Episode 18 – Peter Halperin

Peter Halperin is a West Tisbury, Mass., based singer-songwriter, club owner and radio host. Peter cut his teeth back in the 1960's in the Greenwich Village folk scene. A retired psychiatrist, he was never far from his guitar and piano, and he released a sensational album titled "Beyond the Storm" in 2024, produced by Fred Mollin. Halperin recently told Martha Vineyard’s MV Times newspaper. “It pulls at the creative heartstrings for people like me, who may have drifted off the path into other careers.”

Peter's Acoustic Northeast interview is in-depth and reveals a multidimensional singer-songwriter. Check out his live in-studio performances (available on the Acoustic Northeast YouTube page) which, along with his interview, were recorded at his beautiful Martha's Vineyard home studio, where he also hosts a monthly house concert series. Check out his website:  https://www.woodstovestudios.com. You can stream Peter's radio show at https://www.mvyradio.com each Sunday evening at 7:00.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome everybody again to another edition of Acoustic Northeast, bringing you the singers-songwriters and acoustic music scene of the Northeast United States. We talk about the music scene and topics that affect the artist. We interview singer-songwriters who play live for you in studio. I am George Malice, your host for the day. Our co-host Dave Goldenberg is currently on vacation. We are brought to you by HearAtThere.com, also by Hudson Harding Folk Radio Promoters and WBXO Internet Radio. You can listen to our show wherever you get your podcast, and please subscribe. We are also on YouTube and acousticnortheast.com. We post the song performances of our guests on our YouTube channel. Listen also to our Acoustic Northeast Spotify playlist with which features past and future musicians from the podcast. And today we have a special guest in studio, and it's not my home studio in Brewster. We are coming to you from Martha's Vineyard in Edgar Town. In West Tisbury. West Tisbury. I'm already wrong. And our guest is Peter Halpern. And Peter, we are in his studio, which is called Woodstove Studios. Correct. Okay, I got that right anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Yeah, not bad.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

So anyway, Peter, we're gonna ask you to kick the show off with a tune. So um go for it. Why don't we do that? And please um tell us what you're gonna play.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Well, thanks, George. This is fun. I appreciate you coming to my place to do this. Uh so I'm gonna play three songs, and uh I figured I'd sort of span my songwriting uh life span. So this first one is called Lazy Joe, I wrote when I was seventeen. Uh I'll let the audience guess how long ago that was. Okay. It was a while.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Stand up and all.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

And you wrote that when you were 17 years old. Lazy Joe. And we won't tell everybody how old you are. Let them figure it out through our conversation or whatever. But um I don't mind. You don't mind? Okay. Then straight out. I won't mind. We can we can we can tell everybody if you want to. That that's up to you. Um but um I'm proud of it, so uh you know what? We should be proud of our age because we've made it this far, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

So um that's a wonderful thing. So being that you wrote that at 17, give me a little background how you kind of started off musically. What what drew you to it?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Well, um I was always deep into music ever since early childhood. And it was always kind of the the thing for me.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

And um Was there music in your home growing up?

SPEAKER_01 4:46

There w there was. Um uh my dad was a fantastic singer, although very much uh uh closeted in a sense, but unbelievable, unbelievable voice.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

