Gretchen Peters

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 - Folkwax Magazine

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 - Folkwax Magazine

...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 - Belfast (UK) Telegraph

...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 - Belfast (UK) Telegraph

... If Peters' '96 debut, The Secret of Life, had the answers, her edgier follow-up poses the questions, mostly about how to navigate rough emotional terrain. Full of surprises - "Eddie's First Wife" has a randy lesbian at its center - Peters brings the pop sensibility of Sheryl Crow to meditations on Amelia Earhart and Picasso's cat. Easy to see why she's already captured the Brits. B+

-Entertainment Weekly - Entertainment Weekly

“offers 10 fresh reasons to elect her to the country songwriter's Hall of Fame.”

“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.”

-Time Magazine - Time Magazine

... If Peters' '96 debut, The Secret of Life, had the answers, her edgier follow-up poses the questions, mostly about how to navigate rough emotional terrain. Full of surprises - "Eddie's First Wife" has a randy lesbian at its center - Peters brings the pop sensibility of Sheryl Crow to meditations on Amelia Earhart and Picasso's cat. Easy to see why she's already captured the Brits. B+

-Entertainment Weekly - Entertainment Weekly

...from the aching lament of "Germantown" to the exotic romance encapsulated within "Over Africa," Peters scoured the depths of lyrical discord. And backed by Barry Walsh's exquisite piano playing, the elocution of the emotional truth set forth was only intensified by its execution. Nowhere was this more apparent than within their poignant performance of the Sinatra-propelled classic "One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)." During her set, Peters observed that there are two types of people in this world-those who think sad songs are depressing and those who find them cathartic. Gretchen Peters irrefutably belongs to the latter.

-Santa Barbara Independent (Santa Barbara, CA)
- Santa Barbara Independent (Santa Barbara, CA)

...from the aching lament of "Germantown" to the exotic romance encapsulated within "Over Africa," Peters scoured the depths of lyrical discord. And backed by Barry Walsh's exquisite piano playing, the elocution of the emotional truth set forth was only intensified by its execution. Nowhere was this more apparent than within their poignant performance of the Sinatra-propelled classic "One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)." During her set, Peters observed that there are two types of people in this world-those who think sad songs are depressing and those who find them cathartic. Gretchen Peters irrefutably belongs to the latter.

-Santa Barbara Independent (Santa Barbara, CA)
- Santa Barbara Independent (Santa Barbara, CA)

...in front of an audience that could not have been more reverent had the ghost of Johnny Cash just drifted into the room, she proceeded to produce an epic set.
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 from standard C&W, Peters' high register vocal style gives her material an extra push that overcomes the inevitable cliches that songs of lovelorn heartache throw up.
With exemplary backing on stand-up bass and electric piano, the early part of Peters' performance set the tone for the rest of the evening. Kicking off with three exercises in effortless minor-chord melancholia, it didn't take long before the audience were entranced.

-The Scotsman (Edinburgh, Scotland) - The Scotsman (Edinburgh, Scotland)

...in front of an audience that could not have been more reverent had the ghost of Johnny Cash just drifted into the room, she proceeded to produce an epic set.
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 from standard C&W, Peters' high register vocal style gives her material an extra push that overcomes the inevitable cliches that songs of lovelorn heartache throw up.
With exemplary backing on stand-up bass and electric piano, the early part of Peters' performance set the tone for the rest of the evening. Kicking off with three exercises in effortless minor-chord melancholia, it didn't take long before the audience were entranced.

-The Scotsman (Edinburgh, Scotland) - The Scotsman (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Tom Russell, Gretchen Peters make for tough acts to follow
Swallow Hill Concert Hall, Denver, November 25, 2006
Reviewed by Corinne Brown

Tom Russell showed up with award-winning Nashville singer/songwriter Gretchen Peters for a night of memorable music before a packed house.

Road weary but resolute, Russell opened his first set with a rendition of "The Lost Highway," a tribute to the legacy of Hank Williams... "Ash Wednesday" was sung exquisitely by Russell and Peters together, followed by "The Sound of One Heart Breaking," a song originally written with Sylvia Tyson.

