Paul Schalda
Paul Schalda is an artist without artifice. On his debut solo album, Lately, the Texas transplant troubadour channels the human experience with a transparent, poetic purity. With instinctive melodies and a singularly visceral voice, Schalda’s folk-flecked indie soul is at once vulnerable, personal, and hugely relatable. Lately is released by Skylark Soul Co. on November 7, 2025.
“The goal was to mix the energy of my East Coast family with my new Texas family,” said Schalda, who moved from his native Staten Island to Dallas eight years ago. “It’s an ode to the human experience … of leaving all my roots behind and navigating new terrain.”
For Schalda, music is an innate family trait. His dad, a member of 1960s vocal group The Montereys, would teach his young sons Beach Boys and Beatles harmonies on long car rides. Paul got his start singing in a church choir, later joining his older brother’s hardcore band at age 13. To this day he has a doo-wop band with his father and siblings, The Sha La Das. “It was just kind of in me,” he mulled. “I grew up doing it, it was always there, and I’ve always loved it.”
Almost inevitably, a music career unfurled. Schalda explored folk-pop with Pablo, whose 2006 Half The Time was declared a Top 10 album of the year by KEXP, and rustic Americana with Paul & the Tall Trees, whose 2016 Our Love In The Light earned the same accolade from KCRW. He was a longtime member of Charles Bradley’s touring band, also writing songs for the late soul legend, and later formed indie pop project Las Los with a former Bradley bandmate.
But in 2017, Schalda left Bradley and moved to Texas to devote himself to imminent parenthood. Friends gave the lifelong Staten Islander two weeks max in the Lone Star State, but he knuckled down to a 9-to-5, put his guitar in a corner, and passionately embraced fatherhood (“the greatest thing in the world”).
When divorce and shared custody left him with time on his hands, Schalda returned to songwriting as his go-to therapy. The songs that would ultimately become Lately were subconsciously steeped in his relocation, separation, and boundless love for his kids. Indeed, Lately is a record permeated with love in all its incarnations: romantic, familial, parental, brotherly, and musical.
A fortuitous chain of events connected Schalda, a huge basketball fan, with renowned Texan multihyphenate Jeff “Skin” Wade: Dallas Mavericks announcer and (among many other things) co-founder of the Skylark Soul Co. label. A fixture on the North Texas music scene and a passionate fan of what he terms the “criminally under-listened to” Tall Trees and Las Los, Wade energized Schalda’s reinvention as a solo artist, introducing him to some of the best talent in town and offering to release his music through Skylark.
“Paul offers you a chance to connect to something that is beautiful with each and every song,” Wade explained. “He does not write songs just to write songs. He writes songs because he wants to convey a certain idea combined with a beautiful melody. There’s no artifice to what he does.”
The first fruit of this relationship was 2024’s exquisitely intimate Live at Niles City Sound EP and accompanying video, produced by Wade and recorded at Fort Worth’s legendary Niles City Sound studio, also known as the birthplace of Leon Bridges’ breakout debut album, Coming Home.
The 5-song collection captures Schalda and collaborators including his dad, guitarist Max Shrager, bassist Andrew Moss, drummer Ben Borchers, pianist Kevin Howard, and violinist/vocalist Becki Howard. Almost hypnotically at ease together, they embroider plaintive songs written over the course of 20 years with tasteful restraint and telepathic chemistry.
Recorded live to ¼-inch tape just a few months later at Niles City Sound, following only a single day of rehearsal, Lately carries forward that rare spirit, channeling it into a set of more recent Schalda compositions. The effect is staggeringly gorgeous and uncommonly real. Co-produced by Wade and Houston guitarist/musical director Robert Ellis, the Lately band combined New York and Texas talents including Black Pumas guitarist Adrian Quesada, drummer Rich Terrana and Preet Patel (from NY band the Frightnrs), Brooklyn’s Victor Axelrod (Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings) on keys, and returning Dallas luminaries Kevin and Becki Howard.
“They created a canvas that perfectly magnified the vision of each and every song,” said Schalda. “It’s magic: creating a forever living thing – a record.”
Album opener “Alarmist” was the first song Schalda wrote for what would become Lately and sets the tone for the record: an ode to the human experience with a vastness and sonic depth apt to its subdued lyrical angst. Lead single “Anything For Your Love” is subtly exotic, slightly sepia-toned yacht rock. The one Lately track produced by Quesada, it’s a statement of complete devotion with universally relatable lyrics and earworm melodies.
"Can You See Yourself With Me?” is a we’ve-all-be-there sing-along mantra of hope that a crush feels the same way about you. Lately’s title track is also its spiritual anchor, Schalda’s voice entrancingly dancing with Becki Howard’s – a magic they revisit on “About the Robots.”
It’s entirely in character that Schalda’s favorite song on the album is closer “Rollercoaster,” a memory of a trip to Santa Monica with his young daughters, who also sing on the track alongside their dad and grandpa.
“We hung out on the boardwalk for three days, and did nothing but lounge at the beach, go on rides, eat junk food and stay up late,” Schalda recalled, palpably glowing at the memory. “I came home and was inspired to write that song … and I want them to sing on songs with me.”
A reluctant yet mesmerizing frontman, Schalda is supporting Lately with shows across Texas and on both coasts, sometimes alone, sometimes as a duo or with various permutations of the Lately studio band. His live sets also feature songs from his earlier incarnations and, when possible, his Pops alongside him on stage.
“I’d like listeners to get a sense of hope for humanity,” Schalda concluded. “That moment when sonic vibration hits you, you uncontrollably get goosebumps. It’s rare. It’s real. I want that connection.”