What kind of music was in the was in the home?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Oh uh you know, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, you know, that kind of stuff, uh um show music, Broadway music. My mom was an excellent piano player. Um and uh, you know, I started uh, you know, studying piano at a very young age and kind of took it like from the age of four or five to about ten and kind of left it for reasons I'm not gonna get completely into in this show. But it's fine. But it it wasn't uh it wasn't a a good scene in a lot of ways. Um but I I you know just kept with the music. I sort of got back into it a lot as I hit my early teenage years and all that great stuff was happening. I picked up the guitar and that was all by by ear. And you know, listened to the folkies and and also, you know, blues practice was huge, Al Cooper was huge uh in terms of teaching me how to do at that point I was playing also a lot of keyboard. Yeah. And uh I started songwriting about the age of 14 or 15. And as I was wending my way through high school and thinking what's next and planning on going to college, I was really interested in in just staying with the music business. And I had started to, you know, slept down from Nourshell to Greenwich Village all the time. I was playing a lot of the um first the open mics and even was getting some gigs at at at all those hot spots. And I almost didn't go to college. Uh um I had done a couple of performances and a guy said, you know, we could get you to work, and I kinda my momentum was so much in that more traditional in some ways, but also I wanted a a good place where I could move to and actually afford to be away from the place I wanted to get out of Nerish out, let's put it that way. Well, I left too. So I don't blame you. Yeah. But Lazy Joe was written within the first few weeks of my getting to college, and it was about a theme that I've been wrestling with ever since. Hey man, you want to be a musician? Jump in. Yeah. Right? And so there's a bit of that in that lyric. And um So what what are we talking about here? We're talking about um the late 60s or uh I was doing the music in the that I was just describing, 68-69, and I started college in 70. And where did you go to school? Uh Swarthmore College, outside of Philadelphia. Sure. Uh and actually there was a great music scene there. Uh I hooked up with a real good singer-songwriter um uh named Steve Smith, and we had a a pretty successful duo called Peter and Smitty. And uh let's see, uh I don't know how much time we happen to go into all the things that'll pop in my memory, but Swarthmore had a really great folk festival, one of the one of the big folk festivals for at least 20 years before I got there. And because I got there having done so much music, and I had friends that were in the business and did sound at you know, major places in New York, and I sort of knew what was going on. I got to run that folk festival even as a freshman. It was Mississippi, Fred McDowell, Happy and Our Artie Tram, and Peter Halprin. Well, you got to meet all these guys since you were running it. Yeah, and and and before I was I was just sort of up close because of good friends that I had that I was just sort of mentioning that were in the business.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Um I think a lot rubs off when you get to rub shoulders with people like that. No question. You know, I think you I think in some ways you kind of learn how to write also. I mean, you didn't go to school for music. That's right. So it's like, you know, we have uh, you know, we interview a bunch of people, and I have to tell you, the vast majority of the people that we've interviewed grew up with music in the home. Yes. Some were classically trained or whatever it happens to be, but most of them learned how to write by listening. And that's that's what it came down to. And that's that's where you came in.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

I I totally agree. And another element that I think you know comes out of uh being with such people is that you see that this is what people can do. This is what people do. It it kind of normalizes it, you know. Um so uh the idea that you can just write a song isn't quite as foreign as it might be if you weren't hanging around a lot of people who were doing it. I think it ups your game too. And it ups your game too.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

No question. Because when you have that level that you're striving to reach, you're left with no choice. Well, you are left with a choice. You could just bag it, or you can, you know, or you can work. And and that's what you've done with your with your songwriting. So as we've gotten past school, then you we get into your professional life a little bit. Do you want to talk about that a little?

