PAPER FLOWER
Jesse Harris – vocals, guitar, keys, percussion
Kenny Wollesen – drums, keys, marimba, percussion
Tony Scherr – bass, synth bass, guitar, backing vocals
with:
Anson Jones – backing vocals, dulcitone, piano (1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 11)
Ulysse Cottin – synths, piano, baritone guitar, backing vocals (1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9)
Melody Gardot – backing vocals (6)
Molly Lewis – whistling (7)
Carm – horn arrangement and all horns (7)
Armand Pennicaut – slide guitar (11)
Pierre Rioufol – accordion (10)
All songs c2021 and 2022 by Jesse Harris (Beanly Songs (BMI)/Sony Music Publishing)
Recorded and mixed by Felix Remy at Studio Pigalle, Paris
Except “It’s Okay” recorded and pre-mixed by Jesse Harris at Secret Sun West, NYC
Mastered by Stephen Marcussen
Cover photo by Jesse Harris
c 2024 Secret Sun Recordings
01 We Gotta Know
02 Hoping Tomorrow
03 Paper Flower
04 Why Would I Lie?
05 Slip Of The Tongue
06 I Can Feel It
07 It’s Okay
08 I Was Looking For A Street
09 All Night Long
10 For Wasting Time
11 If You Get A Broken Heart
Jesse Harris Paper Flower Bio
Jesse Harris’s Paper Flower feels like a “Paris record.” Though that’s not a commonly named genre, there’s a lot in common between the works made by Americans in Paris: Henry Miller’s novels, Miles Davis’s recordings, Man Ray’s photographs. “In Paris, you can’t help but fall into collaborative artistic communities,” Harris explains. “It’s not a city to work alone. If you’re recording, everyone drops by the studio to play. After the session you go out and see music and jam and meet musicians who’ll visit the studio the next day. Maybe because artists there receive support from the government and the cost of living is way less than New York, they have more free time to collaborate, or at the very least more time to gather in communities.”
This album strikes an interesting contrast with Jesse’s last album, 2022’s Silver Balloon, which was recorded post-Covid, with only Harris and Kenny Wollesen isolated in a New York apartment, filtering sounds through a vintage harmonizer. “This time, we did the complete
opposite! Went for a live, roomy sound, with players and singers constantly coming and going.”
Harris had already been spending a lot of time in the city of light writing for, playing with and producing Paris-based artists like Gabi Hartmann, Melody Gardot and Papooz (Gardot and members of Papooz appear all over the record.) The sessions came about because longtime friends/collaborators Kenny Wollesen and Tony Scherr found themselves with 3 1/2 days off between shows in Europe with Laurie Anderson and Bill Frisell. Kenny thought it’d be fun to record in Paris, rather than fly all the way home to New York. Harris says, “The three of us hadn’t made an album like this together in about twenty years and the idea of combining old friends with new Paris friends was irresistible.”
Starting in the late 90s, Wollesen and Scherr had been in one of Harris’s earliest bands, The Ferdinandos, making a total of five albums together. They continued to collaborate in Harris’s many projects, including Norah Jones’s debut album (Harris wrote five of the songs including the classic “Don’t Know Why” and played guitar throughout) and the soundtrack for Ethan Hawke’s film, The Hottest State, made up of Harris’s songs covered by artists like Cat Power, Willie Nelson, Bright Eyes, Feist, and The Black Keys.
Back in the day, as it were, they would record albums on an 8 track reel-to-reel in Scherr’s Carroll Gardens apartment, borrow vans for West Coast tours, and once even drove Norah’s famous blue Cadillac from Texas to New York, after Kenny bought it from her when she was still a student at the University of Norah Texas in Denton. “We have a deeply rooted musical connection that was great to explore again,” Harris says. “The morning of the first session Kenny and Tony came directly to the studio from the airport after waking up at 4am in Prague to catch the first flight, and we got straight to work. The first song we recorded was ‘We Gotta Know,’ which I had just written a couple of days before.”
The three old friends recorded the bass, drums, vocals and guitar for all of Paper Flower over the course of the first two days at Studio Pigalle, one of the city’s oldest studios, a short walk from Place Pigalle and Montmartre. They spent the next day-and-a-half adding overdubs.