Double headliner Peters was the show stealer however, providing lush contrast to Russell's sometimes spare and hard-driving delivery. This ex-Coloradoan with the sultry voice and beautiful face had the audience spellbound, offering the best of Nashville today - solid musicianship, effortless delivery, vivid and penetrating lyrics and captivating presence.

Accompanied by keyboard artist Barry Walsh, (also on accordion and xylophone), every song was enriched by the rare magic of piano and guitar. Peters nailed the audience from her opening with "Circus Girl," followed by I Ain't Afraid to Die" (off her recent "Halcyon" album.) Her riveting "Independence Day," made famous by Martina McBride, exposes domestic abuse and her one cover, Paul Simon's "An American Tune," offered hope in a troubled world, even more meaningful now than when it was first written.

If anything was wrong with Russell's concert, it was that there wasn't enough of either of them - two tough acts to follow. To make it right, next time, they ought to make it an all-nighter.
- Country Standard Time

Emerging from the ashes of a 23-year marriage she chose to end, Gretchen Peters (aided by co-producer Doug Lancio) has fashioned a wondrous, wrenching personal reflection on love. Setting her personal reflections to music and arrangements that have, at times, a spare beauty and, at others, a soaring but demure grandeur, Peters makes sure that nothing's overdone, despite the presence of orchestral elements, cooing pop background voices, and evocative instrumental flourishes courtesy of violins, violas, cellos, and clarinets. Peters doesn't pretend to answer the multitude of questions she raises -- indeed, she is as puzzled by the ways of the heart as everyone else -- but she has a poet's eye for the telling detail. In "Ghost," a terse, Allison Krauss-like meditation that opens the album, she admits to not recognizing herself anymore in the wake of her personal calamity; she follows this with "Sunday Morning (Up and Down My Street)," which is built on a folksy, acoustic finger-picked opening, recounting the memory of "making love so sweet" when everything seems promising; from this high, the sweet melody and laconic rhythm of "Summer People" mask a searing indictment of a feckless lover. Then she turns around in the moody "Jezebel" and skewers herself. It's almost as if every happy memory is shadowed by the certainty of an inevitable parting. In this context, the jaunty take on the lone cover here, Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen's classic saloon song "One for My Baby," seems like a benediction, except that there's more drama forthcoming. Deep and deeply beautiful, Burnt Toast & Offerings is a fully realized work of art.
- David McGee, Barnes & Noble - David McGee, Barnes & Noble

Gretchen Peters, long one of Nashville’s A-list songwriters has written hits for the likes of Faith Hill and George Strait, and made several fine albums of her songs. This time, though, she’s put together a stunning collection of mostly western-themed songs drawn from other writers. Several tracks, including Bob Dylan’s Billy 4 – featuring terrific Tex-Mex accordion playing by Joel Guzman which underscores the song’s borderland theme – and Townes Van Zandt’s Snowin’ On Raton, are performed in duet with co-producer Tom Russell. Peters does strikingly gorgeous versions of Russell’s Guadalupe, which also features some evocative accordion playing by Guzman weaving in and around her voice, and Rosalie Sorrels’s My Last Go Round. These songs do, indeed, hit directly into the heart and the head. Four and a half stars of five

-Mike Regenstreif - Montreal Gazette

Gretchen Peters, long one of Nashville’s A-list songwriters has written hits for the likes of Faith Hill and George Strait, and made several fine albums of her songs. This time, though, she’s put together a stunning collection of mostly western-themed songs drawn from other writers. Several tracks, including Bob Dylan’s Billy 4 – featuring terrific Tex-Mex accordion playing by Joel Guzman which underscores the song’s borderland theme – and Townes Van Zandt’s Snowin’ On Raton, are performed in duet with co-producer Tom Russell. Peters does strikingly gorgeous versions of Russell’s Guadalupe, which also features some evocative accordion playing by Guzman weaving in and around her voice, and Rosalie Sorrels’s My Last Go Round. These songs do, indeed, hit directly into the heart and the head. Four and a half stars of five

