The Frontier Touring Company are delighted to confirm that Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed & The True Loves have announced a Melbourne side-show at the Prince Of Wales on Thursday January 1st, 2009.

Put on Roll With You, the latest album from Boston-based soul band Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed & The True Loves, and chances are you’ll immediately feel the urge to either dance or cry. “That first response to a record is the most important,” says frontman Eli Reed. “If a record comes on and makes you want to dance right away, then you’re doing a good job. If a record comes on and makes you want to cry right away, you’re also doing a good job. I think this album does both.”

Indeed Roll With You is a vital, gospel-tinged mix of sweaty, up-tempo numbers and aching, lovelorn ballads — all originals — that connect instantly thanks to the passion of this young performer and his equally young band. The True Loves may employ classic soul stylings — such as anguished vocals and a raucous horn section — but they make the music their own by performing it with the youthful abandon that only a group of seven talented guys in their twenties can muster.

For Reed, a 24-year-old native of Brookline, MA, playing soul music is simply a matter of having good taste. A walking encyclopedia of the genre’s history, Reed grew up listening to his music critic father’s collection of gospel, blues, country, soul, and R&B records and eventually taught himself to play guitar, piano, and harmonica. Then, at age 18, he got a first-hand education when he moved to Clarksdale, MS, one of the birthplaces of the blues, in the North Mississippi Delta, where he sang and played guitar with various soul, R&B, and blues bands at local clubs, and received informal lessons in performing from legendary blues drummer Sam Carr.

Reed is an electrifying showman who puts his heart into every song with a depth of feeling that would do his musical forefathers proud. “I just want to make people feel something,” he says. “You’ve got to get the audience emotionally involved and make people feel what you’re feeling. That’s the whole point of soul music. You have to make them feel like they got their money’s worth.” Consider it done.

Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed and The True Loves featuring Eli Reed on vocals and guitar, Mike Montgomery (bass), Ryan Spraker (guitar), Paul Jones (tenor sax), Ben Jaffe (tenor sax), Patriq Moody (trumpet), and Andy Bauer (drums) will be found blowing audiences away at the Prince of Wales.