West Country Girl...

... we're in Paris for a couple of weeks. There's a pop-up store for Record Store Day, like there was last year, and like there was in December. The December trip was great, not least because we were joined for two or three days by the gentleman genius that is Josh T Pearson. He was great company and we had a blast. But I can't help feeling like Paris is haunted by this beautiful, ephemeral troubadour. Let me tell you why...

A couple of nights ago, we were taken to a small creperie for dinner. It was the kind of place you would walk past, like so many great places in great cities, unless you knew someone to take you there or tell you about it. Anyway, we sat down and ordered cider and ate bread. We got talking about December and Josh and the proprietor of the place, milling about behind the bar, pulling demis and pouring ciders asks if we're talking about Josh. Yes, we say. He lived here for two years, the owner tells us in perfect English, we were fans and we had him stay and try and get his thing together. He ate a lot of crepes. The owners wife walks round to the bar. I make my own caramel and salt butter every day, she said (it's insanely good), and every night Josh would ask if I needed any 'cleaning up'. I had an image of Josh with that beard of his licking a caramel bowl clean.



We hung out talking about music with the owners, who put on little shows - Neal Casal, Micah P Hinson... shows that were started by Josh when he lived there, and they have carried them on. The owner pulled out a record sleeve and handed it to me. It was an album recorded in that very place featuring one night's picking and singing with Josh, Bosque Brown, H Burns and Thousand.

The owner recorded and produced the session and it sounded great when he played us a few songs. They just put mics up in the little bar and hammered it out over homemade apple digestifs and whiskey. The way a record like that should be made in a place like that... if you're going to make records in tiny Parisian creperies.

He played us a couple of tracks off the second record he's got planned and half recorded with She Keeps Bees, which sounded great as well.

If you're in Paris I recommend a crepe with vanilla ice cream and homemade caramel with salt butter at West Country Girl. If you're into good music, I recommend getting hold of their records, too which will soon be available at Rough Trade...