Phoenix resident Paula Tesoriero is a classically trained pianist who uses her background to write songs on guitar. Having never taken a single guitar lesson, she feels a greater sense of freedom to create deeply personal music.
The Show caught up with Tesoriero after Paula T and Company’s performance in the Center Space gallery at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts.
The “and Company” refers to a rotating cast of musicians that plays behind Paula, who notes she has never played a show with the same collection of artists.
This performance was filmed in June. The exhibit at the time was “Unintended Consequences,” a collaborative installation featuring the work of local artists Carolyn Lavender, Monica Aissa Martinez and Mary Shindell. Their wall paintings explored the effects of human activity on Arizona’s people, wildlife and plants.
Full conversation
PAULA TESORIERO: So the genre I think it's most suited for is one that I made up myself, which is called sad Americana.
MARK BRODIE: Ah, OK.
TESORIERO: Sometimes I like to throw in sad orchestral Americana, but it depends on who I am playing with.
BRODIE: Why so sad?
TESORIERO: I find that for me, music, composing music is a helpful way for me to process things, but it tends to be my more distressing emotions that I have the easiest time musically processing. Like it's, it's sometimes difficult for me to write a happy song, and perhaps that's because when I'm happy, it kind of feels a little bit more momentary than sadness, which tends to stick around a little more poignantly.
BRODIE: So if there's something going on in your life that is not particularly happy, like, what's your process then, like, how do you try to maybe use the music a little bit as therapy to sort of help yourself process and get through it?
TESORIERO: It tends to be a space when I'm alone and I'll have a guitar, I'll be at the piano, and I'll just start improvising, and I'll just sing words that come to my head, and if after I find that they're ideas that I want to utilize in a more concrete song, then I'll try to go back and remember what I did. Record it. Sometimes I happen to be recording it, and sometimes it just goes with the wind.
BRODIE: Given that you've been doing this for a while, I hope that there are other inspirations for your songs other than just your own sadness.
TESORIERO: Yes, very much so.
BRODIE: OK, good.
TESORIERO: Yeah.
BRODIE: What kinds of things do you tend to look to?
TESORIERO: I mean, sometimes artists, so I would, I would say that probably half, at least half the album, if not a little bit more. Each individual song was inspired by a different song. So from just a range of artists and I was either trying to copy like the, or not copy but be influenced by the sentiment of a song, sometimes by the instrumentation of a song, sometimes by melodies, sometimes by lyrical rhythms, melodic rhythms, seldom, actually, I guess, now that I'm thinking about it by the context of the song, and I will say, oddly enough, lyrics are the last things I hear when I listen to songs.
BRODIE: Wow. Well, so like, if you're trying to sort of emulate a different song or style. Like, how do you try to do that without copying it, without, like, making your version of what somebody else has already done?
TESORIERO: I've listened to so much music in my life, and there are certainly chord progressions that I find people use more often than not. And so what I like to do is throw in just a chord, or try to try to find a chord that I maybe haven't either heard before or haven't heard in the context of, like a more coherent song, like maybe like a jazz chord or something like that. Sometimes, like, the simpler the better melodically.
But I also like to do some pretty extravagant things, like moving around. And I think that those two things are kind of like the base of any of my songs. And I don't know that it's an intentional thing, necessarily, or like, I'm gonna do this? I don't sound like this song, because none of my songs ever end up sounding like others. And if I feel like they do, then I'll send it to like 10 people and be like, people, and be like, tell me what this sounds like. And they're like, nothing doesn't feel like anything else.
BRODIE: So it's interesting, because given, as you say, that the genre that you feel your music best fits into is one that you made up yourself, I would imagine that could be either very liberating in the sense that you can listen to pretty much anything, and try to draw inspiration from it and sort of incorporate it into the kind of music you're doing. But also, I would imagine it might be paralyzing, because there are no limits, right? Like you can do anything.
TESORIERO: Like you can do anything in a certain way, yeah, and I think that I feel a little bit at that stage, at the moment, at least in terms of composition. I also just trust that things will come up again, and maybe I'll hear a song and be inspired, or maybe, I don't know, maybe I'll do like an improvised album. Who knows?
BRODIE: Wow, the sky's the limit, right? You can do pretty much anything, yeah? I mean, you're inventing the genre. There's no, nobody telling you you can't.
TESORIERO: Exactly.
BRODIE: All right, so, can you guys play a song for us?
TESORIERO: Yeah! Yeah, this song is called “The Western Song,” and it was inspired by a group of musicians asking other musicians to write a Western song. And this is what came.
[PERFORMS SONG]
BRODIE: Where do you tend to draw your inspiration from? Like, what, I guess maybe, what kinds of music do you most enjoy listening to? And maybe they're the same, maybe they're different, but where do you tend to find the most inspiration for your own music?
TESORIERO: So I was a classically trained pianist, so I think that there are harmonic and melodic sentiments that stem from just my familiarity with that type of music. And I really did some jazz piano. I didn't get too far into it, but I listened to a lot of jazz at that time. And so I think that there's something about the more complex chordal, chordal arrangements and harmonies. And then I love folk music as well as, yeah, some rock. I mean, like the Beatles when I was growing up just blew my mind, and it was primarily their melodies that I was intensely drawn to.
BRODIE: So you mentioned that you are a classically trained pianist, and I know that you've been playing piano for a long time, but in these songs, you're now playing guitar. Like, is that something that you've also been playing for a long time? Or like, is that something you picked up recently?
TESORIERO: I kind of messed around on the guitar. Like, when I was younger, my dad played it, so I was around. Never took any lessons or anything. And then I went to Nova Scotia, I think in 2016 and all that was available to me was a guitar there. So I spent a lot of time, and I was around a lot of people who were playing guitar, so I picked up a few things from them.
BRODIE: How do you find that being raised here, you’re second-generation Arizonan. And how do you find that that sort of works its way into your music?
TESORIERO: I think that there are some elements to it. I mean, I've taken a lot of drives just on my own through the desert, and some of the songs that inspired other songs of mine on the album. So like pre-written songs that I listened to, that I really enjoyed hearing on my drives, that inspired my own music, they just came to life in a pretty emotionally significant way, like, you know, you're driving on the 17 north and the sun is rising or something like that. So I'd say that there's something in combination with the desert landscape and my emotional landscape that tends to work its way into my music, I think.
BRODIE: So, given that you have sort of this genre that you have created for yourself, and you clearly have sort of a process and a vision of how you like your music to be and where you draw inspiration, what would you like to do next?
TESORIERO: I think it's worth noting that the music that I write on my own well, so there the songs are on mine and but I like to think of it like I'm providing the skeleton, and then any musician that I play with like they're the ones that are fleshing it out. So I think what I'd like to try to do is use that as a path to maybe collaborating with some of those musicians and seeing if there's a possibility in terms of writing music together, or at the very least, maybe trying to involve them a little bit more in the creative writing process. See how that goes.
BRODIE: All right, so can you guys play something out for us?
TESORIERO: Sure. This song is called “Kota,” and I was dog sitting, actually, when I wrote this song and was trying to write something kind of spooky. Then I wanted to take it out of the spookiness to get a little surprise ending.
If you're in a band or know of one you'd like to hear play a Tiny Desert Concert, send us a note: [email protected].
