Glorious Gretchen Peters returns to play at Arts Festival

Date Published: 12-Jul-2012

Grammy nominated Gretchen Peters plays Kelly’s Bar on Monday, July 23 as part of this year’s Galway Arts Festival.

The singer/songwriter who has carved out her niche in country and folk music was born in New York but moved to Nashville in the late eighties, when artists like Steve Earle and Nanci Griffith were bucking the trend of writing songs for big stars to perform. In Nashville, the roles of ‘singer’ and ‘songwriter’ are often seen as two very different things.

“It was confusing to me when I first moved there, because there was this idea that you were one or the other,” Gretchen recalls. “I think Nashville’s a little less that way [now] but there’s still that tendency to put songwriters who have had commercial success into a box.”

Gretchen’s personal experience informs her work. This is especially the case with her latest record, Hello Cruel World. The songs were written during a tumultuous 12-month period when devastating floods hit Nashville and there was the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the effects of which Gretchen could see from her cottage in Florida. Also, during this period a close friend of 30 years took his life.

“If ever there was an album that was all about songs that needed to come out, it was that one,” Gretchen says. “The songs were written, for the most part, in one year in two songwriting sessions. I poured it out; I had an incredibly tumultuous year in 2010 and I knew I had to write about it. Everything that happened, good and bad and in-between, had to inform all these songs.”

Doors 8pm, tickets €17.50.