SPEAKER_01 9:48

I I'll be glad to. It wasn't just a straight line. I dropped I dropped out as Warthmore, went to New York, and was playing full-time for a couple of years. Dynamite. And uh I was playing keyboard actually in a pretty popular, unusual sort of country music world band. It's the best way to describe it. Uh backing up a uh songwriter named Susan Bader. And uh, you know, we we were the regular Friday night act at Folk City for a year. Fantastic. And so I was right in the middle of all that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Um that that explains your um some of your country music. Uh yeah, absolutely. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Oh wow. Right. I I I sat and heard him play and said, Well this guy's from Brooklyn too. I did start out in Brooklyn. I like country. The west side of Brooklyn. Yeah, right. Exactly. The far west. Yeah, yeah. So there was always been Loving Spoonful was very big uh on that one too. Um uh Sebastian stuff uh in in those late 60 years made a deep imprint on me. Yeah, and it's still doing it. He's still doing it. He's in Woodstock. I know, you I know. It's great, it's great. Um so I did the music uh full-time for a few years and then um decided I was gonna take another turn, and I went back to college. And uh without going into all the details, I'll just say it had something to do with the uh precariousness of the culture in New York, at least at that time as a full-time musician. And I'm talking a lot of people into heavy drugs, especially heroin. Yeah. And and and so all these great players and people that I was hanging with, you know, many of them that's pretty much what they wanted to do. And uh I I guess I uh my antenna were up enough to know just that that was not gonna be a good choice for me. Uh and it was really a very quick decision to leave the scene, go back to school. And once I was back in school, I had, you know, thought about different things to do, but you talk about or I talked about the fact that you you learn about what's possible from the people that you're modeling, you're being modeled by. And my family was steeped with doctors. My father's a doctor, many uncles, cousins, and so medicine was just part of normal life. I was always much more kind of interested in psychological factors than purely uh biological ones, and I ended up becoming a psychiatrist. But so I went through, you know, college uh and then went to medical school and became a psychiatrist. And it was a very rich, uh, you know, interesting career, but it sure kept me away from music, and that was sure frustrating. And I tried to balance it as much as I could. I mean, I was doing that stuff for well over 40 years. Sure. And um, you know, kind of carving my my own bit of a niche in in terms of um sort of bringing psychiatry into medical settings and kind of making it more universal and making it more normal. Um and and and part of really treating medical illnesses because uh uh stress for lack of a better word, uh it's not good for the body. And uh so that was the kind of thing I pursued, and I ended up doing a lot of teaching as well. But I kept the music going as much as possible, mostly the songwriting. And so there wasn't there wasn't a year that I didn't write at least a couple of songs, and sometimes it was more. And I did, you know, try and keep my toes in the water as I had before and get songs out to see if I could, you know, hit it in that way as a songwriter. Came close. Uh the closest I came was I did a demo of a song that uh the guy who we hired to sing it, a guy named Benny Diggs sang it and didn't even tell me. And I got a call uh two days later from the guy who did produce it. Well, Benny is producing George Benson's next album, and he brought it to George. George loves it. George wants to do it. He may even make it the title song. And I said, Oh my God. Three weeks later we find out that uh George was under contract that he didn't realize with another company, wasn't going to be working with that crew, the whole thing got erased. Uh so and that's another reason that the music business was uh it was temperamentally challenging for me, as it is for anybody who has to be able to put up with disappointment and frustrations and near misses. Um I'm better equipped for it now because at this age, who cares? You know. Yeah, uh, yeah. But so that was part of it. But it was I kept it up. And then maybe to kind of tie the into where we are now, I discovered the vineyard in the late 80s just because people I knew were vacationing and I came. And one of the first things I found out was it grows and attracts musicians like a magnet and artists of all kinds, you know, painters and every medium. Um and it felt so good and comfortable and familiar to be around uh so many uh wonderful musicians that it was you know m the pull for me to think about actually just living here. And um When did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 15:08

When did you make your move up to the vineyard?

SPEAKER_01 15:10

We came here in the early 90s, about 1990. Um and um I had been in the Boston area and practicing up there, and I just uprooted, came here, did some practicing in this general area kind of, but uh was playing a lot of music uh for several years, maybe about four years between about ninety and ninety-four, ninety-five. And uh then I got kind of recruited to uh do a teaching thing uh uh at Stonebrook Medical School. Uh somebody had uh heard me um talk about this idea of bringing psychiatry into places like cardiac rehab programs and just making it part of what you do because it's a risk factor just like diet and exercise, or working with other medical patients. And Stonebrook had decided they wanted to kind of get on that bandwagon and they wanted a course for it, which was didn't exist in medical school. And I just couldn't say no. Uh uh so uh went out there and uh inhabited Long Island. To all you Long Islanders, love you. Didn't really love Long Island that much, but I wouldn't have loved anywhere having just left the vineyard.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

Well, I can't I can't blame you.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Yeah, that's something but you know that became a thing, and uh I was there for about 10, 12 years, and then but you never you never lost your love.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Did you have it in the back of your head that this was where you were gonna end up?

