Paul & Brian at it again

4-27-26 — Reuniting Paul Jensen with Brian Grandbouche / Returning to the Studio

at Taylor Riley's Fusion Audio Solutions recording studio — Blog Entry for pauljensenarts.com

1975 — The First Door Opens

At fifteen—barely two years into his relationship with the guitar—Paul Jensen stepped into a recording studio for the first time in Grand Junction, Colorado, a place locals called Shale City. What began as a boy’s quiet devotion to melody and verse had already revealed itself as something more: an instinct for marrying poetry with sound.

It was his father, Lee, who recognized that instinct early, guiding his son on the acoustic guitar.

“It felt like a kind of enchantment,” Paul recalls. “My father saw something in me and refused to let it sit idle. When he heard about a new studio across town, he didn’t hesitate—he asked my oldest sister, Linda, fifteen years my senior, to book time so I could record the songs I’d been writing.”

The studio itself was no small thing for its time—a 16-track setup, rare and sophisticated in the mid-1970s. It was run by Bill Yorty, son of Samuel W. Yorty, then serving as Mayor of Los Angeles. For a teenager just beginning to find his voice, it may as well have been a cathedral.

1977–1980 — The River, The Cabin, The Firelight

In the years that followed, Paul’s creative world narrowed—and deepened.

“I was writing and recording songs in a small loft cabin set on five acres along the Colorado River,” he says. “It was a stripped-down existence—no electricity, no plumbing, no running water. Just the essentials: two ornate kerosene lamps, a scatter of candles, a couch, and a bed tucked into a tiny loft under heavy quilts.”

The cabin itself was an act of devotion, built alongside his father in the bicentennial year of 1976. Each beam carried across a narrow footbridge over cattail-lined wetlands, each nail driven with the quiet understanding that something lasting was being made.

“I was the labor,” Paul says, “the young back hauling lumber. But my father—he built the path.”

Inside, a small wood stove held back the cold. Outside, a firepit ringed in stone gathered warmth and thought alike. Fallen cottonwood logs became seats, and the night sky—uninterrupted—became both witness and collaborator.

“I’ve often thought of it as a ‘Thoreau experience,’ though I hadn’t yet read Walden. It was instinctive—a life pared down to what mattered.”

From that place came songs—unpolished, searching, and sincere. Songs of mountains and rivers, of hawks tracing invisible currents overhead, of trees rooted in silence—and, inevitably, songs of love.

“I didn’t know love yet,” he admits. “Not in any real sense. But I believed in it. That belief was enough to begin.”

Those early recordings, he notes, were little more than demos. Yet they carried weight—lessons in process, patience, and the quiet discipline of creation. By his senior year of high school, that discipline had earned recognition: a National Scholastic Competition Award for his song Mountain Boy. It was his Mass Media teacher, Linda Wagman Cates—also the wife of his basketball coach, Bob Cates—who encouraged him to submit.

After graduation, the path widened once more.

Drawing from the body of work he had written by the river, Paul began recording his first full album, Let Your Love Shine. It was here that another key figure stepped in—his friend Brian Grandbouche.

“Brian was instrumental,” Paul says. “A gifted musician and songwriter, he introduced me to Joe Webber, who became my first official record producer. He also brought in the bandmates who helped shape the sound. What had begun as something solitary—me, a guitar, and a river—was becoming something shared.”

Returning — The Circle Closes

Now, nearly five decades later, the circle closes.

Paul returns to the studio—once again alongside Brian—joined by engineer and studio owner Taylor Riley of Fusion Audio Solutions, and Grammy Award-winning engineer and producer Corin Nelsen of Oxford, Michigan, home of SynchroSonic Productions. It is here, in this renewed creative space, that the early echoes still linger—waiting to be heard again.

There is, as of now, no confirmed release date for the Jensen/Grandbouche project, fittingly titled “Rekindle.” And yet, the name alone suggests what is underway: not simply a recording, but a reawakening.

The embers of those early songs—born along the Colorado River and shaped in the recording sessions of late-1970s Grand Junction—are being brought back to life. Drawing from converted Ampex 2” master reels, Jensen and Grandbouche, now in their mid- to late sixties, are stepping into a rare creative moment: the chance to sing and play alongside their younger selves.

The project will include a renewed rendition of Jensen’s 1980 debut, “Let Your Love Shine,” along with additional, more recent compositions. It will also feature remixed and remastered recordings from the original sessions—musical artifacts captured 46 years ago at Bill Yorty’s ‘Real to Reel’ recording studio.

Time, it seems, has not closed the door. It has simply waited.

And now, the music begins again.