“Art should prepare us for tenderness” – Anton Chekov, as quoted by Peter Mulvey
“Guess
I colored a bit outside the lines but that's me,” Peter says, after
returning an email interview with some unconventional answers. It’s an
apt description of his own career, which started in the subways of
Boston and on the streets of Dublin and has seen Mulvey through 25 years
as a recording artist. His journey has been marked by departures from
the norm: an album recorded in the Boston subways; annual tours by
bicycle; performing Tom Waits’ uncategorizable album ‘Rain Dogs’ live; 12-hour
live performances in person and on the internet, often for worthy
beneficiaries; and an album of spoken-word letters to his young nieces
and nephews. Twenty-five years in and still fired up, he traveled to New
Orleans to record his latest, ‘Are You Listening?’ with Ani DiFranco
producing at her Big Blue studio. In February, DiFranco Tweeted, “Can’t
wait for folks to hear it! What a beaut this one is, what a joy it was
to make.”
‘Are You Listening?’ is his Righteous Babe Records debut with a March 24, 2017 release.
As DiFranco says, "Mulvey has been honing his craft for many a decade
and it shows. He can play some badass guitar, sing to touch your heart,
and write a song that will knock you down – and by knock you down, I
mean lift you up."
Mulvey
is an iconoclast within the singer/songwriter world. Restless and
inventive, he has made seventeen records, spanning rock and roll, folk,
Tin Pan Alley, spoken word, and Americana. His spoken word piece “Vlad
the Astrophysicist,” which arose from a conversation at his recurring
gig at the National Youth Science Camp, became a TEDx talk and then, in
2016, an illustrated book. In 2007, he began an annual late summer tour
by bicycle instead of by car or airplane – the 10th annual bicycle tour
will happen this September. He has also taught songwriting and guitar
workshops at the Swannanoa Gathering and at various folk festivals
across the U.S.
Seeing
a Mulvey show is like sitting in the living room with a keenly
observant friend and raconteur, albeit one who’s also a dazzling
fingerpicking guitarist and a master of alternate tunings; an astute
poet; a social and political activist; a world traveler; and a great
listener. On the album, Mulvey semi-jokingly opines, “I’m a pretty good
listener, I get it from my mother.”
Listening
emerges as the central theme: listening to a friend’s troubles;
listening for the heart of America (as in “Which One Were You (For
Trayvon Martin)”; listening to the bullied as well as for the
insecurities of the bully (“Just Before the War”); listening to the
earthly creatures around us with tenderness (invoking that Chekov quote
in "Winter Poem"); listening for the path through hardship (“It Can Get
You By”); listening to what’s happening in the moment instead of ceding
to the stimulation of one’s phone (“D.I.A”); and listening for the song
in a newly resurrected guitar (the title track, written in just three
minutes, spilled whole from a 1957 Martin.)
“Just
Before The War” is a step inside a bully’s head. Peter explains, “The
narrator presents as a truly awful person. Still, I felt sympathy for
him as the story unfolded. Every bully got damaged some way or other.
That’s worth remembering, especially these days.” Meanwhile, “The Other
Morning Over Coffee” gives us a narrator listening to a friend's
troubles for the umpteenth time: listening without judgement.
Musically,
the sure hand of Ani and her touring band, bassist Todd Sickafoose (who
has also played with Andrew Bird, Anais Mitchell, and Nels Cline) and
drummer Terence Higgins (who has also backed New Orleans legends Allen
Toussaint and Fats Domino as well as Norah Jones), along with newcomer
Anna Tivel, shape the songs as they run the gamut from the full-on
Americana rocker “The Last Song” to the jazzy dissonance of “The
Details.”
The
friendship between DiFranco and Mulvey deepened in the summer of 2015.
Mulvey was opening a run of shows for her when the shootings at the
Emanuel Church in Charleston occurred. In the basement of the Calvin
Theater in Northampton, after a long heart-to-heart conversation among
the band members, Mulvey went into his dressing room and wrote “Take
Down Your Flag.” He sang it twenty minutes later, and as he came offstage, DiFranco asked him to teach her the song. She sang it two days later,
and substituted her own verse, written for Tywanza Sanders (one of the
victims) in place of Mulvey’s verse for Susie Jackson. Within a few
days, their versions were posted to YouTube and over the next few weeks,
hundreds of songwriters added their own versions, including Anais
Mitchell, Keb’ Mo, Paula Cole, and Jeff Daniels, reaching 200,000
cumulative views. This movement also led to an online benefit concert
for the Charleston community.
Mulvey’s
first love is playing music in a room for other people. He has
performed some 4,000 concerts and traveled over a million miles to do
it. He expects to continue to play upwards of 100 concerts a year this
year and every year. DiFranco isn’t the only A-list
supporter. Mulvey has shared stages with Emmylou Harris, Richard
Thompson, Greg Brown, the Indigo Girls, and many others, and media have
long praised his work.
NPR Music’s Bob Boilen has called his music “beautiful…. touching.”
Rolling Stone.com hailed his music ”haunting... A voice lush and hushed that occasionally sinks into a whisper."
The
Washington Post said, "The subtle power of his voice, a husky, hushed
baritone... understated, at once sophisticated and intimate ... song as
cover-worthy as Randy Newman or Elvis Costello."
All
Music testified, "For sheer musicianship, it is difficult to think of
many contemporary guitar playing singer-songwriters who can claim
superiority to Peter Mulvey."
With the forthcoming release of ‘Are You Listening?,’ more ears will turn Mulvey’s way as well.