“Paris is a city that feels like a village,” Harris says. “Being able to walk up the hill from the 9th arrondissement, where I was staying, to the studio every morning made it easy. And friends could drop by to record and then be on their way.” One of them, the young expatriate singer/pianist Anson Jones, harmonizes with him and plays piano on many of the songs.
The influence of this recording experience is clear: Paper Flower is a joyful, positive album, a stark contrast to the general air of alienation and nostalgia on Silver Balloon. Though this record has plenty of Harris’s classic melancholy lyrics, much of it focuses on resisting the impulse to obsess over the past and future, a release from neuroticism, and finding a balance between the enjoyment of beautiful illusions and dreams with pursuing something real.
It opens with “We Gotta Know,” in which Harris tells us “We gotta know when to stop… searching for what we got.” In other words, the album begins with already having what one needs to be happy, the only question being whether you’re able to appreciate it. And the music
embodies an acoustic spring-breeziness, a sweetness and hope.
The title track, “Paper Flower,” presented as a kind of modern jazz standard, offers an extended metaphor about the pros and cons between the real and the illusory. “Flowers all fall apart and rot over time…I would take a paper flower if you tell me that it’s real…” And then later, “I don’t want a paper flower…touch it to a match, it burns…” The guitar and celesta instrumentation, nevertheless, expresses a sweetness and sensitivity.
On the chorus of exotica-tinged “It’s Okay,” the iconic whistler, Molly Lewis, answers a response to the melody; and what instrumental choice embodies dreamlike romance and innocence more than whistling?
Many of the songs touch on the question of whether to reveal oneself and be seen or to hide one’s feelings. In “Slip Of The Tongue,” Harris sings, “A slip of the tongue opened the way…to debts in your heart that you never paid…” while warm organ and acoustic guitar conjure laid-back sunny wandering. The album’s closer, a country song called “If You Get A Broken Heart” Harris again seems conflicted, moving back and forth about whether to share one’s feelings and to whom: “When you’re hurting deep inside, you do your best to try and hide it, but it’s useless to disguise it. They all see beneath your skin. There’s no need to let them know…and it’s better if they go…”
Overall, Paper Flower portrays the experience of Harris in Paris: an escape from troubles, a healing fantasy that may not be quite real but helps anyway. In “For Wasting Time,” he tells us: “Only you know what I mean…made more sense in my dream.” And one feels he’s talking to us, the listeners, and his time in Paris making this record was the dream.
01.WE GOTTA KNOW
We gotta know where we’re going
Or else we could lose our way
If we find trouble
We’ll have ourselves to blame
We gotta know what we’re doing
It’s easy to make mistakes
When no one’s looking
That’s when the world can change
We gotta know what we got
Cause if we lose we lose a lot
We gotta know when to stop
Searching for what we got
We gotta know what we’re thinking
It’s easy to think too much
And keep on pushing
Until we’re out of touch
We gotta know what we got
Cause if we lose we lose a lot
We gotta know when to stop
Searching for what we got
02. HOPING TOMORROW
This room is so dark
Half the lights here are dead
With views of a wall
From the sky turning red
The bell of the church has to chime
So you never lose track of time
Hoping tomorrow
Is not like today
Leaving behind yesterday
You wanted to be here
You made up your mind
Forgot all the people
That you left behind
The wind has to change when it blows
So you never know where to go
Hoping tomorrow
Is not like today
Leaving behind yesterday
Hoping tomorrow
Is not like today
Leaving behind yesterday
You wandered the city
That you found in your dreams
Got lost turning corners
Flew high without wings
The song of the birds is the same
So you give it somebody’s name
Hoping tomorrow
Is not like today
Leaving behind yesterday
Hoping tomorrow
Is not like today
Leaving behind yesterday
03. PAPER FLOWER
If you give a paper flower
Better say it’s from the heart
Flowers all fall apart
And rot over time
I would take a paper flower
If you tell me that it’s real
All I need is to feel
A push from behind
It’s funny how illusion
Soon becomes the truth
You can’t deny the fact in spite of this old confusion
I don’t want a paper flower
Touch it to a match it burns
When will I ever learn
How to read the signs?
It’s funny how illusion
Soon becomes the truth
You can’t deny the fact in spite of this old confusion
I don’t want a paper flower
Touch it to a match it burns
When will I ever learn
How to read the signs?