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Oh, absolutely. You did. We already had the property, you know. We, you know, kind of slowly developed it uh um and put uh our main house up about 22 years ago. Um it's a detail that's not that important. Well, when we were here, we were living in a house behind this lot. It was two separate lots that um we sold, and then we just developed this, but we always knew we'd be back. That's right. You know, we had very close friends right from the beginning. It was our major kind of social network, really. Um and then just to try and get it all back to the president, is uh as for so many people, when COVID came, it opened the door um to do remote practice. And and so uh at that time I was actually practicing in Northampton, Massachusetts. And um uh I was able to do the kind of practice very readily at a distance online and on Zoom. And um uh once we realized that was possible, I said I'm gonna move here as soon as possible. And uh now we're getting close to where we are in this building. Yeah, the building we're in didn't exist until four and a half years ago. And that was when Orly Five when we decided we're moving here.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

And uh I'm gonna take pictures of it and I'm gonna put them up for when we air your interview.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

We're gonna Oh my god, it's such a mess. Well, people will see a lot of guitar. Yeah, absolutely. And one thing that they may see is I have uh a really uh wonderful Steinway uh uh B grand piano. And I had gotten it when we were in Northampton and actually was spending years just doing classical music on it, kind of getting back to my roots. And it simply wasn't gonna fit into our small house. Right. And so the idea, well, I wonder if I can get permission to put a a studio up and turn to zoning, and got the guy who knew the answers and actually who ended up building it, and he said yes. And uh uh and as soon as he said yes, and I realized this was gonna happen, I absolutely knew that this was gonna be what it became, you know, a community resource for year-round uh shows, and that I was gonna put a recording studio in as well. And all of it kind of came together and flowed from there.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

Fantastic. I'm gonna ask you to do another song, and when we come back after that song, I want to talk about the studio. I want to talk a lot about your album that you released in 24.

SPEAKER_01 19:17

Love all of that. Thank you, George. So can you tell us uh get yourself ready to uh you'll hear a little change because I'm changing mics.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

You know. And um please intro the song and um get yourself going. Again, you know, you're listening to uh Acoustic Northeast Podcast. Our guest in studio at his studio is Peter Halpron over at Wood Stove Studios with the fantastic room.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

So we're gonna jump ahead. Uh that first song, okay, I'll tell you, I wrote that song about 57 years ago. Ouch.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

And this song I wrote relatively recently, 15 years ago. It's called One Man's Poison.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

One man's healing met another man. One man's savior, get another man. One man's home.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Wow. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

