Start Listening To: Tall Heights
Tim and Paul walk us through life’s rough paths, staying ever-inspired.
Tall Heights has always been about two individuals coming together to create something beautiful out of grief, dread and joy. Joining forces, Paul and Tim prove that you can still stick to your guns and go through self-exploration with someone by your side. As an effect of that process and infatuated with songwriting, they’ve produced two albums and just gave birthed to a third one, ‘Juniors’. Today, they challenge us to look at the world through the eyes of a child and accept the change as a constant.
Can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?
My name is Paul, my bandmate is Tim, and we’re from a little town in Massachusetts called Sturbridge. Tall Heights has always been the story of two people pursuing self-exploration through songwriting. We grew up together, we started writing together long ago and we’ve never stopped. It’s a little crazy.
How did it all start?
Tim and I started street performing in Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston.
Those were training grounds for us, a place to try out our original music on a challenging, mobile audience. It made us better, it made us tougher and it made us believe in the power of a great song.
If you were to describe your sound to someone who’d never heard you before, what would you say?
I would describe my relationship with Tim, our journey together, because that’s as much a part of our sound as any note. And I think it’s a huge part of what draws people to listen to Tall Heights - two distinct individuals ringing their emotions, together, into song.
Can you tell us more about the themes behind this album?
The years since our last release have been a rollercoaster - the highest highs and the lowest lows. We became fathers, we said goodbye to our grandparents, we endured multiple family health crises, we moved out of the home we shared together with our families for six years, and all of this went down around the onset of the pandemic. We holed up in a little room of our house for our final months together, and we processed all of those major life events into music. We didn't just write the songs, we lived them in real-time. And I like to think of the record as a living, breathing time capsule of that year in that house - two couples, a baby, two more babies in utero, a feuding dog and cat, and a constant storm of emotion.
It’s been a few years since your last album, who are Tall Heights in the most updated, Juniors’ version?
We’re dads, haha. And we’re committing to this idea that the rollercoaster we’ve been on has no end, that we can’t control it, but that we can try to view our world with humble, beginner's eyes. We can accept that it will constantly change, and strive to find beauty along the way. That’s Juniors.
What inspires your music?
All of the beauty and the dread and the joy and the grief.
What advice would you give for anyone trying to achieve a similar sound to your band?
Err, well I reject that as a goal. But I would say practice making music, open up your subconscious, and try really hard to love yourself.
If your music were a film or TV show which would it be?
Short film.
Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s important to you?
David Gray, White Ladder. It’s honest, it’s raw but shiny. And it still makes me want to create music.
What do you hate right now?
Polarization.
What do you love right now?
Connection.
What comes next in the Tall Heights’ story?
We’re hitting the road in a month to share the Juniors story!
Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
As songwriters, our hope is that in laying our emotions bare we are able to stir something within our audience, shift something in their own experience of life. And we feel really lucky to call that our work, to inspire emotional release.
thanks for listening!
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