Episode 5

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Published on:

14th May 2026

Paul Otteson: Finding Purpose in the Music

Paul Otteson’s music is like a message in a bottle that was tossed in a loch west of Glasgow, that drifted along the jet stream to the New World.

It stopped in Brooklyn’s folk revival scene in the early aughts to pick up a pleasant spacey jangly sound that eschews the stomp clap hey of the early teens and it made its way via the fur trade up to the waters of the Gitche Gumme and down to the land of Dejope.

Today, on Taste the Music, Paul Otteson talks about the passions that made his journey in songwriting worth it - and they weren’t always musical in nature. He also tells us about the reckoning that comes with comparing yourself to others, and about the comfort that can follow.

Today's episode was produced, written and edited my me, Mark Griffin, and engineered by Aaron Scholz at WORT studios.

You can learn more about Paul Otteson and his band Faux Fawn at PaulOtteson.com or on Bandcamp.

As usual, you can find all episodes of Taste the Music at TastetheMusic.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

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About the Podcast

Taste the Music: Conversations about creating.
Interviews, stories, and talks about why artists create.
Taste the Music is a show where the artist tells their story about what drives creation. Here we’re going to figure out the reasons we’re driven to make music, and how that vocation ends up forming in some people, or maybe in all of us.

Each week we’ll hear an account of the path to creation by artists, and we’ll try to get at a few questions: why do this? Why write a song, paint a painting, recite a poem, tell a joke, or craft a beer?

And we’ll also seek to answer another question, something that we hope gets at a cultural truth about who we are as a people: why do we choose to sometimes not do these things?

About your host

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Mark Griffin

Mark is a science and culture writer based in Madison. He's written about groundbreaking cancer treatments, advancements in renewable energy, and trying to figure out how to find a mushroom in the woods. He currently resides in Madison, WI.