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NWMS: So you're in the studio today. What project are you working on? PETE: I'm working on songwriting at the moment for a singer/songwriter called Jaime Wyatt who lives in the bay area. We're going to work on collaborating on some songs. I'm going to produce some tracks for her. NWMS: You're incredible at multi-tasking. You have so many projects going on right now. PETE: I try. It keeps me busy, you know? NWMS: With The Thorns CD released in May and then your solo CD skywatching released in July, what is your main priority right now? PETE: Just because of the nature of The Thorns, that's sort of been the priority this year since there's so much more involved in it, just sort of logistically. It's much more complicated and sort of ... what's the word? There's just more to it for us to get together with it being on a big label like Columbia. It's been a focus on that level. They've kept me really busy for the last year or so. The record came out in May but we started promoting it in February so I've been on and off the road with The Thorns since February. NWMS: You just played over in Europe, right? PETE: Yeah we did. We opened for the Dixie Chicks in Europe and Australia. That was the last thing we did and we're starting up again in November. We're doing about two weeks of headline dates and then we go on tour opening up for John Mayer. NWMS: How did The Thorns project come about? PETE: It was sort of an accident. It was kind of presented to us as a really loose experiment like, 'Why don't you guys get together and go into a studio and write some songs and see what happens?' It wasn't really sort of pre-conceived to be a band really. It was more like, 'Why don't you get together and be creative and see what comes of it?' What came of it was we wrote two songs the first time the three of us got together. One of them is called I Can't Remember and the other was called I Set The World On Fire. Those both ended up being on The Thorns record. Just kind of based on that first session, some people ended up really responding to the music and offered us a record deal like five days later. So, this little experiment was suddenly presented to us like, 'Be a band and sign a record deal and make a record.' So the three of us had to commit to eventually sort of come to terms with what that meant and figure out how we were going to approach it. So then we got together I guess about four times throughout the summer to write songs and that process sort of became defining this group. But again, it was very much at that point, in the beginning it was very much presented to us as a little side project record. It wasn't really like they said to us, 'Go make a record and then we're going to make a video and release a single to radio and you're going to promote the record for a year and you're going to travel all over the world.' It was very much like, 'Oh this is a cool little art record, side project thing that you guys can do and it'll be great.' So it was a bit of a surprise when Columbia responded so positively to the music that they wanted to put a lot more energy behind it promotionally. NWMS: The record's received great critical success and has been very well received. How do you feel about the response? PETE: I guess I'm more sensitive to the negative stuff. I've seen both the good and the bad. I'm kind of ambivalent really about it. I feel more attached to my solo record than I do to The Thorns record. I think if there's a rave review of The Thorns record and then there's a rave review of my solo record, the rave review of my solo record means more to me because I put more of myself into that record and it's less diluted by the involvement of others. So I think if somebody says, 'The Thorns record is a great record', of course that's pleasing to me but it's not the same as if somebody says, 'skywatching is a great record,' because skywatching is much more me. With The Thorns, there were two other singer/songwriters involved and a Producer and my record skywatching, I was the Producer on the record and I engineered most of it so I have so much creatively invested in that skywatching record that it just feels much more like an expression of who I am than The Thorns record does. NWMS: When you were making skywatching, didn't you spend the majority of the time alone in your studio creating it? PETE: Yeah I did. I spent more time making that record than I've ever spent making a record before because I made it in my own studio and I had the flexibility to do that. Part of what was longer about it was the fact that I could go away from it and come back to it. That was a luxury that I didn't have in the past. In the past, you'd sort of get the green light to make the record. Then you'd schedule the producer and the studio and the players and you'd go in, you'd set it up and you'd knock it down. Next thing you know, it's on the streets. With skywatching, I was sort of determining my own scheduling and stuff. I didn't have a deadline really. Then what happened in the process was that when other creative opportunities came up that I went off and did, like right in the middle of making my record I went and produced a record for Stone Gossard, (Pearl Jam's ???) and that came out later on Epic. So that was about a three week interruption