This is a Paul tune. It was the principal single off of Amazing Grace and it's still a big live favorite.

The entire Amazing Grace record was made up of demos made in my basement in Wapwallopen, PA. Most of these tunes were tentatively slated to be on the first Cellarbirds record, which didn't come out until several years later. In 1998, the Up There, Down Here record was finished and sitting somewhere in Universal's vaults gathering dust. We had no reason to believe it would ever be released. After we found ourselves in record company limbo for over a year, we decided to try and get released from our contract. That proved to be a formidable task. So there we sat. We couldn't make any progress one way or another.

So we decided to release ANOTHER record the same year, the Amazing Grace record, which was an obvious breach of contract but we figured maybe our label would at least take notice of that and shut us down. We mixed the record, sent it off to press, and went about our business. We were released from our label deal the very same day it came out.

Within months, we had a new label deal and Up There, Down Here was released, thus ending the push of the Amazing Grace record prematurely. Despite its humble beginnings and short lifespan, the Amazing Grace record with all its styles and textures would inform our production style for the next decade.

   - Bret Alexander

Next: "Like a Rembrandt" →

Badlees Songs Blog