-Mike Regenstreif - Montreal Gazette

When it comes to articulating your own inspiration, sometimes it takes a while. Gretchen Peters is well-known in Nashville and pop circles as a top-shelf songwriter whose tunes have been woven into hits by everyone from Neil Diamond to Bonnie Raitt to Martina McBride. She has been able to dig into an aesthetic terrain in second and third persons and come up with topics and stories that are distilled archetypes for every woman and man; they offer metaphors, accidental instruction, and the direct transfer of emotion to anyone who has truly heard them. She's been making her own records for over a decade now and performing live, but she's never been able to completely deliver on tape those beautiful songs she's written. Not until now, that is. Peters' 2007 recording, Burnt Toast & Offerings, was written completely in the first person, a change for her. As a writer, she's peered down into her own well far enough to be able to see what's there, and bring out what she sees into her songs. On this set, she's simply jumped off the edge, without looking for a place of safety to grasp onto. She doesn't see around and through the emotions that come up to greet her. Instead, she's immersed herself in them. She's gotten wet and dirty in the center of that abyss and discovered a baptism, in the fountain of her own heart. In this seemingly dark and dank place, where the sunlight above is just a glimmer, she's discovered an inner guiding light, the voice of her own hunger and the answer to prayers and pleadings to earthly and heavenly powers: the revelation of love.

Burnt Toast & Offerings is a record about the messiest part of love -- the barren desert where it unravels, falls apart, and empties one out, leaving one broken and seemingly alone, in a strange land where all previously known has been spirited away. She reveals that love demands nothing less than total surrender in order to open to it fully and experience its bounty. No matter what it looks like, its promise is enough. With the help of producer/guitarist Doug Lancio, piano and keyboard wiz Barry Walsh, bassist Dave Francis, and drummer John Gardner (with guest musicians in tow), Peters delivers a set of new songs that is simply searing in its lyric honesty and accompanying melodies, sophisticated enough in musical arrangements to carry them to the listener as a gift. The songs offer an encounter with beauty in all its marred, tragic, and transformative glory. The sound of the recording is pristine; it reveals in clear, wide-open tones and abundant -- though never excessive -- atmospheric ones, the struggles and epiphanies these protagonists experience. The hunger is heard in the set's opening cut, "Ghost," as a single harmonic chord and bowed cello usher in these a cappella words: "There was a girl who used to live here/Sometimes you still can hear her laugh...but you let her beauty go unnoticed/And let her music go unheard/You should've listened when she told you/You should've hung on every word/Now I'm a ghost, I haunt this house/And wait for love to lift this shroud/Take these withered dreams and let 'em go/I'm a ghost...." The acoustic guitars swell; Lancio poignantly fills the space between Walsh's organ and synths. Peters abandons herself to the maelstrom, which is enveloping. It's one of the bravest opening tracks on a record in an age.

Lest things get too dark too quickly, "Sunday Morning (Up and Down My Street)," with its nearly nursery rhyme melody -- thanks to the counterpoint guitars creating "ding-dong" effect -- Peters paints a picture of contentment and stillness, a gratitude that embraces the moment when love is present and abundant. The listener has to wonder if this is a reminiscence of what was, or lives in the present. The temptation is toward the latter, especially as Peters' voice rings so clearly, in a way it never has before, above the Hammond B-3 swells, an emergent cello, and a glockenspiel all sewn inside the slippery guitars. "Jezebel," introduced by a fingerpicked acoustic guitar, is in the protagonist's mirror-imaged, self-referential voice, but it's a manifesto. She confesses that her only sin is love, and that it is the only refuge, all that matters now. She reveals that she became an angel in her way, but has experienced heaven with those wings, too. Though the tune is plaintive and stark, it's a real blow to the gut; it leaves the listener breathless. It's followed by the smoky, film noir-ish jazz blues of "Thirsty," driven by spooky guitars and that wily B-3, colored by Jim Hoke's clarinet. The key line: "I'm always thirsty/But never satisfied." "The Lady of the House," a shimmering confessional pop/rock song with a hypnotic little groove, offers this scandalous truth: "The lady of the house is in and might be so inclined/If you're selling something sacred I might be ready to buy." Her cover of Harold Arlen's "One for My Baby" is a slightly woozy, empty-barroom confessional. The protagonist is feeling painless enough t - Thom Jurek, AllMusic.com

