The gospel of Thorne
Paul Thorn plays BrixtonPaul Thorn has won a few hard earned truths. And he’s here to deliver them. Thorn, the soul-singing son of a Southern preacher, is an unlikely rising star. His self-released newest record – on his own Perpetual Obscurity label – is titled Pimps & Preachers and is #1 on the Americana charts and #88 on the Billboard charts. His is an unheralded rise for a large magnitude artist with an even larger back-story. “That title cut, Pimps & Preachers, some folks might think there is just a catchy phrase I came up with,” said Thorn, who plays Brixton Friday night, in an interview this week. “But it actually has real meaning in my life because my father was a Pentecostal preacher and his brother was a pimp and those two guys were my mentors when I was a kid growing up. So a lot of the way I look at the world was molded by them.” Thorn is from Tupelo, Mississippi, home of Elvis Presley, and like Elvis, he spent his formative years both in black gospel and countrified white gospel churches. He was performing on the pulpit, tambourine in hand, by the age of 3, and started playing guitar at 12 – at the very same time his uncle, presumed dead, reappeared after a decade…
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