That's Peter Halpern, One Man's Poison. That's a live version in studio today. And it's uh also on his um on his album, Bring on the Storm, which Peter, you uh recorded it well, you released it in 2024. I wanted to talk about, you know, I told you before we interview a lot of a lot of people, and a lot of people self-produce. You did not self-produce, you went extremely on the other end of self-production. I sure did. Let's talk about your producer and uh and what he brought to the table because he he actually quoted and called your album a masterpiece. And and I have to say, I've listened and listened now. Thank you. And and Fred is right. Well, tell us about Fred Molder. Well, Fred, who was sitting in that chair yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Oh, he was here on the island. He still spent a lot of time out here. He used to spend a lot of more when he had his own place. And the really the reason I went the other way is that the other way met me more than halfway. And so uh the way it developed was uh Fred Mullen, who I'll describe in a little bit more detail in a second, has a brother named Larry Mulen, who's also a fabulously talented artist, a playwright, a novelist, a poet, and an extremely successful TV writer. And the two of them were a tour de force doing all kinds of creative stuff in Toronto and all over the place for years. But Larry and I got together uh that summer uh before I did the album, you know, back uh in 2023, became friends, and uh he said, Oh, my brother Larry's gonna be coming to visit. And by the way, he's he's a big producer, and um, you know, but but don't be disappointed if he doesn't want to check out your music because he gets overwhelmed by these things. Okay, so that was the context. But he brought him over one afternoon. And we clicked like that. For one thing, he walked into the space, and now this is a guy who's been living and breathing in the great recording studios of Nashville and the world, but the feeling of a home place like this in this space just kind of called to him. So he was already kind of softened up. And I said, What? What the heck? I'm gonna play a couple songs for him. And he really kind of liked him, and he said, Hey, you know, what did you do with all that when you went to medical school? So he was kind of giving me uh um uh uh you know, dropping the bait in the water a bit, um if that's what he meant, but that's what it was like for me. Uh and then the next thing was at a dinner party at Larry's place, talking to Fred, who spent his time between LA and Nashville, does most of his recording in Nashville, uh, and he said, So I'm about to go and go to Nashville. And I said, You know, I've never been to Nashville. And he said, Huh. That's where people like us do what we do. And it was like, is this guy telling me that I'm in any way like us? Is he saying that this is I never you have to maybe understand where I do. I dreamt about this at those early years, and I was pushing and fantasizing and getting nibbles and stuff, and when I left it behind, I I assume there's no chance ever that I would ever get to work with this kind of scene and and and develop something like that.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Isn't it wonderful when you have that moment where you feel like okay, what I'm doing is not just okay, what I'm doing is good.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Yeah, man. You know, it it it feels a little, you know, uh uh unhumble, but this is the experience. It's so it started like that, and we started talking about doing a project, and he made it very possible for me to do the project. And I sent him a bunch of songs, and it was all working. We were picking out the album. Now he works with this crew of um sort of super musicians. You know, we used to use the term wrecking crew, every city has, and you know, there are unlimited great musicians in Nashville. I'm not saying that they're the only ones, but man, are they fantastic? And they've been playing with each other for 20 years doing these kind of things. So I didn't know what to expect. And uh first of all, just uh very few people you know would even guess that this is possibly how it works. But this is how it works. You work with the producer, you work with you work with Fred. Fred knows the songs inside out, we talk about what we want to communicate to the musicians, some charts are made out, and the only guy who's playing is the bass player who made the charts. He's the only one who's heard the songs until you're in the studio. Now we're we're we're in a big studio, and all these musicians come in. They have not heard a thing. And then you play the demo and you talk to them about what you want, and then they all kind of pow wow and they're talking. How are we gonna approach this? And then they kill it. But the thing that was that I knew was gonna happen because you told me this is how it happens. Okay. What I didn't expect was how much they loved playing the songs. Wow. I still get goosebumps. They still contact me about it. They loved the songs, and I'm saying, Are you kidding me? Really? So that was the that was the you know, the ultimate of that kind of, okay, all right. So we're doing it, right? And and and you know, so between their great playing, Fred's great production, you know, other stuff happened, you know, the main tracks are laid down by the whole band, then you bring in the pedal seal and this and that, and the background singers and and do it, and it all happens pretty quickly, and he just did a marvelous job. Um, so that that album's called Bring on the Storm. It does exist on all the places you might look for such an album. It you can also come just to my uh Woodstovestudios.com, which I invite especially my northeast uh listeners to know about it, because you know you might come around the Cape or the Vingard sometime, and we have concerts here every month, and we record the concerts, by the way, and then the whole other thing. And yeah, well talk about talk about that because that does kind of lead you into the other thing that you do. Yeah. So okay, so here I was now uh you know in this place and you know before and after that great album experience. And I started having regular concerts uh once a month, generally the first Sunday. First one was Kate Taylor, and it was uh pretty much exactly four years ago. We're we're celebrating our fourth anniversary on this July 5th, uh this show uh on this Sunday. And you know, it was very well received, you know, um having another place, but not just a place, a true listening room. There are a few. There's a place Pathways on the Island, which is a great true listening room, as opposed to seeing folks in a bar or in a restaurant and you know, the the typical venues that that you can generally get work. And people come here just to listen. And I set it up as a recording studio, and I was recording all the shows just to do it anyway. And then about uh a year into it, um had a conversation with PJ Finn, who's the uh director of MVY Radio. Uh, and you know, MVY is uh very much committed to promoting local talent and the community scene. And I was talking to him about what was happening here and wondering whether there might be a way to work together, and he just jumped on it. Um and it was already kind of the strategy was already in place. I was already recording the shows. And so uh about three years ago, um I started broadcasting the one show that I recorded a month at the end of the month. So I was on every the last Sunday of uh of every month at seven o'clock. And um but then things kind of developed and gee, it's almost been a year by the fall, we decided to make it weekly. And in order to make it weekly, unless I started doing a lot of shows, which I think is more than than than I'll ever do, although who knows? Sometimes I do more than one, but I had a thought that that I got support on doing, which is gee, George, something which you have uh a bit of experience about. Um talking to musicians about their music. Absolutely. And what a great thing to do. So uh so uh the artists that play on a given Sunday, uh if they're on island, they just come back. If they're off island, I just put them up here for a night. Uh and we we just do a deep dive into their recorded music, not what they did here live. And whatever it is they'd like to talk about. And we listen to it together and talk. And um I've been having a blast doing it.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

