Halcyon 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 Halcyon:

...Like Gillian Welch, Lucinda Williams and the great Emmylou Harris, Gretchen Peters is a precocious talent. The tag for her work is alternative country but with a voice as haunting and controlled as this, she could sing anything put in front of her. Halcyon is jam-packed with gorgeous musical moments, particularly the beautiful Aviator's Song and If Heaven. -Belfast (UK) Telegraph

...unlike the competition she regularly approaches the subject from an oblique angle lyrically and in the process draws you inexorably into her world. Halcyon is a solid contender in the "Best of 2004" stakes...

-Folkwax Magazine

...No flowery prose, no false sentiment, no artificial anger or angst, just simple messages of life, love and loss wrapped up in elegant, organic arrangements. Peters has something of the same potent sincerity which makes Bruce Springsteen an enduringly fascinating songwriter.

...a masterly lesson in the art of effortless, fluid writing - with pared down arrangements and a lightness of touch that oozes confidence.

...more restrained then her previous outings, Halcyon still packs an emotional punch, with the bittersweet 'Imogene' and 'Tomorrow Morning', both as intelligent as we've come to expect from this introspective mistress of rootsy, lo-fi country.

...A brave and beautiful collection.

-Manchester (UK) Online

...absolutely essential listening. -Shakenstir.co.uk

... In a word, superb. Gretchen is one of USA's best singer-songwriters, and this ranks as her finest moment. Refreshingly frank, even caustic.

-Leicester (UK) Mercury

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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