Quick Q and A with Peter Mulvey
 by Kathy S-B  ·  26 March 2010

Peter Mulvey. Hell, just his name sends one word to my core and I don’t know about you: QUALITY. Peter’s music resonates. Peter’s music teaches. Peter’s music entertains. Need I go on?

If you like intelligent music, Peter’s your man. Seriously. Not only does he write great lyrics about cool topics, but he’s a person, like you and me, who loves his family and friends, and who happens to be musical and also thinks about the larger picture. That’s a good thing. We need more people like Peter Mulvey.

Check out Peter at his website. Here’s a clip of Peter doing one of his most requested songs, “Sad, Sad, Sad.”

The fact that you’ve gone on some tours by bicycle is most impressive. This latest tour, the Long Haul Tour sounds like it might have been the most ambitious. How many miles did you ride on your bike on this tour?

Eleven hundred miles- took a ferry from my hometown of Milwaukee to Muskegon, Michigan, then played shows across Michigan, biked through a little stretch of Ontario to Buffalo, played three shows across upstate New York, then biked from Saratoga to Boston for a couple shows there, and finished up with a show in Northampton. I had four friends riding with me, including the opening act, Brianna Lane. The other three people were nuts- they didn’t have to do it, they just volunteered.

How long did you train for this tour? Any plans to do this again? If so, would you choose yet another route?

Well, this was the third big tour by bicycle- the first two were several hundred mile loops in Wisconsin. I’m going to make a tradition of this, every September, until I can’t do it. In fact, I was just down in Florida and it occurred to me I could do this in Florida in January. How much fun would that be?

What made you decide to record your letters to your nieces and nephews on your latest CD, Letters from a Flying Machine?

The letters on the record are prose pieces, with background music, based on letters to the nieces and nephews. They’re a framing device, used to give the record (and the show) a narrative arc. They’re a bit of theater, really. I’m trying to talk about time and mortality. Like any songwriter, or playwright, or poet.

You’re quite the uncle — to have communicated such wonderful thoughts and impressions to these young children in your family. You’ve really provided everyone in your immediate family with such a gift. Did they know you were making this CD such a personal one? Or did you surprise them with the content when it was released?

Well — the CD is kind of a separate thing from the letters. The letters, I’ve been writing for ten years now, and they are what they are — I think the kids dig them, and the parents do too. Just a kind of diary entry for us in our little tribe. The CD itself, I think the various sets of parents enjoyed it for what it is, and probably recognized a bit of their own kids in the fictional addressees of the letters. . . I dunno. I don’t tend to ask- they’re all the parents of young kids, they have to fight for time as it is. When we do get together, it tends to be mostly about supper, you know?

This recording is very profound on many levels. What kind of reactions are you getting from your long-time fans and from critics? Do they “get” the fact that the CD is meant as a suite of sorts — to be listened to from beginning to end?

Oh, yeah — this record has gone over great, and doing the letters live, especially, has really given a clarity to the show. It adds an element of theater, and audiences really seem to tune into it. I’m pleased with that.

You’ve recorded a dozen CDs. Do you have a favorite or are they all unique in their own way?

There’s always high-water marks, and I think this particular record is one of them. But it’s like this for me: I make a record every year or two, but I play a show every other night all my life- the show is my life’s work. And so the records, for me, are just markers of time. Sometimes, as with this record, the show takes on a very specific shape for a period of time, but mostly, each record just adds to the repertoire a few solid songs that I can go back to. . . .

What’s in store in the next year or so from Peter Mulvey?

Oh. . . in terms of recording projects, I’m working on an instrumental duets record with my longtime cohort David Goodrich. And then there’ll probably be a record of informal, midnight-hang type performances of Jazz standards and other gems . . . and I’m hoping to do a record of songs by friends of mine. And there’s another Redbird record in the pipeline. Plus I’ll probably start writing songs for another “Peter Mulvey makes a record of his songs” record. So really: lots of records over the next few years. But as for what I do with my year — it’s likely to be the same. Fly, drive, sing songs, tell jokes, ride bikes, drink beer, teach workshops, play music with my friends. Hard to beat that for a living.