I got my first “gig” when my pastor asked me to play the organ at Sunday Mass when I was in 5th grade. At about the same time I discovered I could get out of class a lot by playing piano for school music programs, and found out that playing by ear and reading chord charts really expanded what I had learned from my classical lessons. In Jr. High, my next door neighbor turned me on to the band Chicago, and my life was forever changed. My first albums were Chicago IX, Led Zeppelin IV, The Beach Boys Endless Summer, Kiss Alive, Emerson Lake and Palmer Live, and the Overtures of Rossini. From a young age I loved all different kinds of music, and that has served me well over the years.

Me and my buddies put together our first band in the summer before high school, and I played with different combinations of the same guys until I left to go to college at DePaul to study music. In no small way was I influenced to check out DePaul by the fact the the guys from Chicago went there. During that time, the early 80s, I had my first musical partnership with WCN band leader Marc Pulido when we played together in local heroes, The Skylyne Band. It was during my time in that band that I learned the art of writing and recording original music.

I moved to Nashville in the early 90s to pursue the songwriting business. After five years of getting nowhere, I came back to Chicago. Through a pure stroke of luck, or maybe providence, I found myself joining my old friend Marc once again in his fantastic soul band, World Class Noise. That was the beginning of the best and most fulfilling period in my musical life.

Paul Rau