So tell everybody um where, what time, how can they hear it? Okay, this is this is how.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Um it's broadcast in in real time Sundays at 7 p.m. on MVY radio. Now that's streamable. If you go to MVYradio.org and you want to hear the show just like you would if you were listening on the radio, there's a listen, there's a listen now tag. Right. But in addition to that, MVY archives the show. Beautiful. I must say it it's a little user unfriendly. Um so I'm going to archive them as well. I'm gonna um put them on my YouTube channel with a link off of my website. Fantastic. But between between one or the other or both, um, you know, uh people can listen to actually every MBY show, whoever the DJ was, uh going back many years. And um so that's that's what um that's what's going on with the radio show. That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

So you're you're doing you're doing all these things that you've always wanted to do. Yes, sir. And and the beautiful thing, what I see is that you're giving back to the community also. Thanks. Which is which is wonderful because you can there's so many venues that have closed and so many, so fewer places to play now for the working musician. Yep. And anytime you can do something like what you're doing, I I commend you for that. Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

It's a total joy to be able to do it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to talk a little bit more about songwriting before I ask you to close us out. Sure. Because one of the things that I noticed on your album, which again is fantastic, is all the different genres that you go into. You're not you're not, let's say, not typecast, but you don't pigeonhole yourself into one. And so in the production phase of the album, was any of the talk about a particular song and how what genre you should go into? You've got ballads, you've got some country chops, you've definitely got some jazz chops, you got blues, bluegrass. Little rock and roll. Little rock and roll. I have that actually put down here. The title track, Bring of the Storm, is a bit of a rocker. Yeah. Yeah. How do you how do you go about when you sit down? Let's sit, let me ask you this. When you sit down to write or whatever your process is, what goes through your head? Do you um are you one of these guys who gets on his iPhone and uh records little tidbits or something and goes back to them? I remember last year when I met you in the studio, you told me you play your guitar for four hours a day. At least. At least. So during that time, what happens? Do you come up? Are you are you are you always looking for a riff or something like that? Boy, a lot of wonderful questions in in the question.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

In the one question. No, I love it. I I love it. Um I will kind of try and go to go about it this way. Um I'm gonna actually kind of start with what the first question was. As I was making the album, what were the thoughts about the different genres? And one of the things that made me so comfortable with Fred was he clearly recognized that this is all over the musical landscape, and he said, That's you. He said, What ties it all together is you. So he didn't try and and and and you know uh finesse it the way that you know if you're thinking uh the uh the goal here is to sell streams or sell C Ds, then most people absolutely say this is what I'm going for, right? But it was not my goal. Um if it happened, uh wonderful, especially if it led to to touring. Who did this for you? I I did it uh to make a work of art, right? Yes. So and he was all about that. Um and and uh and in no small part because he knows that it's near on impossible to really sell a lot of stuff, no matter how much you try and do it, right? Um so so he didn't push it. The only thing he did was if I had two or three songs, for instance, Lazy Joe, I've always loved Lazy Joe, but I had two other songs that are sort of similar, uh country bluesy swing songs, and he didn't want a third one. But that's not the same as saying we're trying to get this niche. He he sort of welcomed everything. And then in terms of my general songwriting uh process, it's starting to change. But what it was for uh a really long time, and you know, this album has songs that I started when I was 17 and I'd written up to 23, for the vast majority of those songs, they all came in dreams.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

