How Paul Spring Turned a Bach Suite and a Minnesota Bar Into a Song

The Holy Hive songwriter on two years of Tuesday-night Bach, writing what a window frames, and why six names are on a record he wrote alone.

Paul Spring put out Barnstorm on Bombadil in August 2026: twelve songs recorded live in a living room in Oranmore, County Galway, with four local trad and contemporary musicians.

Photo: Niamh O'Callaghan.

If you know him already, it is probably as the falsetto in Holy Hive, the Brooklyn folk-soul band he formed with drummer Homer Steinweiss. Under his own name he has canoed 1,200 miles down the Mississippi to tour one record and 150 miles down the Hudson to tour another, made an album of original songs in Classical Latin, and recorded J.S. Bach: Twelve String Transcriptions (2021). Track eight on that record is the Minuet from Bach's French Suite No. 3 in B minor. Hold onto that.

This is the second in a series of conversations with songwriters about how a song actually gets made. Not gear, not the industry. The part where you have a scrap and no song, and you have to do something about it.

Paul answered by email while on tour. These are his own words, edited for length and order.

The question shows up a song or two in

Usually I write a song or two before I start to find a theme or question. I love the album format, because it lends itself to exploring musical and lyrical ideas over multiple songs. You can spend a year letting things grow. Each song informs or inspires the next.

Some albums begin with conceptual questions, like "where does my anger come from?" Some start with more musical questions, like "what if I made a harpsichord album on a 12-string guitar?"

Usually by song 12 I've either answered the question or given up and settled.

"Barnstorm," twelve years from first hearing to finished song

The title track "Barnstorm" technically took 12 years to figure out.

It began in Minneapolis in 2015, when I heard my neighbor play Bach's French Suite in B minor on piano. I had never heard it before, and thought it was so tough and cool. I found and grew attached to many different recordings of it over the coming years. In 2020 I began to figure it out on guitar, but could only play it very slowly.

Between 2022 and 2024 I had a weekly residency playing Bach in Manhattan, at a Belgian whisper bar near Cooper Union called the Burp Castle. I really created the residency for myself. I walked into the bar and asked the bartender, Hank, if I could set up and play Bach in the corner. A friend had told me Hank liked to listen to Bach. I played for free, and eventually for a couple of beers.

That self-imposed gig forced me to practice and get over a bad case of stage fright. I played an hour of difficult Bach every Tuesday, and had to be completely focused. By the end of the two years I could play most pieces uptempo. They became ingrained in muscle memory.

One night I was playing the French Suite and my thoughts kept straying to my hometown bar in St. Joseph, Minnesota: Sal's Bar and Grill. It has $5 big mugs on Wednesdays, a great cheeseburger, and a big checkered dance floor. On weekends at bar close, last call, everyone gathers in a circle and sings "Piano Man" with their pants down.

I turned those thoughts into lyrics and wrote the song.

Barnstorm cover art by Sophia Heymans.

Using the guitar as a sampler

I wrote the songs for Barnstorm on my own, alone in New York. The lyrics and melodies took a lot of time and fine-tuning. It would have been tough to co-write any of them.

Half the guitar parts are my own and half are adapted from Bach, Paganini and Handel. So I guess they were collaborators in a way, but I was more using my guitar as a sampler to chop and screw their pieces.

Why six names are on the credits anyway

I did list six songwriters, and that is more for the purpose of giving publishing equity to the arrangers and contributors.

The four musicians who played on the record made their own parts and musical arrangements, and the engineer had great suggestions for the music throughout. If a group of people in a room make a song better, I believe those musicians deserve a share of the songwriting royalties and credits.

Photo: Niamh O'Callaghan.

The music business is tough and there isn't much money to go around, especially when you're independent and self-funded. If by some miracle any money is ever made off these recordings, I'd like these talented musicians to have some of that.

Ninety minutes on a bench

On this album, "Gravitron" was written in about 90 minutes on a bench in Kinvara, County Galway. I saw a clip from that Ralph Macchio movie Crossroads and got inspired by the Paganini melody. It was the last song I wrote for the album, the night before we went into the studio.

The hardest was "Barnstorm," just because it took years to learn the piece.

When a song stalls, look out the window

Sit at a window, look at the world outside that it frames, and write about what I see in that rectangle. It's an exercise my mom has her writing students do, to practice point of view and grounding in setting. It has always worked to help me write a song.

Letting them go

I let go of a lot of songs. It feels good to do that. Let it just be a release of thought and emotion.

Some come back, though.

Five minutes a day

Keep daily contact with your instrument. Pick it up for at least five minutes a day if you can, even if you've had a long day at work.

Who should more people be listening to?

The Irish musicians I made this record with all have great projects of their own.

Macdara Ó Faoláin is a very accomplished bouzouki and fiddle player as well as a singer. Ben Duffy, the drummer, has a lovely soul band called The Leon Stax Equation. Aidan Duffy is a skilled multi-instrumentalist and producer, and I love his recent solo record. Sam Wright plays bass in a lot of bands, including Housecats and Leon Stax. Tadhg Ó Raghallaigh has no recordings, but if you go to Ireland you may be lucky enough to catch him playing the pipes in a session somewhere. He's a badass.

And listen to any mix by Jens Jungkurth. He has the best ears and taste. I especially love his engineering and mixes on the El Michels Affair record Adult Themes.

Paul Spring's Barnstorm is out now on Bombadil. More at paulspringmusic.com.