Grammy winner Paula Cole chatted with #Powerjournalist Markos Papadatos about celebrating the 30th anniversary of her seminal 1996 album “This Fire.”
Her 2026 plans feature a North American concert tour titled “This Fire: 30,” where she will perform the album in its entirety, as well as “Sonic Memoir.”
On her fall tour, she remarked, “I am excited very much. I am so happy to play music again with my band and see people because I live very hermetically.”
“I’m just a very private person,” she admitted. “So, it’s nice to go back out and see people, and connect with my fans.”
Webster Hall show in New York
Cole will be playing Webster Hall in New York City on Thursday, September 17, 2026, as part of her This Fire: 30 Tour. “Well, New York is the city of my life and my favorite place, so of course I cannot wait. I love it,” she said.
“The touring is going to be really rigorous. I am doing over 50 concerts on this tour. I will be doing a pre-show VIP soundtrack for anybody who wants. I’ve spent many years doing the hugging line and meet-and-greets. This time around, for health reasons, I will only be doing the soundcheck. I’ve got to take care of myself better,” she elaborated.
“In this soundcheck, I will play a couple of songs solo that they won’t hear in the actual show,” she added.
‘Sonic Memoir’
“Sonic Memoir” is a massive archival box, which spans two volumes and 63 tracks. This release compiles rare, raw, and unreleased demos from 1989 to 1998, where she is offering listeners a window into her formative years and her time at the Berklee College of Music.
Regarding the idea for “Sonic Memoir,” Cole said, “I wrote ‘The Replacements & Dinosaur Jr’ for my late friend Mark Hutchins. He was very young (at age 51) when he passed away, and he had kids. Since we dated in the early ‘90s, I still had a lot of his DAT tapes from that time period. I wanted the digitize them so that his kids could be able to hear his music.”
“So, this process started really naturally like that,” she noted. “I was just going through my archives, DAT tapes, ADAT, two-inch tapes, and all these analog dinosaur formats. I was just lucky that I kept them all these years in boxes,” she elaborated.
“Through all my moves and touring, I still had these tapes,” she admitted. “So, I took them to a mastering lab and digitized them and then shared the playlists with his family so his kids could hear music when he was the same age in his 20s. Then, I realized that I had a ton of material there.”
“So, I just put on my kind of engineering hat, my scientist hat, and I stayed really patient. I listened to every single tape that I could find that seemed to have my music on it or Mark’s music on it, and then, I took notes in journals. It felt like a life review,” she acknowledged.
“It was a scientific process, but it was also an emotional process because I was visiting my 20 and 30-year-old self, and it felt like a life review. Also, it coincided with the end of my mom’s life,” she elaborated.
“So, it really was this full circle moment,” she said. “I realized that there were probably over 100 songs on there, and there were rehearsals and there were conversations in those rehearsals. I was really re-visiting myself,” she explained.
“Assembling ‘Sonic Memoir’ was a very cathartic process,” she said. “It was slow and laborious. I didn’t know why I was doing it but I just felt compelled to do it. Then, I found out that there were all these songs (and demos) that I made because back in those days you had to make demos.”
“It was the time of record companies, and they wanted to hear your demos,” she said. “They wanted to hear your new songs. So, it was up to you to figure out how to demo them.”
“You would either go into a studio, or you would set up a studio in your apartment, and so I did that. That’s how I learned how to produce… by setting up gear in my bedroom, basically,” she noted.
Cole continued, “Then, I found demos of all these songs that people knew, which works for ‘This Fire: 30’ and then, there are a bunch of songs that people have never heard. So, ‘Sonic Memoir’ consists of songs people already know in demo format; that’s half of it.”
“Then, the other half of the demos are songs that nobody has heard. So, it’s a love letter to fans. In ‘Sonic Memoir, I’m basically reviewing my life. It’s an auditory book, in a way, comprised of 63 songs because I kept chopping and chopping (from over 100),” she expanded.
Stage of her life
On the title of the current chapter of her life, Cole revealed, “Finding Myself After My Mother Died.” “There is freedom in that but it’s also really sad,” she said.
Cole on working with Peter Gabriel as his background vocalist
On working with Peter Gabriel as his background singer, she said, “That was a lot. It was magnificent, but it made me realize that I didn’t want to be a backup singer anymore. I wanted to be my own artist.”
In 2014, Peter Gabriel was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist. “Chris Martin from Coldplay inducted him. That was a really good speech that Chris Martin had for him,” she recalled.
Paula Cole remembers the late James Van Der Beek
The songstress took some time to remember the late but great James van der Beek of “Dawson’s Creek,” the show where she sang the theme song “I Don’t Want to Wait.” “James was a good man,” she said.
On September 22nd, a tribute and reunion event for “Dawson’s Creek” took place in New York City at Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre.
Titled “Dawson’s Creek Class Reunion,” the event was put together to raise money and awareness for cancer, as well as to honor lead actor James Van Der Beek following his diagnosis of colorectal cancer. At the end, the cast gathered together and they sang Cole’s signature song “I Don’t Want to Wait.”
“I remember when they did the song, where everybody sang it at the end. I couldn’t make it and I felt badly but it was really, really good because the cast sang it instead of me, and it was better that way,” Cole acknowledged.
“I would have loved to have met everybody and met Lin-Manuel Miranda, but I was hard at work. I like my work and I like my life. So, I don’t want to hope out of it too quickly or too easily,” she elaborated.
For Netflix, Cole’s iconic song was fully restored as the official opening theme song for the streaming service. “When Netflix used it, they used my master, which is super awesome of them,” she said.
Simply put, that song is the gift that keeps on giving… not just for Cole, but for “Dawson’s Creek” fans worldwide.
“The fans of ‘Dawson’s Creek’ are really loyal and they loved him, and this song means so much to a lot of people,” she added.
Success
On her definition of the word success, Cole said, “Success means feeling that I like my own work. Looking back on it, I like it well enough. So, that’s good. I am proud of that. I feel like success is staying true to myself.”
“First and foremost, success is having a good personal life; that’s the most important thing. When you are old, no Grammy Award is going to love you. I love my husband and my kids (who are all adults now). I love my family, so that’s a success,” she elaborated.
“It’s nice being a little older and feeling a little more peace and seeing the success of your family members. My children’s success is my success, and I care about people who show up for me,” she said.
“We’re a family and we’re a community, so that’s a success too. I feel that lately that has been growing and that’s a good thing,” she noted.
“Just being healthy in my box is an additional success. I appreciate that. In the music business, too many people die young, so I’m glad to still be here and be healthy,” she added.
Message for her fans
For her fans and supporters, Cole said, “I am grateful for them! This ‘Sonic Memoir’ is really for my fans as much as it is a life review for myself, personally. It’s for the fans because it’s a totally impractical money loser. It has been a two-year project, and I’ve been pulling everything out of the pre-digital era, I’ve been mixing it and putting it all together.”
“It has been such a labor of love,” she admitted. “It’s really for my fans because they know half of the song already, but they will probably enjoy hearing the demos. The demos are the rough ideas being born. Then, they get to hear their quirky, weird songs that came out of my brain when I was in my 20s”
“This album is for the fans,” she underscored. “I just love my fans and it feels like a family reunion when we do our live shows.”
To learn more about Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter and producer Paula Cole and her new album, check out her Facebook page, Instagram, and follow her on X (formerly known as Twitter).
