Paul Siebel born September 19, 1937

Paul Siebel (September 19, 1937 – April 5, 2022) was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist.

Paul Karl Siebel was  born in Buffalo, New York. His father, Karl, was a farmer and restaurateur. His mother, Dorothy (Hosmer) Siebel, was a homemaker and seamstress. Paul studied classical violin as a child and later became proficient at the guitar. 

After attending what is now the University at Buffalo, he served in the Army in Europe before beginning to perform on the folk circuit in Buffalo. When he moved to New York City, he supported himself by working in a baby carriage factory in Brooklyn.

After serving in the military, Siebel began playing folk clubs, eventually moving to Greenwich Village in 1962, where he where he eventually played his first professional gig in 1965, playing traditional songs in a coffee house. An article in The New York Times on February 14, 1970, written by Mike Jahn, described Siebel as "a folk singer with a country and western bias, a 32‐year‐old native of Buffalo and musically a product of the Greenwich Village folk scene" and said that he "sings in high nasal and hillbilly manner, rather like Bob Dylan's singing in his early days". Referring to his songs as "uncomplicated country and folk songs, with occasional thoughts about such things as suburban living and raising children". Typical of his songs were “Bride 1945" and "My Town". At The Bitter End, he played acoustic guitar and was backed by David Bromberg, Don Brooks, Jeff Gutcheon and Gary White.

                                                            

               

In 1969, Elektra Records became aware of a collection of songs Siebel made with David Bromberg and signed him to record Woodsmoke and Oranges (1970) and Jack-Knife Gypsy (1971). He is best known for other artists' cover versions of his songs, most notably "Louise". Other frequently covered Siebel songs include "Spanish Johnny" (which was originally a poem written by Willa Cather in 1917 and expanded upon by Siebel), "Long Afternoons," "Any Day Woman," "Nashville Again," "She Made Me Lose My Blues," "Then Came the Children" and "Pinto Pony". 

Among some of the artists who covered his songs were David Bromberg, Willy DeVille, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Jerry Jeff Walker, Kate Wolf, Mary McCaslin, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Rick Roberts and Leo Kottke; but Siebel remained mostly unknown to the larger public.  After 1971, his song writing production stopped. Siebel became depressed and developed drug problems. Now and then his name came up in interviews with other artists. Kris Kristofferson tips his hat to Siebel in his song "The Pilgrim". Siebel played McCabe's Guitar Shop in 1978, which was considered a comeback, and appeared on a 1977 release, Music From Mud Acres, with a cover of the Hank Williams song "Weary Blues".

Siebel made his home on Maryland's Eastern Shore in the 1990s. In 1996, folk magazine Dirty Linen tracked him down and talked with the then 58-year-old who was baking bread for a living. Siebel looked back on the difficult time of his depression. "I wasn't moving," he said. "I wasn't going forward with it and I was finding that, well, it was bumming me out. It got to a point of where I was disliking going out there and not coming up with new material. I was too uncomfortable knowing that I was gonna have to go off stage and meet people who were gonna ask me that question. 

And I couldn't blame them. When they said, 'When are you gonna come out with the third album and have you written more songs?' and to come up with a negative night after night was something that I was becoming very uncomfortable with, to a point of either go forward with this or stop. And I stopped." After leaving his job as a bread baker for a restaurant and a county park worker in Maryland.

Siebel died in hospice care in Centreville, Maryland from complications of pulmonary fibrosis on April 5, 2022. He was 84.

(Edited from Wikipedia & New York Times)