Trio by Gretchen Peters

Peters brings almost as many heart-rending details and almost as profound a sense of lost promise as most writers could manage in a novel”.

Peters claims, “I never understood how the music business took people and broke them up into little pieces - the songwriter, the producer, the recording artist, the entertainer. I suppose I grew up with the idea that you made music from start to finish, and I never felt satisfied being one of the pieces”. Rejecting the Nashville assembly-line model and eschewing what she laughingly calls “gratuitous co-writing”, she nevertheless accumulated enough accolades as a songwriter, for artists as wide-ranging as Martina McBride, The Neville Brothers, Faith Hill, Etta James, Trisha Yearwood, Bryan Adams and George Strait, to earn her a recording contract in 1996. That resulted in The Secret Of Life, about which Time magazine wrote, “Peters, whose choir-girl voice has a seductive hint of late nights and cigarettes, knows the tunesmith's secret: crafting a good love song... The passionately elegiac When You Are Old is a declaration of eternal devotion: "When your brave tales have all been told/ I'll ask for them when you are old." In Peters' music every tale is brave, unique, beautiful.” Similarly, Entertainment Weekly added, "she has more in common with the romantic sensibilities of Rickie Lee Jones... Peters' songs about emotional thirsts that never get quenched have a quiet power all their own..."

As a performer, she began touring in the UK and Ireland soon after The Secret Of Life was released there and named by Mojo magazine as one of the year’s best records. As she puts it, “There was an instant connection with UK audiences. They didn’t care that I didn’t fit neatly into any particular category. They just loved the music”. The Scotsman (UK) says of Peters’ live performances, “The first thing that strikes you about Peters is her voice. The vast array of singers she has written for obviously have their own appeal but it is hard to imagine how her own crystalline vocals could ever be bettered. Reminiscent of both Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, yet maintaining a jazzy edge that sets it apart”.

In 2004, her album Halcyon caught the ear of folk legend Tom Russell, and he invited her to sing on his next two projects, the groundbreaking Hotwalker (2005) and the incisive Love And Fear (2006), in which Peters teams with Russell on the searing duet Ash Wednesday, introducing her to a whole new audience of folk fans in the USA and Canada. After signing with Russell’s US booking agent, in 2006 Peters went in to the studio to record her upcoming album, Burnt Toast And Offerings with Doug Lancio (Patty Griffin, The Greencards) coproducing. It is scheduled for release in spring of 2007, and Peters will be touring the album on both sides of the Atlantic.

Praise for Trio:

it is a major treat that one year on from Gretchen's third studio release, we have these songs stripped bare in concert interpretations, since Peters possesses an edgy singing voice that will break your heart as easily as her stories and lyrics. Trio would be a sort of greatest hits collection, except that to do Gretchen's song catalogue justice the reality would have been a multi-disc set.

-Folkwax magazine

...her songwriting is better than 99% of writers working in this or any other genre. Not only that, but she has a serious voice too, one of those effortlessly pure instruments that clutches at your heart and guts and twists them out of shape. So, for those who’ve missed out so far “Trio” is the perfect place to begin. A live album, recorded with a pianist and bassist as accompanists, hence the title, it cherrypicks the best bits from her previous studio recordings and presents them in a stripped down form.  Virtually without exception they work better in this style, as it allows concentration on Peters voice and superlative songs.

-Americana-UK.com

..."Like Water Into Wine" is a carnal piece simmering with just the right amounts of hope and desperation. (Barry) Walsh and (Dave) Francis shade the song in all the right places and provide a soft place for Peters’ crystalline vocals to fall.  The lump-in-the-throat "This Used To Be My Town," from last year’s Halcyon album, has Gretchen climbing into the skin of a departed girl who hovers over her lifeless body, the people, and the town that defined who she was when she was alive.  The haunting track is one of the best songs Peters has ever written.

-Countryreview.com

...some singers were born to perform and Gretchen Peters is definitely one of them. Trio, on which she and her guitar are sparsely supplemented by piano and acoustic bass, is a startling record - her voice arrestingly beautiful, her delivery perfect and the songs divine.

-HMV magazine (UK)

...her songs are like micro-novels: they have settings, plots and are inhabited by utterly believable characters, such as the lonely performer in Circus Girl. Indeed, her evocation of a murdered girl's return to her home, This Used To Be My Town, brings to mind Alice Sebold's recent bestselling novel, The Lovely Bones. Peters brings almost as many heart-rending details and almost as profound a sense of lost promise as most writers could manage in a novel.

-Country Music People (UK)

...this whole CD sees the incisive singer-songwriter at a peak of melodic, immaculately-crafted brilliance. Tracks such as the Patty Loveless hit Like Water Into Wine, the poignantly reflective Main Street and This Used To Be My Town are fine-cut gems of contemporary rootsy songcraft.

-Maverick magazine (UK)

Gretchen was nominated in 2003 for a Golden Globe award for her work on the DreamWorks animated film, “Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron”, and her multi-award winning "Independence Day" was recently included in CMT's list of The Top 100 Greatest Songs in Country Music.

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