Foundations Part 1 | Early Life of Paul Wilbur | Episode 01

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Welcome to the Foundations podcast. Wow, this is exciting. This is our first one in a very long series. And I'm, I'm pretty pumped about this. Finally, we get to do Father, Son, Generations to Generations, L'Dor v Dor. And let's, yeah, let's get this thing cooking.

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So we're going to get to know you a little bit. We want to get to know Paul, Wilbur, the man, the myth, the legend. We want to get a little bit into you as a child. I'm sure you were a great blessing.

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I was.

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And then we'll get into also the ministry elements and why are we having this. But being on a new platform, I think it's always important so people can get to know a little bit about who we are, get to know Paul and Nathan.

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Good idea.

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And you've been in ministry. How many years?

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Well, let's see. I got born again, March 26, 1977. And that day, I picked up my guitar and wrote my first worship song. Very messianic called Thank You, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, for your sweet, sweet love.

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That's because a Baptist from West Texas shared the gospel with me. And I was, I was so taken by him as a person.

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I, I didn't really know him. I heard him.

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I don't know how far we want to go into my testimony. It could take the next 10 podcasts, but suffice it to say right now that I came to know the Lord through the testimony of a southern Pentecostal Baptist from Odessa, Texas, and Jerry Williams, he's still ministering, lives down in Houston, Texas.

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But yeah, I heard the gospel accepted it. And then it just so happened that he was also a singer with a guitar. And, and I was very intrigued. So, and you started a group called harvest.

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And I started a group like this next week, wow, added a guy that I was going to graduate school with. I just met him at grad school, Ed Carr, six foot seven, I think Ed is six, six, maybe six, six piano major at Indiana University.

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We met at the school. I'm not sure if I introduced him to Jerry, or somehow, but Jerry also led him to the Lord the same week.

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And so Jerry and I are in a practice room at Indiana University playing guitar and singing. And it was, can I use the word magical. Yeah. Okay, good.

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Well, crowd hasn't ambushed every term yet. So it was amazing. And right in the middle, Jerry stopped playing and he said, he said, there's another guy I want to bring in.

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And just see what it sounds like. And I said, no, man, this sounds so good. We're Simon and Garfunkel 2.0, you know, Simon and Garfunkel was a two guy group.

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In the 70s. Like a bridge over troubled waters. Yeah, Paul Simon Jewish art Garfunkel. I don't think was Jewish.

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They've done some remakes of their music for some in our crowd today, by popular rock groups and so forth that have brought it back.

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Probably people too much information they won't get into. But you went from there. And then we'll get through your journey.

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But you've been to over 80 nations. How many albums have you recorded with integrity? That's hard, because, you know, artist quote unquote artist records.

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I would have to stop and count. I think that's eight or 10. Then there's compilations that they did of the most popular. Yeah, then we went back and did them all in Spanish to in Portuguese.

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Then there was two from Harvest Years, two from Israel's Hope Years, which we jumped right over.

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We'll get into that too. Okay. All right. Good. Getting to know. That's great. But you've had a long, wonderful career that's just going to continue getting better.

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That's right. But Shalom Jerusalem was probably the big album that brought you into the view of the nations. Then, yeah, there was Holy Fire, not as well known, but I thought was a great album.

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I helped pick some of the songs you did on there. Yeah. And then Jerusalem Arise. I don't know if it really eclipsed Shalom Jerusalem, but that album has impacted so many people.

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And then also The Watchmen with The Worship Medley and just I think the message from that album has made a big impact in the nations.

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And, you know, a lot of the other songs that were in your albums, Days of Elijah, Praise Out On I, you recorded some of those, not all of them, but you had an impact on those that people heard.

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And we always have this different sound, which is what I really like. When you worship and lead it, there's something about it that just sounds a little different.

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It's not just a recording sitting in the studio, but there was always this live expression and a roar from the people. Sometimes there was a cat, I remember.

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When the albums were getting edited, you could hear someone go, wow! We called it the cat effect.

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A real cat, but a, yes. A worshiper. But you've been all over the world and amazing stories and I want to be able to get to all those.

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But growing up as Paul Wilbur in Lowell, Massachusetts, what was that like?

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Well, you know all the details. How do you know so many of the details?

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I've heard the stories.

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You've heard stories. Well, you've lived the stories, actually.

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This is so much fun to get to do this together because you had a role to play in this whole thing, obviously, right from the very beginning, along with your mother.

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And mommy and I just celebrated, as you know, 45 years of marriage.

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And that was just last week or the week before.

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Last of April. I do remember the date, but just in case someone's looking to rip off our information, I don't give all the specifics.

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So, yeah, well, New England, back in the 50s, we didn't stay long in one city.

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My mom and dad, your mom, your grandpa and grandma were born in Lowell, Massachusetts.

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Their parents, my grandparents, born in New York, Brooklyn, New York, their parents came from Russia.

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So we have this Jewish side from my dad. And then what we thought to be non Jewish side from my mom, Charlotte, but we heard from a Orthodox rabbi couple years ago that her maiden name.

