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Peter Mulvey

Venue: Grateful Fred's Cafe Session
Town: Cafe D'Art, Formby
Date: 25/03/14
Website: http://www.petermulvey.com

The latest artist to appear at the wonderful Cafe Sessions put on by Grateful Fred in the intimate surroundings of the Cafe D'Art in Formby was superb bicycling singer/songwriter Peter Mulvey from Milwaukee, USA. My introduction to Peter and his music came last year when he opened for the great Birds of Chicago [with whom he also played as a band member]. On that occasion Peter played a short support set which impressed me greatly, so much so that I purchased several of his albums. He clearly impressed Grateful Fred as well as he booked him for tonight's Cafe Session.

Peter is touring the UK to promote his excellent new Chuck Prophet-produced album "Silver Ladder", which I wholeheartedly recommend. Unlike tonight, when he appeared solo, the album features a full band including such luminaries as Bob Dylan's longtime drummer David Kemper, Chuck Prophet himself and Nickel Creek's Sara Hawkins. If, like me, you are a fan of John Hiatt, you won't go far wrong with this record.

Tonight, Peter had just his trusty acoustic guitar for company. Actually, the instrument has a fascinating history. It's a 1957 Martin which, until very recently, had been in fragments before being painstakingly restored and reassembled by Peter's friend Yukon.

Being produced by Chuck Prophet has clearly had an invigorating on Peter; he described it like working with a "cross between a Tasmanian Devil and a Chainsaw"!

For those who are unfamiliar with Peter's work, he is an exceptionally talented songwriter and quite why he is not a household name is hard to fathom.

Peter's set tonight, naturally, featured several songs from the new album, including "You Don't Have To Tell Me","Lies You Forgot You Told", "What Else Was It?"and "Back In The Wind", all of which sounded as good in a live, acoustic context as they do on the album. Peter also featured a cracking new song which recalls a trip that he made to Fairbanks, Alaska in February, when the temperature was 39 below ["the brutal arctic air"]. From his album "The Cool Stuff", Peter sang a great version of Jolie Holland's "Old Fashioned Morphine", on which he sounded like a melodic Tom Waits.

Peter is a prolific songwriter and for the past two years he has been writing a song every week on a Tuesday! One of the results of this process is one of the standout tracks on "Silver Ladder", the extraordinary "If You Shoot At A King You Must Kill Him", which Peter wrote, in his head, whilst wandering around the "ancient empty city" of Bilbao, suffering from jetlag after a flying from Chicago. Peter's performance of this incredible stream of consciousness epic was simply stunning [even without the sound effects that Chuck Prophet conjured up on the album track].

Another innovative track on "Silver Ladder" which Peter performed tonight is "Copenhagen Airport", which appears to be an instrumental track until its very end, when Peter intones a couple of lines of lyrics, in what must be one of the shortest songs ever written.

From his earlier album of the same name, Peter played his beautiful evocation of a "warm summer evening", "The Knuckleball Suite". In much the same way as other great songwriters like Van Morrison and Bruce Springsteen, Peter creates an almost cinematic sense of time and place. From the same album, Peter sang the catchy "Girl In The Hi-Tops", which must be one of the few songs which mentions Percy Shelley!

To close the show, Peter chose his "most rock and roll song", "Sympathies", from his new album, which had the audience joining in on the chorus of "I wanna know where your sympathies lie".

Naturally, the crowd demanded an encore, but what to play? Well this is Liverpool, so what else could Peter play other than a Beatles song, especially with a portrait of Macca staring down at him from the gallery wall ? Thus another superb Cafe Session ended with the Fab Four's "I Will". Great stuff.

Peter Cowley