You're listening to Nakedly Examined Music, a podcast about songs and songwriters.

My name is Mark Lintonmeyer.

My guest for episode 213 is Paul Chastain.

He had his first solo release in 1985 and in the late 80s, joined with Rickank to form a band that was initially called Choo Choo Train in Illinois and they moved to Rhode Island and it became Velvet Crush.

He released six studio albums in 1991 through 2004. Right now you're hearing Hold Me Up from their second and most commercially successful album Teenage Symphony's to God, 1994.

Paula has since moved back to Illinois and has a project called The Small Square, releasing their first album in 2015.

And now their second album in 2003, as Paul also plays as a longtime member of Matthew Sweet's band.

Today we'll discuss Can't Let Go, parentheses O Tommy,

by the small square from their new album, ours and others.

California Inclined by Velvet Crush from their last album,

Stereo Blues, 2004,

and Flowerfield by Choo Choo Train from the Briar Rose EP, 1988.

We'll conclude by listening to SML from the Small Square, their 2015 self-titled album that's just been re-released.

For more information, please see Smallsquare Music.com or ActionMusic, that is with a K, actionmusic.

com. For more about this podcast, see

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ad-free episodes. So I will have played a little bit of Hold Me Up by Velvet Crush from Teenage

Symphonies to God, 1994, your second and

biggest album, I guess. Definitely the most well known of our canon. We're going to get pretty

quickly to the new stuff. You were recording, what, a decade before even this early Velvet Crush thing,

right, that you have a single from 85 I saw. Doesn't seem like it,

but yeah, it was. That's true. Several albums of that and then a pretty big gap. So is it just that

...