Paul Loranger

Paul Loranger wanted to play upright bass in high school. They told him he was too short and handed him a baritone horn. Bass remained the thing he was going to do regardless. He started playing at sixteen, went professional at seventeen, and hasn’t stopped working since.

He first gained wider recognition with the Eric Sardinas Project, after Sardinas — the slide guitar powerhouse — found him at a jam session in Los Angeles. Sardinas wanted a bassist who could work upright in a blues-rock context, and Loranger was the one who could. That partnership took him through the late 1990s and 2000s, touring most of Western Europe, much of Eastern Europe, Japan, South Africa, and throughout the United States.

The credits that followed tell you where his playing lives. Candye Kane. Popa Chubby. Paul Nelson — Johnny Winter’s guitarist and musical director. Rod Piazza. Lurrie Bell and Jason Ricci on their West Coast tours. He and drummer Kurt Kalker became a rhythm section that bandleaders kept calling back because the pocket never moved.

He’s currently a member of Anthony Geraci & The Boston Blues All-Stars — three-time Blues Music Award nominees for Band of the Year — and The Barrett Anderson Band, which won the 2013 Boston Music Award for Blues Artist of the Year. Barrett Anderson’s live album Hypnoboogie spent three weeks on the Billboard Blues Album chart, peaking at number six.

Adrian Galysh called him “the real deal, a pocket player, who knows the blues.” That’s the whole story in one sentence. Paul Loranger plays upright and electric, four-string tuned down low, fretless when the song asks for it. He doesn’t showboat. He lays down the bottom end and the music stands on it.