To get a bead on what kind of person Paul Cebar is, all you need to do is look at the title of his upcoming album
After 40+ years as a member of Milwaukee’s music scene and more than a dozen record releases under a handful of band names, only now is Cebar getting around to putting out a self-titled album.
It’s a fitting timeline for a musician who, yes, stands center stage as frontman and lead vocalist but has built a career on collaboration and the kind of sound that’s only possible from a group effort. So it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, either, that Paul Cebar the person made togetherness a major theme of Paul Cebar the album.
“When We Sing,” the opener of Cebar’s Friday afternoon Studio Milwaukee Session, hit it squarely on the head as he preached about the benefits of tuneful connection and how when we lend our voices to something bigger, “out of all that’s wrong there’s suddenly some right.”
Those lyrics sprung from an opportunity extended by The Blind Boys of Alabama to write songs for an upcoming record. Cebar explained, “I kind of kept thinking about what I liked about them and kind of what I liked about gospel music and that whole tradition. And one of the ideas was: When we sing, it brings us together.”
It also brought a capacity audience of Radio Milwaukee members to our performance space — further evidence of the goodwill and warm feelings Cebar has fostered in the city over the nearly 50 years since his first paid gig. He talked about “scrabbling” in those early days and name-checked dearly departed venues like the Blue River Café, Century Hall and The Toad.
While those locations have long since shuttered, Cebar remains firmly in place on stages like ours — not to put himself front and center, but to share the spotlight (and the music) with everyone.
Studio MKE: Paul Cebar set list
- "When We Sing"
- "We Sure Got Enough"
- "Back in the Wind"
