Don Paul

DON PAUL has led or produced 29 Albums since 1988 and written many more than 30 Books since his first novel, Among Ashes, at age 16 in 1966. His current Band is Don Paul and Rivers Answer Moons (DPRAM) with ROGER LEWIS, KIRK JOSEPH, DON VAPPIE, HERMAN LEBEAUX and ALEXEY MARTI and their 2025 Album is the sequence of 12 Tracks that are also meant to serve for a Stage-Show, LOUISIANA STORIES. THIERY DE CLEMENSAT wrote about LOUISIANA STORIES on January 2 for Paris Move: ‘This is an artistic masterpiece, worthy of inclusion among those albums—or in this case, double albums—we deem essential.’

Great musicians have for 37 years graced Don Paul with their collaboration. His Suspect Many Band in the San Francisco Bay Area included his brother Kenton Hulme, Babatundé Lea, Dhyani Dharma Mas, John Baker, George Cremaschi, Richard Howell, John Karr, James Henry, Kenny Blackman, and John Law. In the 1990s Bay Area he came to produce Albums led by Glenn Spearman, Lisle Ellis, India Cooke, and Paul Plimley and worked also with Ustad Salamat and Ustad Shafqat Ali Khan, Donald Robinson, Larry Ochs, Chris Brown, William Winant, Myles Boisen, Miya Masaoka, George Lewis, and Terbo Ted. He also produced the 1989 and 1992 Rebel Poets compilations Worlds Made Flesh and America Fears The Drum (among the great poets and performers on these Albums q.r. hand, Alfonso Texidor, Jack Hirschman, Boadiba, Sarah Menefee, John Sinclair, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, peter plate, Genny Lim, Opal Palmer Adisa and devorah major.).

After 10 years as a volunteer in the SF Bay Area and then in post-Katrina New Orleans, 2000 into 2011, Don Paul resumed recording in 2014 with the solo Voice-and-Percussion They Call To You and the collaboration and Poems-and-Improvisation with Kidd Jordan and Morikeba Kouyaté Women Center Earth, Sea And Sky. He also toured that year with Hamid Drake and Alex de Grassi as the GALLOP Trio. He, Roger, Kirk and trumpeter Mario Abney began performances in 2015. In 2018 he, Kidd, Hamid and Alex recorded the Soundtrack for Melissa Gregory Rue’s documentary film “Live Out Loud”. Since 2020 he’s released two compilations of Poems and Songs, involving many of the superb musicians named above,, The Time We Have, Meld 1 and WOMEN and MUSIC, Meld 2, and an Album with Hamid Drake, COMPASSION, Poems and Drums. In 2022 he produced Roger Lewis’ début as leader, ALRIGHT!, and his own collection of mostly new Songs and Poems, LOVE OVER WAR.

David Amram wrote about Don Paul in 2018: ‘Like Shakespeare, Jack Kerouac, Langston Hughes, Virginia Woolf and Carson McCullers, Don Paul uses words like music.’ Matt Gonzalez wrote in his Foreword to Don Paul’s 2002 book of poems and songs and prose, Flares: ‘Listen for the music that is there.’ Jeannette Armstrong wrote about the 1999 book Pulsing: ‘I was moved deeply by Don Paul’s poetry […] A way sane as dance.’ Sound Choice wrote in 1989: ‘Another Woody Guthrie? Cool.’

Don Paul’s gratitude toward the musicians with whom he’s been so blessed to work is boundless.