I remember reading that. And I have to tell you, I'm very angry.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

You said that last year last year.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

I'm very angry because I hear this from from a few artists, not a lot. The woman that I play with, Louise Coombe, yeah, woke up one day with a full song and everything, and I looked at her and I like, I really hate you.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

So tell me, tell us about this.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

I'm not I'm not sure exactly how I understand it. Except, you know, uh psychiatrist kind of thinking in these terms, the unconscious is a big, powerful place. And and no matter how schooled you are in music, letting the unconscious come through has a lot to do with successful creativity. But I wasn't schooled. I was almost anti-schooled, uh, where I had forgotten everything I learned. It was a whole part of that way of responding to the not pleasant stuff that happened when I was a kid. And so I'd write songs and not know the chords that I was playing. When I when I wrote um, you know, that jazz song, um uh Our Vineyard Home, I had no idea what chords they were. And so that's cool, but it's also really kind of limiting. It does. You know, so you you you you know, you want to you want to do more with that.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Yeah, because sometimes you're looking for a change.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

You're looking for a change, and you want to have a language to to to do it. So that's starting to happen. And um the that last thing you mentioned is definitely a place where a lot of my songs now come from. Rifts that just pop out while I'm playing, but usually surprising. Something, oh, wait a second. And so um many of the more recent songs, well, Bring on the Storm was one. Yeah. Um the two new ones that I recorded, I had the the chance to go back to Nashville uh and um record one that I'm gonna be, you know, closing the three songs with called Every Demon and another called Here Now were examples. You know, it it it came out while playing the guitar. Here now, even more specifically, an example of a guitar riff defining what's gonna happen next, you know, in a more traditional kind of way.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Do you write it all on the piano anymore?

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Yes, in the future. Right. Because I'm playing so much guitar, but but I I definitely um well uh you know, it depends on anymore. Uh several of the songs on the album were written on the piano relatively recently, like that um uh The Man I Might Have Been.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Right, which I wanted to talk about because I actually love that song. Oh, thank you. It really it really it really touched me.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

Uh thank you. Well, you know, The Man I Might Have Been was a kind of a recap of Lazy Joe. Lazy Joe, I'm 17 saying, you know, don't be afraid, do it. And I kind of put it off. Man I Might Have Been was I'm doing it. And and it it it it came from the reality. What had happened was this studio went up, which was more of a surprise to me than a than a plan, the way it all came out. And then I got all the recording stuff in, and you're gonna hate me. I woke up with everybody's got a dream and a passion they can call their own. And it and it just came out about being the man I might have been, right? Now just gonna, you know, take the chance and do it. And um Lucky as as Bob would say, I can't help it if I'm lucky. Yeah, because this is the luckiest thing that could have ever happened, that that this all came to place.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

It hit me because um in in in in some ways you and I are are similar, where you know we kind of put our music career, so to speak, or our music ambitions on hold. And I'm kind of like doing like the same thing that that you're doing. And doing it great. Making music, thank you. Yeah. And um and and we're both doing the same thing. We're conducting interviews, we're giving back to the community.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

A little like I'm looking in a mirror right now. Yeah. I mean, you're sitting, this is the setup that I use with these mics sitting here with these shares when I do the interviews, right? And uh it clearly there's uh You're on the other side of it. Yeah, I well yeah, I know, I like it actually, but there's a place that we've gone to that uh it's a nice place. And like you say, it's it's a gift, you know, it's a gift to the person that gets to express themselves. It is people who get to find out about you know, artists and artistry in general.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