When it comes to articulating your own inspiration, sometimes it takes a while. Gretchen Peters is well-known in Nashville and pop circles as a top-shelf songwriter whose tunes have been woven into hits by everyone from Neil Diamond to Bonnie Raitt to Martina McBride. She has been able to dig into an aesthetic terrain in second and third persons and come up with topics and stories that are distilled archetypes for every woman and man; they offer metaphors, accidental instruction, and the direct transfer of emotion to anyone who has truly heard them. She's been making her own records for over a decade now and performing live, but she's never been able to completely deliver on tape those beautiful songs she's written. Not until now, that is. Peters' 2007 recording, Burnt Toast & Offerings, was written completely in the first person, a change for her. As a writer, she's peered down into her own well far enough to be able to see what's there, and bring out what she sees into her songs. On this set, she's simply jumped off the edge, without looking for a place of safety to grasp onto. She doesn't see around and through the emotions that come up to greet her. Instead, she's immersed herself in them. She's gotten wet and dirty in the center of that abyss and discovered a baptism, in the fountain of her own heart. In this seemingly dark and dank place, where the sunlight above is just a glimmer, she's discovered an inner guiding light, the voice of her own hunger and the answer to prayers and pleadings to earthly and heavenly powers: the revelation of love.

Burnt Toast & Offerings is a record about the messiest part of love -- the barren desert where it unravels, falls apart, and empties one out, leaving one broken and seemingly alone, in a strange land where all previously known has been spirited away. She reveals that love demands nothing less than total surrender in order to open to it fully and experience its bounty. No matter what it looks like, its promise is enough. With the help of producer/guitarist Doug Lancio, piano and keyboard wiz Barry Walsh, bassist Dave Francis, and drummer John Gardner (with guest musicians in tow), Peters delivers a set of new songs that is simply searing in its lyric honesty and accompanying melodies, sophisticated enough in musical arrangements to carry them to the listener as a gift. The songs offer an encounter with beauty in all its marred, tragic, and transformative glory. The sound of the recording is pristine; it reveals in clear, wide-open tones and abundant -- though never excessive -- atmospheric ones, the struggles and epiphanies these protagonists experience. The hunger is heard in the set's opening cut, "Ghost," as a single harmonic chord and bowed cello usher in these a cappella words: "There was a girl who used to live here/Sometimes you still can hear her laugh...but you let her beauty go unnoticed/And let her music go unheard/You should've listened when she told you/You should've hung on every word/Now I'm a ghost, I haunt this house/And wait for love to lift this shroud/Take these withered dreams and let 'em go/I'm a ghost...." The acoustic guitars swell; Lancio poignantly fills the space between Walsh's organ and synths. Peters abandons herself to the maelstrom, which is enveloping. It's one of the bravest opening tracks on a record in an age.

Lest things get too dark too quickly, "Sunday Morning (Up and Down My Street)," with its nearly nursery rhyme melody -- thanks to the counterpoint guitars creating "ding-dong" effect -- Peters paints a picture of contentment and stillness, a gratitude that embraces the moment when love is present and abundant. The listener has to wonder if this is a reminiscence of what was, or lives in the present. The temptation is toward the latter, especially as Peters' voice rings so clearly, in a way it never has before, above the Hammond B-3 swells, an emergent cello, and a glockenspiel all sewn inside the slippery guitars. "Jezebel," introduced by a fingerpicked acoustic guitar, is in the protagonist's mirror-imaged, self-referential voice, but it's a manifesto. She confesses that her only sin is love, and that it is the only refuge, all that matters now. She reveals that she became an angel in her way, but has experienced heaven with those wings, too. Though the tune is plaintive and stark, it's a real blow to the gut; it leaves the listener breathless. It's followed by the smoky, film noir-ish jazz blues of "Thirsty," driven by spooky guitars and that wily B-3, colored by Jim Hoke's clarinet. The key line: "I'm always thirsty/But never satisfied." "The Lady of the House," a shimmering confessional pop/rock song with a hypnotic little groove, offers this scandalous truth: "The lady of the house is in and might be so inclined/If you're selling something sacred I might be ready to buy." Her cover of Harold Arlen's "One for My Baby" is a slightly woozy, empty-barroom confessional. The protagonist is feeling painless enough t - Thom Jurek, AllMusic.com