This paper flower’s mine
04. WHY WOULD I LIE?
Why would I lie?
Look in my eyes
Do you see what I see?
Did you try?
Why should I care?
If no one is there
There’s a hole in the place
That we shared
And no it’s not me
Who needs to be free
How will I know
When it’s time to go?
Will the wind carry me
Where it blows?
And no it’s not you
Who knows what to do
But no it’s not me
Who needs to be free
Why would I lie?
Look in my eyes
Do you see what I see?
Did you try?
Do you see what I see?
Did you try?
Do you see what I see?
Did you try?
Do you see what I see?
Did you try?
Did you?
05. SLIP OF THE TONGUE
A slip of the tongue
And everything changed
The silent walls talked and
The talking bird sang
A slip of the tongue
Like a boat on a reef
Broke open and spilled
Everything underneath
Don’t tell anyone
You don’t tell anyone
Then a slip of the tongue
Is over and done
A slip of the tongue
Is over and done
If to yourself
You can’t be true
How can you expect
Somebody else to?
A slip of the tongue
Opened the way
To debts in your heart that you never paid
Don’t tell anyone
You don’t tell anyone
Then a slip of the tongue
Is over and done
A slip of the tongue
Is over and done
Don’t tell anyone
You don’t tell anyone
Then a slip of the tongue
Is over and done
A slip of the tongue
Is over and done
A slip of the tongue
Is over and done
06. I CAN FEEL IT
I can feel it
I can see it
Coming down the line
This time there’s nothing to be done
If I show you that I know you
Would it change your plan?
If you can, before we lose the sun
I knew there’d come a day
When you’d go your way
And I would fall behind
I try to be strong
But my strength is gone
I only wish that I could find it
Every ending is a beginning
But nothing ever ends
The river bends and flows into the sun
The river bends and flows into the sun
07. IT’S OKAY
It wasn’t fate, you had a choice
Even if you heard my voice
There was really nothing I could do
I thought that I could change for us
I thought that time would wait for us
We used up what we had and then some too
It’s okay
It’s for the best
It’s okay
So I tell myself
Forget the rest
I walk along the riverside
A floating swan moves at my side
Staring from the corner of its eye
In my mind you wait for me
On a rock down by the sea
Staring at a cloud up in the sky
It’s okay
It’s for the best
It’s okay
So I tell myself
Forget the rest
08. I WAS LOOKING FOR A STREET
I was out looking for a street
That I couldn’t find
Wandered on thinking I would see it
As it’s in my mind
Where did it go?
Where did it go?
I was out looking for a block
In my memory burned
I was out looking for the place
Where the road returned
Where did it go?
Where did it go?
Everything seems unreal
I don’t know how to feel
I was out looking for a street
That crossed into the past
I was lost looking for the way
But I moved too fast
Where did I go?
Where did I go?
Everything seems untrue
I don’t know what to do
I was out looking for a street
Had to be somewhere
I was lost following my feet
Take my anywhere
Where did it go?
Where did it go?
09. ALL NIGHT LONG
With your reds and greens
And your winter scene
A glass of snow
Is glittering
On a Christmas Eve
Do you still believe
That what you give
You will receive?
All night long
All night long
All night long
All night
Then you sleep so well
In an old hotel
Full of empty rooms
And a broken bell
All night long
All night long
All night long
All night
All night long
All night long
All night long
All night
You lie and dream
And you barely breath
In another world
So close to me
All night long
All night long
All night long
All night
10. FOR WASTING TIME
Please don’t wait
For wasting time
Who can say what I might find
Every day and every night
I think ahead, I fall behind
Only you
Know what I mean
Made more sense in my dream
Every excuse is just a lie
I tell myself as the days go by
Look around
No one’s listening
You can tell me anything
Don’t be ashamed and don’t be shy
Between us there’s nothing to hide
11. IF YOU GET A BROKEN HEART
If you get a broken heart
Lose your way or fall apart
There’s no one that’s going to help you
Get back on your feet again
When you’re hurting deep inside
You do your best to try to hide it
But it’s useless to disguise it
They all see beneath your skin
There’s no need to let them know
And it’s better if they go
You can plant a seed tomorrow
Watch the flowers as they grow
So if you get a broken heart
Lose your way and fall apart
Ask nobody else to help you
Get back on your feet again