It was when he was living in a van in New Mexico and met his current girlfriend that the music started kicking in. He moved around to D.C., California, Central America, and briefly lived in Arlington, Texas, busking wherever he could. He received a grant during college and lived in Northwest Africa, where he studied art and music and started seeing the world outside the church. "There was definitely a lot of me listening on a Walkman," Wert smiles. While he mainly played guitar in his teens, pop and rock music weren't allowed in the church. There's grunting, growling, melody, balladry, oppression, dirt, grit, love, taxes, death. In his live shows, he goes by the name Possessed by Paul James, and to hear him try to describe his music is an exercise in primality. Wert is part of a handful of local musicians who do it for themselves. And in terms of my music, there are a lot of roots." But it was a multilingual church service Creole, Spanish, and English so it sounded really crazy. It was an instrument made by man, so they felt the only way to sing and praise God was with the voice. "It was four-part hymn singing piano was secular. The 29-year-old guitarist grew up in the swamps of Immokalee, Fla., and his family was Mennonite Amish. He offers a story with all the Waitsian traits: God, religion, and revelation in a half-empty bar. We sit at the Horseshoe Lounge in South Austin, where the jukebox spins Otis Redding and shuffleboard is the preferred recreational sport. Among the handful of soused baseball fans, Konrad Wert looks like a younger version of Tom Waits: hat dipped low over one eye, suspenders clinging to a worn T-shirt.
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