Gretchen Peters: Not at all – Nashville wasn’t really on my radar growing up. But in between New York and Nashville, I lived in Boulder, Colorado during my teens and early twenties. I found country music via the hippie bands like the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Byrds and Gram Parsons; and Boulder was a great place to cut my teeth, musically speaking, because that kind of music was everywhere. I think if I hadn’t had that formative time playing in the bars in Boulder I would never have ended up in Nashville. It was my gateway drug.
Who was the first person you wrote a song for?
Gretchen Peters (credit: Folkradiouk)
I’ve never actually written a song for any artist in particular – I’m not sure I’d be able to do that. I’ve been really lucky to have some great artists cover my songs, but I write whatever is bubbling up from my subconscious, and staying true to that voice is hard enough without trying to tailor a song to a particular artist.
I’m a storyteller. I think of my songs as little movies, little dramas with characters and a narrative arc and scenery and an emotional landscape, too. That’s what attracted me to folk music when I was an eight year old, and what attracted me to country music when I was a nineteen year old – it was the stories. Growing up hearing folk music and singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Carole King and Paul Simon gave me a pretty solid grounding in narrative songwriting.
The very first job I got was as a temporary receptionist over at Praxis Recordings – they were an indie record company here in Nashville who signed Jason and the Scorchers, the Georgia Satellites, bands like that. I needed money and they needed someone to answer the phone. I did that for a few months until I got my first publishing deal, three months after I’d moved to town. I got a very modest draw and between that, and singing demos for other songwriters, and maxing out my credit card, I managed to squeak by until I started having some success with my songs.
I didn’t like Hannity using my song but because of the publishing legalities they had every right to use it. It completely perverted the song’s meaning. Much like “Born In The USA” being miscast as a patriotic anthem, when in fact it’s a protest song, “Independence Day” is about domestic abuse, about a woman who’s powerless to escape a deadly situation. Everything Hannity (and later, Sarah Palin, who also used it) stands for goes against what that song is about. I used to think it was that people like that didn’t listen to the words carefully enough. Now I think it’s that they just don’t care. When Sarah Palin used it in 2008 my husband-to-be urged me to ‘reclaim’ my song. So I announced that I was going to donate the royalties for the remainder of the campaign season to Planned Parenthood in Sarah Palin’s name. A lot of other people followed suit, and we raised over $1 million for Planned Parenthood in just a couple months. Sarah Palin got a lot of thank-you notes from Planned Parenthood. That was my favorite part.
Bryan has an incredible work ethic and we worked hard over about 15 years writing songs together – we had a hell of a lot of fun, too. He’s always working on something, and I did a lot of things I probably never would’ve done because of him. We spent most of one year working on an animated movie for Dreamworks. That opportunity never would have come my way if not for Bryan. He’s a dear friend and flew all the way to Nashville to sing at my wedding.
I didn’t plan to write an album of songs centered around women, and when I started writing the songs for Dancing With The Beast the #MeToo movement was not a thing. But sometimes there’s just something in the air, some kind of collective undercurrent, and I think artists pick up on these things intuitively. I thought a lot about what happened to my country in 2016, and how I could write about it, given the ugly turn we took. But the songs started to emerge naturally and intuitively. I’ve really been writing about women and girls my whole life, so it’s not particularly surprising that this would be my reaction. They just started talking to me, like characters do. I’m not a protest songwriter, not an overtly political songwriter – but I do know how to tell a story, and I believe that when you tell one person’s story you’re creating a space for empathy. Storytelling is the best tool there is for understanding what it feels like to be someone else. That’s how songs move people and change minds. So in its own way, telling these women’s and girls’ stories is a political act.
Your semi-world tour is about to start. Do you have any rituals you have before you
Gretchen Peters
perform a show?
Nothing crazy. Vocal warm-ups while I get ready, which can sound a bit weird to the uninitiated if you happen to be wandering the halls backstage. My husband Barry, who tours with me and plays piano and accordion, usually pours us each a glass of wine for after the show – a little reward for when we come offstage. Sometimes we play ambient music in the dressing room – Brian Eno or Chad Lawson or something like that. It calms the nerves, if I have any.
Yes – we’ll be touring all over the US throughout 2018, in between trips across the Atlantic to the UK and Europe. Canada too – we won’t be forgetting our friends up north.
Frank Sinatra. I just don’t think there’s anyone who comes close. His phrasing, the rhythm and swing in his singing, his understanding of the song. And that incredible tone. Yes, Frank Sinatra – and I think Bob Dylan agrees with me.
I’m not much of a jammer! I like a song with a beginning, a middle and an end. But just for fun? I’d like to sing backup for Bruce Springsteen, just to stand on that stage and feel the power of that band. Holy wow.
Nobody else likes it but every year we put on Bob Dylan’s Christmas album and we play it until New Year’s. Everyone I know thinks it’s horrible. I’m resolutely in favor of it. I can’t explain why.
The Northern Lights. I WILL see them one day. I’ve been in plenty of places where there was a good chance – northern Sweden, Alaska, the Shetland islands – but it’s never happened. That’s at the top of my list.
When you meet a songwriter, please don’t ask them which comes first, the lyrics or the music.
Gretchen Peters (credit: Helliehel)
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