Peter Mulvey – An Xperience Interview

Peter Mulvey – An Xperience Interview – by Liam Sweeny.

Peter Mulvey has been there and seen it all, possibly even seen the giant ball of string. This folk singer/songwriter tours internationally and constantly, and will be in our neck of the woods at Caffe Lena on November 2oth. Let’s welcome him.

RRX: What’s going on with you right now? I know you have a show coming up at Caffe Lena. Any other things going on that I didn’t manage to glean?

PM: That’s the closest show I have to you. I’ve got shows in Wisconsin and shows in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York City … that’s how I’ve made my living for a long time.

I have a reputation for that, in that I toured from – I’m gonna say like ‘94 until now – for 31 years. In the beginning, it was what dumb young people do, like 240 shows in a year in my 20s, and then I got married and slowed it down some, ‘cause you need to come home. All these years later, I got a 4-year-old. And so, honestly, I still tour more than a lot of people, but I try to restrict it to 4-day-run outs. It makes the West Coast and the Mountain West brutal because you have to get up at 0 dark 30, take a couple of 3-hour flights, and then drive to the gig. And it’s a triple shift. It’s like 24 hours before you go into bed. But I gotta be home; these years do not come back.

RRX: Most people don’t realise, when they’re just listening to music, that no matter who they’re listening to, it’s a job for them, even though it might be very fun, it is still a job. When you’re playing four out and you’re doing all this kind of touring, how do you keep it from being just a job? How do you keep it fresh?

PM: I mean, there are a lot of things that do that. One, I’m a natural. I think I’ve always wanted to do this. I’ve done it since I was 16. Also, I got really lucky to fall in with Kelly Joe Phelps, and then also my good friend David Goodrich, who produced a bunch of records for me and toured with me for a long time. Both of them are major improvisers, more so than most singer-songwriters. I play the songs differently every day. I try to stay in the moment, and I try my best to not quite know how I’m gonna sing a phrase until I’m singing it. And I’ve learned that that puts me in the position of the audience. If I don’t quite know what’s coming next, then neither do they. In a very real sense, we have to lean forward a little bit, both myself and them.

RRX: I’ve never actually heard anybody put it like that, but that’s pretty cool. Nobody really knows what’s gonna happen cause you don’t know what’s really gonna happen.

PM: The jazz musicians could tell you quite a bit about this. That’s the bedrock of jazz. It is worth mentioning that most people who take this approach have a way better vocabulary and a way firmer grasp on harmony. But it is surprising how spontaneous you can be. I’m kind of known as a guitar yahoo, you know, like one of those, “Oh, that guy’s such a great guitar player.” But the truth is, my primary instrument is my voice. I’m talking right now, thinking off the top of my head. I really have done that now for 56 years, all day, every day, and I don’t play guitar nearly as much as that. So, I don’t know. This is my personal thing. I often try to get my students who are singers and songwriters to realise that they have a lot more potential to do this kind of stuff than they actually think.

RRX: Busking, I love the whole concept. I don’t know if I have the wherewithal to ever do it myself, but it’s so cool to think about busking and to watch people do that. You spent time busking. What’s something that people should probably know if they ever were gonna try to start doing it?

PM: Just keep going. I feel like busking is the most elemental form of performing, cause you’re just nobody. It’s tempting to even think of you as on par with someone who’s simply panhandling, you know, like it’s to make yourself just absolutely nameless. I loved that because you can still be a tremendous musician, and you have to be to really thrive. In fact, I got to introduce Brandi Carlile, who’s a giant star playing with Elton John and etc. But I got to introduce her at a festival, and I just went on stage and I said, “Brandi Carlile started out busking at the Pike Place Market in Seattle, and it still shows.” There is only one way to survive as a busker, and that is to reach out with your whole self towards strangers. And I could see her offstage, and she just put her hand on her heart, and you could tell she was going like, “Oh my God, this guy gets it.”

RRX: I hate to ask this, ‘cause you’re obviously good at both, but if you had to choose one day where you could say, “I’m either gonna go do some busking or I’m gonna go play at a place.” If you had to, if you just had that choice one day, is it an easy choice, or would it depend on other factors?

PM: Nowadays, if I had just one day, I suppose I might do busking just cause I haven’t done it in forever, and it would feel so fresh. Having said that, the one thing that I miss from busking … you can create this spontaneous community where you’re on a subway platform and there’s 40 people. And like, seven of them are just tuned into what you’re doing, and you’ve suddenly created the spontaneous community.

But I gotta say, I love venues. I love venues, especially my very favorite venues like Club Passim in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Caffe Lena is a tremendous example. The Cafe Carpe, which is sort of my spiritual home turf in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. I love venues that are consciously seeking to be a center, not just of music, but of music and community and justice and, you know, of humanity. And Lena’s real good for that.

RRX: We have a folk tradition in America that goes back, in one form or another, hundreds of years. When you tour internationally, is folk something that’s American, or does it just kind of tap into something that’s everywhere?

PM: I think it taps into something that’s everywhere. When I go to Ireland, there is a sense that, oh, you know, “he’s American, so he probably wears denim, and he has that midwestern twang.” And there is also the sort of romanticization of America. I remember once, there was a television ad for some show I was doing in Belfast, and they were like, “from the streets of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” I was like, you know, “God, that’s weird. That’s like saying from Monaghan in Ireland.” The whole audience chuckled because they knew exactly what I was saying. They’re just places. Having said all that, all of my father’s ancestors, every single one of them, are from Ireland. And then starting with about his grandparents, they were all Americans, but they were all American immigrants. And I have to say, like when I go there, I just get it. Every third person looks like a cousin, and the sense of humor is like what all of my funniest cousins are like.

 

 

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