You know, I happened I happened upon I used to have a radio show out of Pauling, New York on Pauling Public Radio called the Songwriter's Block.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

And which is basically, you know, I got this opportunity and I took over for a couple of other guys, and they were just spinning CDs and drinking bourbon in the studio. And I'm like, I don't want to do that. Yeah, I want to interview people. And growing up, probably you and I the same way, we listened to AM radio to start off with. Yep. But then we started listening to FM radio, yeah, and we listened to uh WNEW and all these places, and we we listened to these DJs conducting interviews. Yep, and I loved it. Yep. I wanted to know as much as I could about the artist, and that's that's probably why I'm doing this now. Great. Yep. Totally with you.

SPEAKER_01 43:15

You know, totally with you. And I've said that. I said that to PJ when when we started talking about doing the show. I said, I grew up on this, and I've always loved it, and you know, the opportunity to to jump into that world. Yeah, exactly that.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

And and the the thing is also today, this world doesn't exist as much. Yeah, there are other podcasts out there, but radio, of course, you guys are lucky up here in in the vineyard. Yeah, you've got a great radio station with eclectic music, but that is not the norm any at all. I know, you know, so it's uh it just is different. But anyway, I want to thank you for inviting me into your studio to interview you. I've really, really enjoyed this and getting to know you more and listening.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

to your music and again tell everybody where they can listen to your music well for one they they can go to woodstowstudios.com and if you press uh if you press on uh press actually you'll there there my albums there with with the biography you can stream um uh bring on the storm if you want to you know stream it elsewhere or download it it's on all the spots Spotify and Bandcamp and and Amazon and anywhere else I do have two new ones that are coming out um and one of them I'm gonna play for you now. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

And uh you know we talk about the streaming platforms and uh the last show that I had recorded with my buddy Dave Goldenberg I came up with a line called Pennies from Spotify from Spotify and we threw it out there when when the show airs we told people if you write a song called Pennies from Spotify we're gonna take the best one and we're gonna we're gonna put it on the air.

SPEAKER_03 45:00

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

So yeah we're gonna do that. But I also found out as of today this recording is is June 30th and um I found out recently that the streaming service title T I D I L are you familiar with that? Yeah I actually I use it a bit yeah you do so there they just came out with something and said there will be no AI music on their platform.

SPEAKER_01 45:23

Right on title. Exactly right on title exactly oh I'm glad I support them they're my main listener um and it's better it's better listening it's higher fidelity that's how I got into it in the first yeah yeah yeah again everybody this is Peter Halprin on Acoustic Northeast and you're gonna close us out with a song but not before thanking you every bit as much as you thank me for doing what you're doing bringing me into it and I didn't even have to travel I mean you know oh you got off easy how much you didn't have to come down to Booster New York thanks everybody for listening to Acoustic Northeast Peter Halpern is gonna close us all with a tune and he's gonna intro it and um as he said before it's a newer tune that is going to be coming out with soon.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

So tell us about it Peter.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

So the song is called Every Demon Fears They Are a Saint And you know we were talking about songwriting process in some ways this this is the most unusual piece of work that I've ever done. It's hard to put it in in in words I I don't really know where this song came from.

SPEAKER_02 46:44

And it took me a little while to accept that it was a song uh it's hard to describe but but uh I'm glad I did when the night sweeps down like an angel to shield us from the light when our tears rain down like their cannonball to keep us in the fire when our greed becomes empty and it leads us to restraint the know why every demon feels they are the same when our suffering creates such be in the masterpiece it pains when our grief brings back lost memories so distant and so faint when our prisons set our spirit found freedom from strength while every demon fears hear the prayer hear the prayer I've been listening to some music I hear chords of hope and fear I hear the dissonance of evil right before graceful love and I'm trying to decipher what it is and what it ain't and to know why every demon feels they are the same why every demon knows they are a saint beautiful extremely talented man fantastic we're sitting here doing exactly what we want to be doing right now.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

Yeah right absolutely so what else you can't beat it. You really can