Slower

“I used to think no one could catch me,” observes Jules Shear on “Until Now,” a track from his first solo album since 2017’s One More Crooked Dance. “But now I’m slower.”

With no worries about radio airplay, streams, sales or even being cool – though he is, effortlessly – Jules Shear has been creatively liberated to pursue his very idiosyncratic muse on Slower, which may describe his current lifestyle, but certainly not his prolific writing pace. The album will be released on November 13, 2020, with the first single, “Smart,” set for digital release on October 16 via Funzalo Records.

“What else is there to do?,” muses the man who famously wrote Cyndi Lauper’s “All Through the Night,” the Bangles’ “If She Knew What She Wants,” and Alison Moyet’s “Whispering Your Name,” then made his name performing with the Funky Kings, Jules and the Polar Bears, the Reckless Sleepers and as a solo artist. “At this point, I’m just going to keep doing it in the way I feel like doing it. It felt natural to me, so I just kept going.”

Slower finds Jules trying to enjoy the present moment between past and future, yesterday and tomorrow, living and dying, “Hell and Hello,” whether he’s touting the joys of eating “Sugar All Day” (which begins with one scratchy guitar chord and includes a warm, plaintive harp solo from guest and fellow Woodstock denizen John Sebastian), pondering the onset of autumn in “Feels Like Fall,” or singing the praises of companionship in “It Came Down From Heaven,” “It’s Love,” and “Call It Love.”

Make today like tomorrow for a little while,” Shear croons over the jazzy piano of the new standard of the same name, “Today Like Tomorrow,” then “I don’t know what time it is now/And I don’t know what time it was,”in “Pretty Please,” trying as best as a self-conscious guy like Jules can to be in the moment, which he addresses with the philosophical, tongue-in-cheeky “Smart.”

Much in the vein of his previous effort, One More Crooked Dance, Slower is yet another homegrown effort, again recorded at producer Lee Danziger’s home studio in Woodstock, a 10-minute ride from Shear’s home. The end result works as a whole, a throwback to the Great American Songbook and Tin Pan Alley, late-night Sinatra torch ballads for swinging lovers, as well as Leonard Cohen/Dylan-esque folk dirges, laced with a none-too-self-serious gravitas and a whiff of imminent mortality.

“These songs all started with words, no music, and then I try to figure out what kind of song they sound like,” says Shear about making the new album. “I’ll take it from there and start messing with it, filling in the gaps with melody.”

Slower is a personal album, offering an inadvertent glimpse into the fertile mind of Jules Shear.“You’re supposed to be angry and sad/Is that why people love your songs?” in “Between Hell and Hello,” a tiny glimpse inside the dark side of domesticity.

These days, Shear’s songwriting process is similar to a jigsaw puzzle, juggling lyrics until they click into place, then creating music to “fill in the gaps.” An old-school auteur in an age of multi-writer songs, Jules has tried to collaborate with others, but finds “I don’t think it ever turns out too good.”

A writer of some of the greatest love songs in pop music, Shear continues to explore a hard-won contentment. “I’m not embarrassed to write like that,” insists Jules, “I’m fine with it.” One of the album’s set pieces, “Feels Like Fall,” offers the perspective of someone much closer to the end of life than the beginning. “I’m just trying to be in the present,” he says realizing you can’t eat “Sugar All Day,” but must accept that even love comes with its conflicts. In the end, the process of songwriting proves its own reward.

“I feel like I have to keep writing songs; I don’t know why or what makes me do it, but the fact that I can do it and I like them a lot when I’m done with them, I just feel like I should not ask many questions and just forge ahead.”

Slower is Jules Shear unfettered, transparent and raw, forging ahead as only he can, with lyrics that engage the mind and melodies that touch the heart, which he’s been doing since his very first solo album, 1983’s Watch Dog, produced by Todd Rundgren, the first time Jules remembers being in Woodstock, now his permanent residence. That record included both Jules’ original versions of “All Through the Night” and “Whispering Your Name,” which became hits for Cyndi Lauper and Alison Moyet, respectively.

“I hope people discover these new songs and cover them,” says Jules. “That’s a really nice way to make a living.”


Jules Mark Shear (born March 7, 1952) is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He wrote the Cyndi Lauper hit single “All Through the Night” and The Bangles’ hit “If She Knew What She Wants”, and charted a hit as a performer with “Steady” in 1985.

Jules Shear has recorded several albums of highly accessible, hit-worthy material, and as a testament to his abilities, he’s penned hits for others, including “All Through the Night” for Cyndi Lauper and “If She Knew What She Wants” for the Bangles. Born in Pittsburgh, Shear began writing songs as a teenager. He relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-’70s, joining his first band, a typically laid-back combo called the Funky Kings. The band released one album for Arista in 1976. While “Slow Dancing” from the album (written by Jack Tempchin) would later be a hit for Johnny Rivers, the three Shear songs were clearly the highlights of the album. Shear left the following year to form his own group, Jules & the Polar Bears, who released two critically acclaimed, though commercially overlooked, albums for Columbia. When a third album was rejected by the label, Shear forged on as a solo artist.

