringe artists, so he brings an element of indie credibility and melodic smarts,” Smith said. “I like standard song structures, old folk artists and people like Randy Newman and Tom Waits. That retains the tried-and-true structure, but we spin it in different ways.

“And Chad is a fantastic producer. He brought the synths in. When we said, ‘We want it to sound like this,’ Chad could actually play it.”

In the aftermath of a previous band that imploded (featuring Smith, Daly and Howat),  they individually came to realize the various elements of music they love the most. Those elements combined form the music of Paper Route.

The band’s name was inspired by the newspaper routes that Smith and Daly had when they were kids. Howat’s dad had a paper route, too.

“Just like a CD or a record, there’s something to be said for having a newspaper that you can hold in your hand,” Smith said. “It keeps everything tangible. Reading news on the Internet seems distant, but when you read an obituary in print, for some reason, it has more weight.”

Like printed newspapers, CDs — or records, as many people still call those round discs that contain recorded sound — are experiencing industry-wide changes and challenges. Where others fear changes, Smith sees opportunities.

“The music business is probably more in a state of change than a state of decay,” he said. “More people are listening to music than ever before, but the revenue stream hasn’t quite caught up. On one hand, if you wanna be stubborn about the way things have always been, it can be really scary. Or it can be really exciting. We find it exciting.”

Though Paper Route is open to change, the band went the conventional major-label route by signing with Universal Motown.
“We were talking with a bunch of labels,” Smith recalled. “We were definitely a little hesitant about a major label situation. But whatever we were gonna do, whether it was Sub Pop records or starting our own label, it needed to make sense for us and connect.”