Meet Stefan Paul of Fort Pierce, FL

Today we’d like to introduce you to Stefan Paul.

Hi Stefan, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I guess I was pretty obsessed with music from an early age. I would play along to the radio beating on cardboard boxes as drums and used small bamboo sticks as makeshift drumsticks. I guess at some point I realized I don’t want to just be a consumer, I want to participate in making the music.
Then a friend of mine started playing guitar, but he lived in a different state. He told me since he plays guitar I should get a bass since he already played guitar. I asked my dad for a bass. He eventually got me an acoustic guitar when I was 14. I picked it up pretty quickly. My guitar teacher showed me a bunch of surf rock songs and a lot of ‘60s rock songs, including garage rock songs and one by The Easybeats, who I had never heard of. I can safely say he opened the door to the ‘60s rock that I’m still obsessed with to this day, because I wasn’t really listening to much of that at the time. I thought ‘70s classic rock was the jam back then, but I really liked The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and Elvis and Motown. I guess I didn’t really pay much attention to what decade the music was from until later. I wrote a few songs in high school, but in hindsight they probably weren’t that good, but I liked them at the time. But yeah writing songs was fun and easy and I didn’t really know what I was doing, I just wrote straight from the heart.
When I was 19 I joined a band called The Explorers Club and basically learned how to play the keyboards on stage. It took a little while but I eventually got good enough to play rock ‘n’ roll songs and even some jazz chords. I was so young at the time I didn’t realize how cool that experience was. We toured extensively and were always broke.
After that I played in some garage punk bands in Charleston and that really got me back to my roots and my love for music that was on Nuggets, but by then we’d discovered Pebbles and Back From the Grave, which cuts even deeper into the wonderful genre of garage rock, and by this point I’d totally abandoned the idea of doing Burt Bacharach style complexity in favor of more simple gritty soulful music. But I was still just playing the role of the supporting cast. I wanted to write more songs but never really got around to it.
Then one summer I went through a pretty messy breakup with a longtime girlfriend and suddenly had more free time than I’d ever had. It might’ve been one of the drunkest summers of my life, and honestly one of the most fun times I’d had. I really cut loose for a while. I went to a bunch of underground shows and it really changed my entire perspective on music.
Then I just started developing some song ideas and really spent a good bit of time on them. I studied the chords of John Lennon’s Beatles songs and re-learned a lot of those. Then my first song was complete. Then came another, and another, and another. I probably wrote about five songs or more that summer. They were not fully realized, but the gist was there.
The garage punk band I was in maybe learned one of my songs and tried to learn another one, but we already had three main songwriters in that band and didn’t really need a fourth I suppose. I also wasn’t really good at showing them how to play the songs. Then shortly after that the band split up. Some people moved and some formed other bands, and I soon moved out of state to start another job. Then I became a parent and around that time also moved to Florida. So I basically stopped playing music for a few years. I didn’t even have a guitar with me when I moved to Florida.
Eventually my family offered to babysit and I saw some inspiring shows by Jacuzzi Boys and The Ar-Kaics and realized I need to get back into playing music.
Those shows really lit a fire. I found a cheap $90 Danelectro and learned some Velvet Underground songs on it.
I kinda dusted off some of my old songs, wrote several new ones and eventually the concept of The Electric Splash came together.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The music journey is a gravel road. I planted some seeds along that gravel road, but you could say that I’m trying to bloom where there’s no soil.
Building an original music project on the Treasure Coast can feel isolating at times because the local scene leans heavily toward cover bands and more traditional entertainment formats.
It can also be a challenge to find the right collaborators. Some really talented people come along for a while, but original music projects require a different kind of long-term investment and creative chemistry. A lot of musicians naturally focus on live performance, while I tend to put most of my energy into arrangements, recording, songwriting and experimentation.
Managing schedules, rehearsals and recording sessions can definitely be difficult, especially when everyone is balancing work, family and life outside of music. Over time I’ve learned that every musician brings a different personality and creative process into the room, including myself.
I’ve gone back to the home recording route after doing sessions in practice spaces and professional studios. I enjoy studio environments, but I also like the freedom of working more intuitively at home where ideas can evolve naturally without feeling rushed.
If I’m hit with an idea at 2 a.m. I could go record it while the iron is hot. You have to be ready to capture the energy while it’s there.
Lately I’ve also been leaning more into the visual art side of the project through field sessions in remote parks with just me and a guitar. Sometimes I bring an acoustic and sometimes an electric with a tiny amp. That has become its own kind of creative challenge and inspiration.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m less interested in building a polished industry product and more interested in building a strange, handmade world people can step into. I feel like collages from vintage magazines and old hand-wired tube amps are as much a staple of this project as anything else.
The music is largely inspired by ‘60s rock but is also aware of punk rock and remembers how liberating the early 2000s rock revival was. That showed us it was OK to mix old sounds with new sounds. There was definitely a time in the late ‘90s where if you liked anything old it was deemed not cool, at least with the people I was hanging around.
I try to specialize in making songs that are accessible and relatable, but also quirky enough that they are still interesting to play five or ten years after I wrote them.
It’s really uplifting to see friends and strangers singing along to choruses the first time they’ve heard an original song I’m performing. That puts a smile on my face.
I’m probably most proud of those times where seasoned musicians who can play circles around me tell me they like chords I use because they bend the ears a little bit, or ask me how I came up with a certain riff that they enjoyed.
Sometimes I mix jazz and surf rock through this independent artist lens and I feel like that’s a lane that’s been pretty underutilized. I guess I like that modal element of certain jazz records but the pure raw energy of surf and garage rock, but also the depth and honesty of soul music.
I guess what sets it apart is that it’s not just a garage or indie band, it’s an entire identity tied to surrealist images that should probably not go together but can be playful and fun and sometimes a little jarring.
I’m not trying to make commercial music. I think I’m mostly writing for the handful of people who love this kind of music as deeply as I do, including friends and collaborators from earlier chapters of my life. In some ways The Electric Splash feels like a continuation of ideas that were always floating around back then, except now I’ve taken the time to express them in my own voice.
I also like to simplify songs. I often make them too long or too complex or will write 10 verses and pick the most fitting lines to trim down into two verses and a bridge, maybe a pre-chorus if needed. It’s all about listening to what the song wants, where it wants to go. It’s just capturing ideas out of the ether, maybe putting my clever little spin on them, or using my past experiences and a lot of imagination to turn them into something hopefully one person will find beautiful or meaningful, or at least add a little smile to their face.

Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
I used to ride around in my mom’s car and listen to the oldies radio station in Charlotte and loved hearing Motown and Elvis and probably a bunch of other stuff. I was so young then I thought each band or artist was actually playing every song live at the radio station. Then I got to wondering, if Elvis is dead, how can he be at the radio station singing this song? I guess I kept those thoughts to myself.

Pricing:

• The project is currently focused more on creative growth and selective performances than commercial expectations. But you know it’s nice when you can at least break even and cover your travel costs with fuel and hotels and meals.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theelectricsplash/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theelectricsplash/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@theelectricsplash7384
• Other: https://theelectricsplash.bandcamp.com/album/early-days