Paul Schalda, With a Little Help From Friends, Reinvents Himself on Live at Niles City Sound

Were it not for the Dallas Mavericks and the team’s 2006 NBA Finals loss to the Miami Heat, we might not have Paul Schalda’s Live at Niles City Sound EP.

The EP was produced by the tireless Jeff “Skin” Wade, who works as a TV analyst for the Mavs, and it was recently released via the label Wade co-founded, Skylark Soul Co. — but there’s a bit more to the story than just that.

“I knew of Skin for years before I moved to Texas, because I’ve always been a big NBA fan,” the Staten Island native said during a recent conversation. “In 2006, I kind of got really pissed, and I thought the NBA was fixed — I thought I was watching wrestling for a little while, so I started really rooting for the Mavs. ... I was really upset about that [2006] finals — I was legitimately watching every game that they played, so I’d seen Skin on the broadcast.”

Schalda eventually relocated from the East Coast to Texas in 2017. After some time here, he found himself in Josey Records, a copy of Our Love in the Light, his first record under the Paul & the Tall Trees moniker, in hand, in hopes of getting placement on the store’s shelves.

Here again, Schalda’s path would serendipitously cross with Wade’s, although this time, their connection would have less to do with the latter’s gig with the Mavericks.

“About a week later [after visiting Josey], I got an email from Jeff ‘Skin’ Wade, introducing me to Adrian Quesada,” Schalda says. “[He wrote] ‘I’m a big fan of [Schalda’s]; Adrian is a friend of mine — he’s a producer out here in Texas.’ For me, my head fucking blew up. I went to my wife at the time, and I said, ‘I think the commentator from the Mavs just wrote me an email.’”

The relationship blossomed into a productive, mutually beneficial one for Schalda and Wade. The former built a career touring with the late Charles Bradley, and performing with the Sha La Das (his father and siblings), as well as working on his own solo material.

The latter set about building one of the most dynamic independent labels in North Texas, helping launch initiatives such as the Truth to Power Project and supporting artists Wasafiri and the late, great Bastards of Soul (who enlisted Schalda's help on Give It Right Back, their third and final album).

When the time came for Schalda, who had started a family and realized his days as a road warrior were drawing to a close, to recapture a fistful of songs he’d written over a 20-year span, Wade was there once again.

“He put all that wonderfulness together,” Schalda says. “When I was like, ‘Hey, man I think I feel this urge to do a couple of songs from the releases I’ve done over 20 years,’ I was gonna do it on [software program] GarageBand and just put it out into the world. And [Wade] was like, ‘Let’s go to Niles — I’ll get us in. I’ll get some video of that too.’”

The result is Live at Niles City Sound, a lovingly mounted, five-song live EP — produced by Wade, and engineered and mixed by Jimi Bowman — with an accompanying 18-minute visual capturing Schalda and his collaborators arrayed on the floor of the intimate Niles City Sound studio in Fort Worth.

“Paul’s musical relationship with Skylark Soul Co. started when he and his father jumped on Bastards of Soul's ‘Try A Little Love’ to help us after Chadwick [Bastards' lead singer Murray] had passed,” Wade said in a statement. “Now a few years later, to have the opportunity to release this powerful yet delicate live performance of some of his solo work spanning the last two decades feels really special for us.”

Over the course of five songs, Schalda is joined at various points by guitarist Max Shrager, bassist Andrew Moss, drummer Ben Borchers, pianist Kevin Howard, violinist and backing vocalist Becki Howard and his father, William Schalda Sr., who contributes vocals and harmonica.
It's a moving collection of work, offered up with minimal varnish — opener “Apparent Now” finds Schalda reaching for a high note, and his voice breaking as he strives — and an abundance of shuffling, sinuous grooves, all anchored by Schalda’s plaintive, powerful singing.

“Any time I can document something like that, especially with my father being there, that I can show my kids when they get older and have it be around is just a massive blessing,” Schalda says. “It really turned out beautiful, and I’m very, very proud of it.”

Even more remarkably, Schalda said the gathered players completed the session in about seven hours, and, apart from practicing a couple isolated sections before recording, had never performed together as a unit. You wouldn’t know it from hearing how beautifully everything coheres around Schalda.

“We didn’t practice the songs,” he says. “We just went for it, and that’s fucking cool. ... I knew the players that I brought in were so talented, that I would be the least talented musician in the room.”

The experience was so inspiring that Schalda, a veteran of performing for and under names other than his own, will be using this project as a means of launching the next phase of his career, recording and releasing music under his given name.

At Wade’s suggestion, Schalda will be self-producing the new material, with an eye toward releasing it — via Skylark Soul Co., naturally — in 2025.

“We’re going into the studio in two weeks,” Schalda says. “It’s super exciting, man; we’ve got some great musicians on it.”

More than once during our conversation, Schalda, still a passionate Mavs fan whose roots are evident in the tangy borough accent gilding his words, professes his love and gratitude for Texas, It was, he admits, an unlikely landing place for him. Still, he’s found a home and life-changing friendships that root him here, even as he’s seeking new horizons and challenges yet to be undertaken.

“I’m very lucky,” Schalda says. “Considering that I gave it up and it’s not my full-time thing, that I have a [9-to-5] job ... it’s amazing. Then I get to have my regular life of raising my daughters and stuff. I’m very grateful. I’ve been very lucky out in Texas. I love it out here.”