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And actually, I don't even know why he wrote to me, but but he did. And said, did you know that your mother's maiden name, Lorman, is a German Jewish name. And it means like court jester wants to enjoys making people laugh.

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Well, I inherited part of that, I guess.

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You did. And it helps if you'll laugh a few times while we're speaking helps my reputation.

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So we don't know. And then when we were in Auschwitz two years ago, remember doing the feast, you were there. Yeah, doing the feast of porum. Yeah, we had what 70 pastors and their wives, if I'm remembering, approximately from 14 nations, those 14 nations.

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Yeah, 70 or 72 pastors and their wives. And we remembered porum right there as we're walking around Auschwitz. This was the day before the COVID shutdown. Right. Yeah, it was a wild weekend. It was wild.

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We barely got back to the United States. Yeah. But as usual, I'm on another bunny trail, right? Yeah, but I think the point what you're getting to is we went to that gigantic book.

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And we were looking up our names just to see and how many Mormons had gone through Auschwitz, right, was astounding. We had no idea. And of course, you know, Jacobson from my grandfather's side was and was another thing and we'll get into more about my grandfather because I also want to honor him and his duty and all this but

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Yeah, people can't see the wall that I've built with his cap from his service in World War Two and a picture of him and his crew in front of a B 17 and his dog tag.

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And you had some made actually some of his ribbons and metals and

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Yeah, it's good to honor the memory. And but growing up, did you always have this? Did you grow up with a guitar? Did it just be stuck to yourself? Yeah, you can see him behind me. If you if you're watching the video, I've got a wall of guitars.

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And so, Papa, my dad put a cheap Sears and Robot guitar in my hands at the age of nine. He wanted to be a musician played violin very well. He took out his violin and taught me my gave me my first guitar lesson on violin.

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Wow. And and just taught me a C scale. Do we me was a Latino and then said, good luck. He eventually got me a teacher, a very Italian.

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Oh, gosh, I can't remember his name right now. But but he spoke with a very thick Italian American English accent. Apollo. That's a good. And I mean, he was like a character. But I did get to try lessons. But that thing has stuck with me ever since.

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And you primarily stuck with a music background, right? I mean, throughout school, you're always a part of playing guitar, practicing. You went to college for that. You studied over in Italy. Some people might be interested to know you were an exchange student overseas.

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Yeah, well, the guitar was both a blessing and a cursing as as a young person.

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Capable and then willing to get up in front of a class in fifth grade or sixth grade or seventh grade with a guitar and and sing a song. You know, the cool kids. That's not cool. The the teachers and, you know, the teachers pets.

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Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. So in seventh grade. For some reason, I was asked to sing I'll never forget it at the eighth grade sock hop. Now this is every month on a given Friday, after school was over.

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This is back in Pompton Plains, New Jersey. The eighth grade class sponsored a dance called a sock hop. So we're in the gym. You had to take off your shoes. And there was music playing on the the PA system.

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And we all got to seventh graders and eighth graders and we could dance. And I think it went on for an hour or something. Teachers chaperoned and and all. But, you know, kind of the innocence of the 50s, 60s. Yeah, just before the Beatles hit.

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And then innocence goes away. And so for some reason, I'm in seventh grade, the eighth graders asked, would you sing a song? I had just gotten a new electric guitar. Oh, I was very excited.

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I said, yes, for some stupid reason. They put me behind the curtain, open the curtains. And there I'm singing, oh, when the cotton balls get rotten, you can't pick very much cotton. And then old cotton fields back home. Believe it or not, that was a popular song on rock and roll.

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Really? I never heard that. And I listened to the, to the what they call the oldies. Yeah. Today that's a different. This was the transition from folk rock.

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To rock and roll. Okay. And there was a show back then on TV called Hoot Nanny. And the Smothers Brothers before they were stand up comedy.

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They were a guitar and upright bass doing folk music. Okay. Kingston trio. Yeah. Many, many others. That was pre John Denver, but he would have been there too.

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Anyway, so because I did that, the eighth graders gave me the nickname, the singing monkey. Oh, no. Yeah, that's not a singing. You don't want that kind of hold on one minute.

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Someone's calling in. The phones are lighting up. That's usually what happens. Yeah.

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Are we editing now? We're just going to keep going. Okay, keep going. We're good. Okay, so that that's why I say, and then I'd get invited to sing at the strawberry festival in town, you know, strawberry patches, everybody comes and picks their own strawberries.

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And here's Paul Wilbur singing cotton balls and whatever. Michael rode the boat ashore. And if I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the Peter Paul and Mary stuff. They were another Hoot Nanny.

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So that's probably way too much information. But that's your childhood memory of music. It was your passion. Yeah.

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So I think when we'll stop here, and then we'll do another part where we start getting into a little more pre college. And then we'll get to high school next.

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Well, we'll eventually get to Italy, and then maybe the nations. Yeah. But I think it's good because normally, when we're sharing, you don't get this opportunity to really get into kind of what journey you've been on all this time and people will really enjoy hearing that.

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We will be back with another episode from foundations learning about Paul. Oh, man. How exciting. Don't miss it.