"Am I Wasting My Time"

Eli "Paperboy" Reed & The True Loves (from the brand new but 40-year-old-sounding Roll With You)

HOOD: Who is that?

INDEPENDENT: It's a young guy out of Boston named Eli "Paperboy" Reed.

Hmmm, wow. Is he black?

No, he's white. He spent his late teens singing in clubs in Mississippi and then returned to the Northeast.

It's like anybody anymore that's playing this kind of music is not only not black, but also not in the South. It's strange. He does a good job with it; it's a good song, and it sounds old.

Yeah, he really does stick to that late-'60s script.

I'm reading Bobby Womack's autobiography right now. And, wheeew, God. [Laughs.] It's something else. It sounds like somebody with a recorder just letting him talk. It's very conversational, very impassioned. Defiant and angry and sometimes maybe a little bitterâ€"there's that word again. It's quite a read, but not always a fun read. I'm a huge, huge fan. I used to say that my dream was to produce a record by him. I told my dad how much I'd like to do that. Dad just shook his head and said, "He'll break your heart."