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Warren native happy to be returning home
By John Benson
Warren native Dan Paolucci can’t wait to come home for his band Good Brother Earl’s show Saturday at the W.D. Packard Music Hall.
“It’s probably been eight years since we last played the area,” said Paolucci, 38, a 1991 John F. Kennedy High School graduate. “It’s been a while. We used to play the Horseshoe Bar in Warren once a month years ago, so this is definitely going to be the biggest show we’ve done in Warren. We’re kind of a different band, just tighter, and we’ve had two albums since we last played there. We still keep in touch with some fans, so it’ll be fun to play a lot of our new stuff for them.”
Paolucci, who credits his hard-work ethic to growing up in blue-collar Warren, has come a long way from his teen years when he was in rock trio Oneway, a high-school band he describes as sounding like The Police. Back then he was playing guitar; today, he’s a bassist in one of Pittsburgh’s more popular jam bands that over the years has opened up for The Dave Matthews Band and The Clarks.
Good Brother Earl got its start after Paolucci graduated from Ohio University and moved to the Steel City to work with singer-songwriter Jeff Schmutz. The outfit is still supporting its 2009 effort “Fiction,” which often garners the group comparisons to the aforementioned Dave Matthews Band, as well as The Jayhawks and Wilco. Just think an Americana or jam-band sound, and you’ve pretty much pegged Good Brother Earl.
“There’s a difference between who your influences are and what you sound like,” said Paolucci, who is finishing physical-therapy school. “We’re mainly influenced by old country like Johnny Cash, but it just comes out sounding like the Dave Matthews Band. I’m OK with those comparisons. We’ve been around for a while. When we first started out, we were more like the jam band, jazz-rock fusion, and the past couple of albums have been songwriting albums where we have these three-minute songs that are lyrically based.”
It appears as though while the band would be open to expanding its fan base regionally and beyond, Paolucci paints a picture of the group having found its comfort zone as a self-contained entity that records on its own, writes its own material and even books its own shows.
In fact, you probably could argue that recording on their own has become sort of a crux for the band considering keyboard player Skip Sanders has a day gig working as a sound engineer. This means the band can record for free whenever it wants. Paolucci said in a perfect world, the band would like to release a new album soon, but nothing is in the works.
Instead, the group is focused on playing crowd favorites — such as the country-rock “Lonely Heart,” the rocking “When I Come Around” and the upbeat “Fighting Gravity” — to friendly audiences, which is what Paolucci expects to find at his upcoming hometown gig.
Perhaps the only question remaining is whether locals will have to wait another eight years before Good Brother Earl returns?
Paolucci said, “We’ll have to see how this show goes first.”