Gretchen Peters – New 2xCD Collection + UK Tour Dates

January 2016

Sun Jan 31 GLASGOW, MACKINTOSH CHURCH – CELTIC CONNECTIONS

February 2016

Mon Feb 1 ABERDEEN, LEMON TREE
Thurs Feb 4 DURHAM, GALA
Fri Feb 5 SOUTHPORT ATKINSON
Sat Feb 6 SHREWSBURY, WALKER THEATRE
Sun Feb 7 MUCH MARCEL, HELLANS MANOR
Tues Feb 9 RHYL, PAVILLION THEATRE
Wed Feb 10 HARPENDEN, PUBLIC HALLS
Thur Feb 11 BEXHILL-ON SEA, DE LA WARR PAVILION
Sat Feb 13 BUXTON, PAVILLION
Sun Feb 14 HIGH WYCOMBE, TOWN HALL
Tues Feb 16 LONDON, UNION CHAPEL
Thur Feb 18 SHEFFIELD, CITY HALL (BALLROOM)
Fri Feb 19 BROMSGROVE, ARTRIX
Sat Feb 20 BINGLEY, ARTS CENTRE
Sun Feb 21 EDINBURGH, QUEENS HALL

“I remember going on
my first radio tour for my debut album and the guys at the radio stations
would say, ‘So you’re a songwriter, and now you want to be an artist?'”
remembers Gretchen Peters.

In hindsight, it’s a laughable distinction. Over the last three decades,
Peters has proven to posses one of the most indelible voices in country and
roots music in addition to wielding one the genres’ most enduring pens. But
in 1996, as she crossed the invisible Music City barrier between writer and
performer, few could have predicted what lay ahead.

Peters first arrived in Nashville in 1987 and quickly established herself as
a songwriting force to be reckoned with and tracks recorded by some of the
biggest names in country music. She landed her first #1 with George Strait’s
rendition of her “Chill Of An Early Fall,” garnered her first
GRAMMY Nomination and CMA Song of the Year win with Martina McBride’s
recording of “Independence Day,” and penned hits for Patty
Loveless, Shania Twain, Bryan Adams, Trisha Yearwood, Jimmy LaFave, and Etta
James among others. “If
Peters never delivers another tune as achingly beautiful as ‘On A Bus To St.
Cloud,'” People Magazine wrote, “she has already earned herself a spot among
country’s upper echelon of contemporary composers.”

All the while, though, she had bigger plans for herself.

“Performing my own
material was always in my sights from the time I moved to Nashville,”
Peters explains. “I
didn’t separate the writing from the performing from the recording in my
mind. I always saw myself as a singer-songwriter, and that was all part of
the job.”

Riding the momentum from her remarkable success, Peters signed her first
recording contract in 1996 with an independent label and released her debut
album, ‘The Secret Of Life.’ While it fared well critically, Peters fell
between the cracks of an industry hungry for easy-to-categorize products to
feed the machine. Marketing a nuanced, mature storyteller—one who penned
songs like the album’s bittersweet title track and the stirring “When
You Are Old” (both of which appear on ‘The Essential’ Disc 1)—to
mainstream country radio proved to be fruitless, and when the label later
folded, Peters bought back the master recordings and vowed to maintain control
for the rest of her days in the business, becoming an early adopter of the
now-common process of self-releasing albums through licensing and
distribution partnerships.

Despite the early commercial stumble in the US, though, Peters found a
different appreciation for her songs in the UK, where she earned the
admiration of early champions in radio and press, like the legendary BBC host
Bob Harris.

“The first time I
went over, I played four little gigs with no more than 40 or 50 people at any
of them, maybe less,” she remembers. “But I immediately felt
completely comfortable in my skin. I felt like those audiences didn’t expect
or want me to be anything other than who I was. Everything that wasn’t
working here in the States was working really well over there. It was like
stepping through the looking glass.”

All the while, the US was catching up to what they’d been missing out on in
their own backyard. NPR called her 2012 release ‘Hello Cruel World’ “the album of her career,” while
Rolling Stone dubbed “Blackbirds” “one of the most affecting
murder ballads since Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska,'” and in 2014, she
was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

While ‘The Essential Gretchen Peters’ collects some of the most memorable
moments from her inimitable catalogue, it also offers a unique window into
Peters’ process. Highlights include rare recordings of her own takes on
classics like “The Chill Of An Early Fall,” “On A Bus To St
Cloud,” and “Independence Day,” as well as a previously
unheard collaboration with Bryan Adams and unreleased demos and outtakes from
throughout her career. Listeners can also trace the evolution of her work
with keyboard player Barry Walsh, who began recording on Peters’ demos in
1990 and appears on every one of her albums (the two were married in 2010).

“The first real UK
tour I did with Barry was in 2001, and when we started playing live together
it really became apparent that we had this sympathetic way of playing
music,” Peters explains. “We were always able to
telegraph to each other what we were going to do. At this point now, 25 years
since we first started recording together, it’s like we play with one brain,
but even back then, I felt like we had some kind of language that we were
speaking onstage.”

Though Peters is beloved as a songwriter of the highest calibre, she also
uses the ‘The Essential’ collection as an opportunity to showcase her talent
for interpreting the work of others that have influenced her, including a
stunning cover of John Lennon’s “Love” and a gorgeous rendition of
the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” performed by Wine, Women &
Song, her touring group featuring fellow Nashville icons Suzy Bogguss and
Matraca Berg.

“Once the idea for
this collection came up, I took the title pretty seriously when I was
deciding on what to include,” explains Peters. “Regardless of when, how, or if
they were released, I wanted to choose tracks that really felt essential to
who I am, the closest, absolute right-down-to-the-bone expressions of
myself.”

Gretchen Peters is a songwriter and an
artist. Both sides are essential to her identity, and one listen to this
collection makes it clear that her extraordinary body of work is indeed
essential listening for the rest of us.

www.gretchenpeters.com