Slow And Steady Wins The Race
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 30, 2005 4:50PM
A few years ago we were booking a local club and, as usually happens when booking a local club, we were talking to a local booking agent. He was expounding on how terrific this dude he was representing was. He kept likening the dude to Uncle Tupelo with better vocals. He kept talking about the dude like he was God or something. This is what booking agents do. Usually we would have dismissed all of this if it weren’t for the fact that the local booking agent also had a band and he wanted his band to open for this dude who was like God or something.
This changed things. A booking agent doesn’t want to be at the scene of the crime when some band he’s duped you into booking stinks up the place so we decided to go ahead and book the show.
Well, the dude the booking agent was obsessed about wasn’t next to God but he was awfully goddamned good and his name was Brad Peterson. He and his band played a sweetly dramatic type of music (that, by the way sounded nothing like Uncle Tupelo) and stunned us with just how far out they had broken when it came to the sounds of the local scene at the time. They weren’t prog, punk, country or funk; he and his band were just damn good.
Peterson played another show or two at the club we booked, opened for a high profile act or two…and then he promptly disappeared for a few years.
Recently he popped back up in the public eye with a new album under his arm and a new band behind him. The songwriting that struck us so much a few years ago has matured into an altogether different and more powerful beast. The drama of the compositions is intensified and the presence of the singer is magnetic. Peterson’s new songs burn slow and hot as magnesium so whatever Peterson was doing all those years out of the public eye was definitely for the best as far as the local – and eventually the undoubtedly national – music scene is concerned.
Peterson has been playing a number of shows leading up to the release of his stunning new disc The Red Album and tonight he and his band will be performing at Martyr’s for a “pre-release” show. The album won’t be available for sale at the show but a number of copies will be given away to lucky concert attendees. We recommend you catch Peterson now because we don’t think he’ll be playing intimate settings like tonight’s for very much longer.