Sheffield singer Paul Pashley: 'I think there’s a space for British artists doing swing'
Paul Pashley launches his album at Bibis Italianissimo in Leeds on Sunday October 11
Sheffield singer Paul Pashley’s path to a career in music was unusual to say the least.
“Honestly, my background’s crazy,” he tells our sister title The Yorkshire Post with no understatement. The son of an Italian father who left home before he was born, he was raised by his mother and stepfather in Sheffield. At 15 he was doing work experience at Meadowhall shopping centre when an entertainment company hired him as a clown.
“From in between school, going down there and doing some Crucible youth theatre in some of the productions like Oliver!, I grew up in that performance atmosphere,” he says. “I’d finish school at 3pm sometimes, get down there for 3.15pm, do a couple of hours with the clowns and learning how to facepaint, juggle unicycle. I did that until I was 21.
“In between doing that I went to a college for performing arts because I wanted to act, and then I went to university and did a degree. Not really singing – I was treading the boards as an actor and I was picked up in a show at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. I was in Jack and the Beanstalk and I was hired as the Giant because I could stiltwalk on animatronic stilts...as I was doing it I was doubling up on principal singing roles, and one of the musicians in the orchestra said to me, ‘You should be singing’.”
Following his suggestion, Pashley demoed an Arctic Monkeys song which was passed on to Greg Francis, leader of the Memphis Belle Orchestra, who offered him a job as a crooner. “I remember being at St George’s Hall in Bradford,” he says, “and he threw me onstage with two guys who took me under their wing and I performed for the first time with a 17-piece big band. It was literally sink or swim.”
Later, he formed a jazz and swing band and worked as an events singer at Manchester United Football Club, and in 2008 performed at the wedding of Wayne and Colleen Rooney. His CV also includes a studio project with the Grammy Award-winning Sheffield songwriter Eliot Kennedy and an EP with Steve Edwards, who co-wrote the hit World Hold On with Bob Sinclar. In 2016 he appeared on The Voice UK doing a swing version of Arctic Monkeys’ I Bet You Good Look on the Dance Floor.
He believes “there’s a space for British artists” doing swing. While drawing up a setlist for a 17th birthday party, he commissioned big band arrangements of songs by Drake, Harry Styles and Pulp. Along with fresh readings of Calvin Harris and Rag N Bone Man’s Giant, Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy and Tones and I’s Dance Monkey, they now form the basis of his self-funded new album, Swing’s a 21st Century Thing. “I decided to put a financial risk on and put a big band gig on in Sheffield and we filmed it and I said to my musical director, I’m going to record it,” he explains.
Although Pashley is concerned about the impacts of artificial intelligence on music, the cover of his album was partially designed using AI. “There’s that phrase, never judge a book by its cover,” he says. “When I go out and people find out I’m from Sheffield, they think, ‘Well, he’s not going to sing that’ because they don’t expect it. So there’s a little bit of tongue in cheek with that cover because if you’re listening to big band music, for me the soul of it is on hard copy. I could not make that album and just release it digitally, so I’ve put my hand in my pocket again and had 250 vinyls done with that picture as a limited edition artwork copy. I’m going to release the album once they’ve sold with different artwork, but that artwork is quite prominent and special because it’s got AI in it. It is quite tongue in cheek but there’s a story in that about where music’s moving.”
Paul Pashley launches his album at Bibis Italianissimo in Leeds on Sunday October 11. https://www.paulpashley.com/