Pfau’s Play

The Scrawny White Kid Blues.

By Sean Jester
Photos by Mary Kate McKenna

 

Imagine this: I take you to a blues bar blindfolded. You can smell the bar’s signature aromas, hear the people talking, and eventually a guy starts playing the blues akin to some of the legends, like B.B. King, Eric Clapton and John Lee Hooker.  When you take off the blindfold, do you expect to see a scrawny, 23-year-old white kid from Middletown, Maryland, who can’t weigh more than 130 pounds, soaking wet? I don’t think so.

Meet Paul Pfau. He is the aforementioned scrawny, 23-year-old, who—if you close your eyes and listen to his voice—you’d swear was a 60-year-old black man, weighing in at about 250 pounds.

Pfau was gracious enough to take time from his busy schedule to have a beer with me in downtown Frederick. The plan was to talk about how he got into the blues, what the future holds for him, and if that this is a musician caught between his youth and the blues’ older sound. So, where does he fit in?

As I size him up and order a Kolsch, Pfau orders an oatmeal stout. Just from his beer order alone, he’s already showing a taste for life, I reflect, that I didn’t expect from someone his age. Sporting messy brown hair, thin-framed, black glasses and a vintage M*A*S*H t-shirt, Pfau nevertheless sits across from me as a self-assured youth. He speaks in a deep, raspy voice with passion and confidence. You wouldn’t know from his “go-with-the flow” demeanor that he has something unique to offer the music biz. But one look at his tour schedule—local venues, Washington, D.C., New York City, etc.—tells me that he is going somewhere, and not only geographically. 

Our conversation begins with where it all started for Pfau.

“It was one of those high school senior talent shows,” he says, smirking. “It was the first time my parents ever heard me sing. It was a song by The Fray and I forgot the entire second verse.” He remembers the event as a disaster.

Curious about what this kid had to offer, I had earlier traveled to Piccadilly’s Pub in Winchester, Virginia, to see Pfau and the Paul Pfau Blues Band perform live.

Pfau transforms on stage. He goes from a reserved kid to a musician with a stage presence that conjures Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton, while at the same time retaining a youthful air. He whipped the crowd at Piccadilly’s into a dancing frenzy with apparent ease and nonchalance, proving he has outgrown the nerves of his talent show days and has begun to discover the artist within.

Pfau’s unique, youthful take on the blues’ venerable genre has me wondering how a kid like this—growing up in the Middletown valley’s prevalent mix of country music and pop songs—found himself so totally immersed in the blues. What was it about the lyrics and melodies of his music inspirations—Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Lylle Lovett, John Hiatt, and Matt Schofield—that captured him so totally?

Pfau recalls hearing these blues greats and says that their musical expertise made him want to find the blues zone within himself.

“When I first heard Schofield, I realized that he was doing what I was trying to do; but he was doing it at an expert level,” Pfau says.

Pfau envisions a musical world he never was able to experience first-hand—one of a generation prior to his existence—and voices his frustration with the current musical landscape stating, “It seems like nowadays everything is electronic or based around a DJ.”

That statement told me that across from me sat a young musician enamored of both a world of music before his time and a prospective one in which today’s youth would begin a musical revival. Pfau wants to collide these two worlds, so that what is left is a contemporary, bluesy, funky brand of rock ‘n’ roll.

Sipping our beers in Brewer’s Ally, I wonder what role Frederick County has played in this local musician’s career? Has it helped him realize his big dreams? Why did I have to travel all the way to Winchester to see him perform?

“I went to college in Shepherdstown,” says Pfau. “That’s when I started playing shows. So, it kind of grew from there. But Frederick has been really helpful.” 

He cites radio station KEY 103.1 and Frederick-based Flying Dog Brewery as being two of his biggest Frederick-based supporters.

Just with that bit of support, Pfau says, he has been able to take his career to well-established venues like the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. and The Bitter End in New York City. Frederick’s lack of music venues forces Pfau to travel out of the area, he adds, saying he wishes that Frederick had a 9:30 Club of its own. “There’s no ‘music-first’ venue in Frederick,” he notes somberly. “There’s a ton of bars that have live music, which is great, but I really think the main focus. That’s something else I’m working on; bringing a ‘music-first’ venue to Frederick.”

In the meantime, Pfau says he’s playing smaller venues, closer to home. Recently he played in Middletown, at Westview Promenade and at Sugarloaf Mountain. 

Finally, Pfau pauses to take a breath and reflect on the individuals who have helped him get to where he is today. “There are so many people who’ve helped me that it would probably take years to recognize them all. [But] I feel like we’ve got everyone in place, and we’re just ready to push it over the edge.”