Alan Paul

Wheels Off with Rhett Miller

Rhett Miller

Music, Performing Arts, Arts

4.9 • 609 Ratings

🗓️ 25 July 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Alan Paul is an author, journalist and musician. His fourth book, BROTHERS AND SISTERS: The Allman Brothers Band and the Inside Story of the Album That Defined the 70s, out today, is a deep dive into the time before and after the 1973 album. Alan joins Rhett to talk about his career as a music journalist and unexpected turn as a touring musician. Alan shares the lessons he learned while playing in a band in China, and why it’s important to “know your helpers” when you’re living a creative life. Paul’s last two books have been instant New York Times bestsellers: Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. His first book, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing is about his experiences raising three American children in Beijing and Paul’s unlikely journey to becoming a Chinese music star, fronting the blues band Woodie Alan. Alan Paul website Rhett Miller website Follow Rhett on IG @rhettmiller Wheels Off is hosted and produced by Rhett Miller. Executive produced by Kirsten Cluthe. Editing by Matt Dwyer. Music by OLD 97’s. Episode artwork by Katherine Boils and Mark Dowd. Show logo by Tim Skirven. Distributed in partnership with Osiris Media. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also ask Alexa to play it. Revisit previous episodes of Wheels Off with guests Rosanne Cash, Rob Thomas, Jeff Tweedy, The Milk Carton Kids, and more. If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating or review on iTunes! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	O'SIRUS
0:02.0	Welcome to Wheels Off, a show about the messy reality of the creative life.
0:09.0	I'm Rhett Miller.
0:10.0	That's when it got wheels off.
0:13.0	He started ugly ain't gonna stop.
0:16.0	Oh, she made me feel like a good God.
0:19.0	That's when it got wheels off. Alan Paul is an author and a musician.
0:27.2	His life has wound up centering around the guitar,
0:31.2	as he was the managing editor of Guitar World magazine for years.
0:42.5	He plays guitar in a band called Woody Allen,
0:51.3	spelled differently, that he formed in Beijing, China when he lived over there, wrote a book about that, a memoir about his experience, you know, finding acclaim in the world of rock and roll in China.
0:59.8	He has written a number of books, most recently, a biography of the Alman Brothers, and he is a badass in the world of journalism, music journalism, and guitar writing.
1:17.4	I didn't quite know what to expect.
1:20.6	He is not the most obvious candidate for a wheels off interview, but I'm so glad that I spoke to Alan about his experience in
1:33.1	these two worlds. And I think what we wound up with is a conversation that has a lot of
1:41.5	really, really useful advice and wisdom about a life spent as a creative person, a creative life.
1:52.0	And there are a lot of different paths, you know, and the thing that I think that you will find in this interview, the thing that struck me the most is the
2:02.6	idea that sometimes there's a lot of value and flexibility in your life. I mean, certainly in
2:12.7	your art as you're making it moment by moment, but in your life, when you're making the bigger
2:17.0	decisions that you look back on, that sometimes... as you're making it moment by moment, but in your life, when you're making the bigger decisions
2:17.5	that you look back on, that sort of determined the trajectory of your life, I think there's
2:27.6	a lot to be said for going with the flow, for accepting alternate routes that you might not have envisioned to begin with.
	...

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