PEOPLE
Peterson’s personal brand heralds new sound

By Alastair Baker
“I like songs,” said Michael Peterson after his gig at the Pollard Pub, Red Lodge, Jan. 19.

This is all one really needs to say, especially if your life is spent on stage. You wonder how many singer-songwriters can point to that simple ideology without getting bogged down in mire of self-importance.

Quoted on a fan’s website recently, Peterson said, “I can’t remember one moment in my life when music wasn’t my friend, my favorite source of entertainment, my comfort and my encouragement. I have been consumed with writing and singing my entire life.”
Peterson’s earliest influence as a child was listening to the Beatles’ Penny Lane.  “The Beatles,” he said plainly, “because they wrote their own stuff.”

Peterson’s music isn’t your run-of-the-mill country, possessing an eclectic fusion of practically everything emanating popular music.
Peterson hopefully will return to Red Lodge. He carries with him an unusual style that is hard to pin down, and sounds like nothing else on the radio.  Armed with a catchy backbeat and drumming out the tune with his right foot, it was hard to imagine this was a one-man band before you.  Peterson’s love songs are truly amazing for their insight but then as he admitted frequently during the gig, that relationships and him have had their roller coaster highs and torments.  He knows a thing or two about the world and its cynical webbing and dark holes but through it all, Peterson reaches in and pulls out plenty of humorous nuggets. To hell with political correctness as well; how wonderful that here’s an artist who just won’t listen to the modern morality brigade with its pincer-like, crabapple looks of distaste.

An evening with Peterson, as he stated early on, is like performing in his lounge before friends, before comfort and knowing that we’re all here for the same trip.  Peterson wears his soul and heart on his sleeve and recalled with passionate detail his relationship with his grandmother who would let him play his heavy metal records at her house and she in return play him her favorites.
She had a huge record collection and introduced him to the sounds of Ella Fritzgerald, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Hoagy Carmichael, Roger Miller Willie Nelson and Jimmy Webb. They have all left their mark on him.

Brad Westering, whose success as a producer for Denise Williams, gave Peterson his first professional opportunity as a songwriter. And on that note he moved to Nashville.  Music Row, Nashville, cropped up frequently on this Sunday night, and his eyes show his passion and determination and joy at working with his heroes, many of whom are now his friends such as John Bettis, Jim Weatherly, Josh Leo and Robert Ellis Orrall, the last two co-producing his first album, Michael Peterson.

At the pub he played a selection of songs from that first outing on vinyl, ‘Lost In The Shuffle’, ‘When The Bartender Cries’, ‘Drink, Swear, Steal and Lie’, ‘I Finally Passed The Bar’, all of them different and idiosyncratic in their tapestry.
‘From Here To Eternity’, was a beautifully emotive piece and worthy of its place near the end of an evocative and fun-filled evening.
One thing is for certain, Peterson is a master craftsman with a tune and some words, and should be lauded as the next phase in the Nashville sound.