This career of yours is getting better as you go?
It is quite amazing how my career has progressed. Especially over here in England —I have had four albums out in as many years.
It seems to be a case that you keep appearing at the right place at the right time. Since you started to breakthrough as a songwriter when it was all about Nashville. But today a lot of those restrictions have now disappeared and allow the likes of your self a greater creative freedom?
Absolutely, that is so true. You know all the bad things that have happened in the music industry have been blessings in disguise for me. Starting with my very first record Secret Of Life (1996) that did do very well here and put me on the path I am on today. Sometimes, I think where would I be if that record had been a commercial success. It would have put me on a completely different path and not where I would want to be.
It was a very strong and artistic recording and what a wonderful interpretation you did of Steve Earle's 'I Ain't Ever Satisfied' (an album of wall to wall in keepers; Guy Clark has Old No 1 and Peters has The Secret Of Life!) it shows you expressing yourself in a wonderful, uninhibited fashion.
I was lucky enough back then to have a record label that allowed me to have a lot of freedom, and it probably accounted for why it sounded even then a little too adventuress for the genre it was intended. But bless them for it set me on the path that I have continued on.
I feel it has been largely down to the likes of the people behind the smaller labels who helped change the course of music and develop the singer-songwriter genre. Although some of them did not see their efforts come to fruition and their labels fold brought about during the transition?
I think so. I just read today an article in one of the biggest magazines, Southern Living and who have done a profile on Nashville and said the big secret in Nashville is that the best form, most interesting music and the best music coming out of Nashville isn't country music but Americana. Having them say that is a huge thing, a huge acknowledgement to music that doesn't get national attention. But is fuelled by singer-songwriters. Made up of people who like myself fell through the cracks and never made it in the first place. It is an interesting paradox to live through because today you have the mainstream acts who are no longer selling as well. From my point of view Americana music has opened a lot of doors for me that would otherwise been closed after my first record wasn't a commercial success.
How did having the success of 'On A Bus To St. Cloud' and 'Independence Day' effect you; did it make you more focussed on songwriting or did it fuel a desire to go out on you own?
Obviously, it gave me certain amount autonomy. I wasn't in a position of a lot of performing singer-songwriter. I hadn't to scrabble and worry about money so much. Also, it allowed me to break away early from the normal progressive you have with labels. I only really had a traditional record deal once and this allowed me to jump ship. Having success as a songwriter never affected how I wrote, and I was never externally directed to what I wrote. I have always been at the mercy of whatever internal motivations I have to write. I think in a way my songwriting has always been a little bit protected by the commercial comings and goings and, was surprised as anyone when they were hits. I did not sit down to write because I thought they would be hits and it just happened. It did not change me in any way other than the success gave me confidence and self-sufficiency to do my own thing.
Where did you get your start in music, was it in Colorado?
Yes, it was. I moved to Colorado as a teenager with my mom and was in school. Years before I had learnt the guitar but wasn't really in a sense of mission about it or a direction regards, music but I got out to Colorado and it was the seventies and there a lot of bands. Even on the semi-and national levels, the Nitty Gritty Band and Dan Fogelberg people like that were living in the area and it was very much flavoured by country music and wasn't really aware of country music that came from Nashville but more the hippie variety. People like the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and you also had the singer-songwriter elements that I started playing in clubs and I put my first band together. It had a great allegiance with me being in the west and was a time there was burgeoning music scene. There were also ties to Austin and to L.A. It was a great time for me to immerse myself in that kind of music.
During this hugely influential period you would no doubt meet some people who you would eventually collaborate with?
I did, one of the people who was responsible for me moving to Nashville was my then singing partner, Michael Woody who moved about a year before I did and had a hit with the Desert Rose Band featuring Chris Hillman and Herb Pederson. I thought if he could do it then I could.
At the time you moved to Nashville it was rich with singer-songwriters like yourself?
It was. Suzy Bogguss was one of them who I met early on and we became friends. I related to Suzy because she played in a lot of the clubs I had in Colorado. She drove herself around in a camper van and played bars like I did, and I always felt that kinship mentality that if the bottom fell out we could always get back in the van and drive round doing gigs. We had come up doing that and know a lot a people from those early days. Steve Earle was another one. Getting to hear… because I was also with the same publishing company and just watching him work and hear his new songs no one had ever heard and was an educational experience. I miss those early days in Nashville, I feel like I bought in at the tail end of a real golden era that we will not see again, not there!