right in the middle of making my record which was really amazing because it got me away from all of these things I'd been so close to on my record. I was then able to after finishing with Stone's record, I was able to come back to my record and I had this really refreshed perspective. NWMS: The skywatching record was released with United Musicians, Aimee Mann's label. Did that assist in enabling you to make the record on your own terms and your own timeline? PETE: At the time I was making the record, I wasn't with United Musicians. I was actually making the record on my own. Then they heard the record after it was finished and we made the choice to work together on releasing the record. So at the time, in a sense, I was really liberated by not making the record for anybody else. I was the only person I had to answer to. At the end of the day, there wasn't a Producer whose blessing I needed to have. Record company people that I had to sort of... there weren't those sort of gates that I had to pass through to get to the point where the record's done. When it was done, it was done. That said, I've had really good luck in the past when I did make records in the sort of traditional, major label arena. I was really lucky that I never really had to go through some of the nightmarish scenarios that artists often times have to go through which is, you write for your record and then some record company joker says, 'I don't hear a single. Go back and write more.' Then they make you do that over and over. Then they put you in the studio and then you turn in your record and then they go, 'We don't think it's done. We want you to re-mix it with this hot shot guy and re-do this song. A lot of artists get jerked around in that system. A lot of artists when they feel like they're ready to put their stamp of approval on a record and as artists they say, 'This is my art', somebody else who's looking at things from a different more commercial vantage point tells them, 'No it's not'. I've seen that be a really painful thing for people to have to suffer through. So I was fortunate that I was sort of protected from that stuff in my career. I never really for whatever reasons, I think because label people who I was in business with, they were creative people who didn't really want to impose that kind of stuff. They were artists so I was kind of lucky that way but even that said, on this record I was even more liberated on my own and just really felt the freedom to make whatever kind of record I wanted to make and that was a great feeling. I didn't have to feel like I was sort of chasing, 'What's going to get me on the radio? What's going to feel current and vital or whatever?' At that point in my life, I just felt like I was going to make whatever kind of record I wanted to make period. I'm not going to be concerned with if this is going to get me on the radio or make me rich and famous. It was more about making a record that spoke for me, you know? NWMS: It really seems as though there is a grassroots movement taking place in the music industry right now. There was such an over-indulgence of pop music and record labels creating products. Now you see artists such as Howie Day or John Mayer who have built audiences through touring and word of mouth. Do you see a shift happening? PETE: I do see that there's limited opportunities in the big system, the major label system. They're just not throwing their money around like they did ten years ago. They're taking less chances on things. What that means is that there's less avenues for somebody to go into that money system and use all their assets to sort of develop that grassroots thing that you're talking about. So with the vacancy there, with those opportunities not being as available to people, people are being forced to sort of find their own path, you know? And a lot of what's really exciting to me about music these days is figuring out how we can as artists, take back control of our lives and our music and be masters of our own destiny in a way even though that sounds kind of heady, but to not have to be morphed into some pre-existing form, to have the ability to define the form. I think it's a very nebulous time and you have to define what that is but I think, to me it's an exciting time and it's an exciting thing to be a part of trying to define what this 'recording artist's life' is. I think Aimee Mann is an example to us all of somebody who's been able to sort of, at a time when she could've walked back into the major label system coming off of the heels of the Magnolia Soundtrack being so successful, the fact that she turned her back on that and just hit the jackpot with it and did so well with it on every level, not only artistically but commercially, that's just awesome. I think the more of us who are able to kind of do that and define our own careers in ways, the better. That's what I find exciting and I see a lot of people doing things for the right reasons. That's where I think great music comes from is genuine motive. It's not like, 'What's going to get me on the top of the charts and make me really rich, really fast?' But it's now, 'What's going to touch me emotionally? What music can I make that's going to be a true expression of who I am?' NWMS: That's what people relate to.
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