Big Boss Sounds Signing on to EMI-America, he released two solo albums, 1983’s Watch Dog and 1985’s Eternal Return; both received critical praise but few sales. Once again, he was dropped by his label and unable to secure another deal. Shear then formed the Reckless Sleepers with the Cars’ Elliot Easton. In 1988, without Easton, the Reckless Sleepers released their sole album for IRS, Big Boss Sounds; it failed to make much impact, though “If We Never Meet Again” from the album was later covered by Roger McGuinn. In contrast to the Reckless Sleepers’ hard rock tendencies, Shear teamed up with the Church’s Marty Willson-Piper for an all-acoustic, Dylanesque album, The Third Party, in 1989. The album ultimately led to a spot on MTV, where he hosted the first 13 episodes of Unplugged — he left when the show switched to the single-artist format. Shear followed with two critically acclaimed, more or less pop-oriented albums — 1992’s The Great Puzzle and 1994’s Healing Bones — two of his finest albums to date.

Between Us In 1998, he released Between Us, an album of duets for High Street Records. Shear moved to Rounder Records subsidiary Zoe Records for his April 2000 release, Allow Me, and to Valley in 2004 for Sayin’ Hello to the Folks. Dreams Don’t Count was released on the Mad Dragon label in 2006, followed by More, billed to Jules Mark Shear rather than Jules Shear, on Funzalo Records in 2008. He was back to identifying himself as Jules Shear on the independently released 2013 album Longer to Get to Yesterday. In 2017, Shear delivered One More Crooked Dance, which included a guest appearance by Lovin’ Spoonful founder John Sebastian on harmonica.

 


 About ‘One More Crooked Dance’

Jules Shear isn’t being cagy when he insists he doesn’t know what the songs on his 13th studio album, One More Crooked Dance (Funzalo Records) – and first since 2013’s Longer to Get to Yesterday – are about. He really doesn’t, at least without being able to consult a lyric sheet, which is nowhere in sight at the moment. With nary a guitar, bass or drum in earshot, Shear didn’t have to wander far from his longtime Woodstock, N.Y., home, corralling locals Pepe (piano), touring partner Molly Farley (vocals) and the legendary John Sebastian (harp) at his neighborhood health food store and somehow cajoling them to join him at his friend’s nearby home studio.

Indeed, Shear will admit One More Crooked Dance is not a young man’s album, but from someone who has lasted over two decades (“I honestly don’t know how long we’ve been together,” he says) with wife and creative partner Pal Shazar, and is now examining that relationship in terms of his own mortality. Of course, Shear will only nod and offer, “I just write ‘em. And let them speak for themselves. And people will think what they wanna think.”

With just piano, vocals and the occasional harmonica interspersed, the 13 personal songs on One More Crooked Dance — its title a sly, Leonard Cohen play on man’s favorite sport — evoke the likes of one-time Woodstock resident Dylan (whose former house Jules can see out his window) Randy Newman, Brian Wilson, Elton John and Neil Young. The spare instrumentation, the effortless harmonies and Shear’s world-weary vocals give the record a gravitas deserving of his 40-plus years in the music business, starting with the Funky Kings (a precursor to the country-rock singer/songwriter sound), moving on to Jules and the Polar Bears and then an impressive solo career, with hits like Cyndi Lauper’s “All Through the Night,” The Bangles “If She Knew What She Wants” and his own “Steady,” a co-write with Lauper. Not to mention catalog mainstays such as Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers’ “If We Never Meet Again”), Til Tuesday’s “[I Believed You Were] Lucky” and Alison Moyer’s Top 20 U.K. hit, “Whispering Your Name.” And he was the host (and co-creator) of the influential MTV Unplugged.

It’s safe to say, in his long and varied career, Jules Shear has never put out an album without guitar, bass and drums, so this is certainly a first, but when he’s asked about his method, he shrugs, “It was something we tried, and it seemed to be working out good,” he said about the stark, minimalist approach. “So we just kept going.”

The plainspoken approach covers the conundrum of maintaining passion while feeling safe, examining the domestic “Rules of the Game,” the

things we do to self-medicate (“Painkiller”), “Tangled Up In Blue” love songs (“Be With You” the Elton John gospel plaint of “Looking for Me”), the war of the sexes (“The Hunter and the Hunted”) and the closing one-two punch of the exquisite Beach Boys harmonies in “When It’s Right” and the harp/piano interwoven through “Wrong Again,” the ultimate rejoinder, “You think to me/It’s nothing personal/And you’re wrong again.”

Jules Shear may be coy about lyrics like “The only way you get old is from wishing/Never wishing is a waste of time” (“This Flame”) or tease the primal mind-body dualism of “Half- Hearted Head,” but don’t believe him if he tries to tell you One More Crooked Dance isn’t personal. Or that he forgot what the songs mean. Or the dog ate his lyric sheet. Or whatever story he’s trying to sell you.

Is there any resolution to the yin-yang of human existence? Can we achieve any sort of inner peace and outer satisfaction? Is it all about just One More Crooked Dance?

“Whoa, what’s the question again?” Shear deadpans. “When people hear these songs, they’re not looking for answers to their problems, but listening to someone else who is dealing with it, too. And that’s all it should be, I think.”

One more question. What’s your secret to long-term happiness?

“That’s none of your business,” he guffaws. “Read between the lines.”

One More Crooked Dance is as good a place to start as any.