It came through the emergence of such people as Rodney Crowell, Mickey Newbury, Billy Joe shaver, Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt with you coming (alongside Earle, Lyle Lovett etc) at the latter edge of this rich seam of singer-songwriters?
That is right. I feel I was on the edge of it. I feel I got in on the tail end of it. The publisher I was with was a small publisher (Silver Line Gold Line) in a tiny little house on 16th Avenue and it felt like a family. When one person wrote a great new song news travelled down Music Row so fast people would get together for a beer and, it did not matter who wrote them. If it was a great song everybody was celebrating. I got to be friends with Harlan Howard before he died and really treasured that. The publishing company was owned by the Oak Ridge Boys and apart from Steve and myself, Gail Davies was there. Maybe, five writers in all, she reflects.
Gail Davies did a great deal for female acts didn't she?
Absolutely, she was that way then back in the late 1980s (RCA) and she was the first woman to produce a country record.
Through working in this tight community you got to become friends with not only Suzy but Matraca Berg with whom you have toured under the heading of Wine, Women and Song?
It was so special and continues to be when people see us on stage know straight away we are really old friends. I have likened it to a slumber party with better hair and makeup. I think the relationship between us and good-natured banter that goes on is public, and 40 - 50 % of the show plus the music it is wonderful. We love singing together and what a great sound we have. When you think about it we are three completely different voices but somehow it works and there is the joy of singing three-part harmony all night. Something none of us get to do regularly. It is so joyous!
Matraca Berg I feel is something of an unsung hero despite the fact she has a handful of albums out to go alongside her work as a songwriter?
Suzy and I are on a personal mission to make sure people know who she is —because she is so, so wonderful.
I can imagine it will give you a drive to see that happens, because like with Matraca there are artists who don't get the recognition their work warrants.
That is true. The world is not fare that way. I came up with the mentality that if something was really, really great it would make itself out into the world but I don't think that is entirely true. Part of your obligation as an artist I feel for me is if you see something really remarkable then the world should know about it (and it is up to you to tell the world). That was part of my motivation for the whole Wine, Women and Song (where they sing in the round) was that people should know about this. It was such a wonderful sound and such a natural thing I felt we should take it on the road.
When you are having such fun as you do together it will be at times like this the unexpected happens, ideas for songs organically come to fruition. Without either of you paying it much thought. Opposed to driving yourself all of the times as you strive to craft out a song?
Exactly, that is how I made the record I did with Tom Russell. It was such a casual, and even the recording although we had a song list it was done in a casual manner and live, and I think things come out like you said when you are relaxed. And the pressure is off. It was a side project and you do things and go places you wouldn't if you watched yourself more carefully.
There is such a wealth of songwriters featured on the record: Bob Dylan to Townes Van Zandt to Rosalie Sorrels and the wonderful Mary McCaslin?
She had a really good influence on me when I lived in Colorado. She had these magical, sounding records, the voice and the songs she sang and wrote. I was so determined to do one of her songs because she sung about the west and it fitted in with our record. I was really thrilled when she heard we had done 'Prairie In The Sky' and came see me play with Barry (Walsh) and just to do one of her song for her was just great because she was my idol. She was such an inspiration from how she covered the Beatles 'Things We Said Today' and The Who's 'Pinball Wizard'.
How did your friendship with Tom Russell come about?
It really started when I was on tour with my album, Halcyon and featured on the cover of Maverick magazine June in 2004 and Tom toured a couple of months later, and he said who is this, the latest chick from Nashville? Whoever was with him said you should check her out she is really good, and he went and got himself a copy and liked the songs and songwriting and ended up writing like a fan letter. Saying he was blown away by the album and that sort of thing, and said you don't know who I am but I would by making an album that summer and I was welcome to come and sing on the record. At the time I don't know what it is but was ready to break out and expand my world a bit, and on a whim said yes! That is how we become friends. That night before the recording session we went for dinner and talked for two or three hours about music and hit it off as friends and musically.
What is going to be your next project?
I have a lot of things in mind. My brain is buzzing with things to do. An album of covers; possibly, another collaboration with the girls (Suzy and Matraca) but the first thing is to finish writing an album for myself. I already have two or three songs that I already feel strong about and now need to sit down and write the others.
Circus Girl —The Best Of Gretchen Peters is out now on Scarlet Letter Records. For more info, go to Gretchenpeters.com
