In a quiet studio/living room late at night, lyrics flow quickly and seamlessly around the quiet strumming of an acoustic guitar. The song comes all at once but it is a hard process. The voice being channeled is that of a 12 year old girl who disappeared from her Nashville neighborhood without a trace four years earlier. The songwriter isn't always sure what to do with songs like these. They are painful, almost spiritual songs and they demand to be given voice. Ed Pettersen's latest, The New Punk Blues of Ed Pettersen, finds Pettersen singing the blues, the blues of the world around him and the internal blues that he is leaving behind. "A pretty home like ours comes down, makes me so sad"(Baghdad). It is also a celebration of sorts, of life and its joys and little ironies such as finding an uncle you never knew existed. "I often thought about home and how to explain why, but every draft I'd write them, turned into a bigger lie" (June, 1945). Ed Pettersen grew up in a working class Italian immigrant family with a strong sense of tradition, their outlook based on faith and hard work. His father was a wanderer and adventurer who never really settled into family life. Ed was the eldest of six and covered his shyness and poetry writing by blasting away on the hockey rink. Music had its place in his dreams, but despite some early jazz studies and the requisite high school band Ed received little encouragement from those close to him. And so music took a back seat for a while to hockey, whose competitive, macho essence kept everyone happy, including Ed, who played well enough to make a national junior all-star squad. Most of his teammates moved on to the NHL; Ed might have too, if not for a shattered elbow that pulled him permanently from the ice. During his recovery Ed spent two years in Japan and then came back to the States for a whirlwind of creative activities: sales, copywriting, film work, and more music, all of which, to his surprise, he did rather well. Eventually he chose his first love music as his main focus, a decision that led to the well-received acoustic Folk disc Desperate Times in 1995 and the Alt-Country classic Somewhere South of Here (Ed Pettersen & The High Line Riders) in 1997. Ed recalls his early recording experiences on Desperate Times. "Halfway through my own efforts, Dave Kincaid of the Brandos took me under his wing. Scott Kempner, my songwriting mentor, was touring with The Brandos at the time. Scott and I had met at a gym in NYC and bonded over Yankee baseball and music. Scott taught me songwriting but Dave taught me the studio and the discipline of a working musician." With Kincaid's training under his belt, Pettersen released the Gavin charting Somewhere South of Here to glowing reviews in Country Music Magazine, New Country and No Depression. Surprisingly for a newcomer from New York, Pettersen earned a top spot in Country Line Dance clubs around the country with the track "DWIOU", as well as placement on a Universal Records Hot Hits compilation. Nashville, that mythical place where one could find talented mandolin, fiddle, and steel guitar players to interpret the sounds in his head, was calling to Ed. Various projects, including producing Liz Graham's debut record and forming the rock group The Strangely's with Pete and Mike Abbott, who played with Ed as The High Line Riders, kept Pettersen busy in the New York area for a time. Then a surprise visitor dropped in and literally changed his life. This little surprise was a rare genetic disorder that drops in every now and then, long enough to disrupt things for a while before going back into hiding. Luckily for Ed, he was already well into music by the time it hit. "Music was the one thing that kept me going during a time of intense pain and confusion. For me, music was a more effective painkiller than anything else I've ever tried. I focused on getting better and better at my craft because that was all I had to look forward to." And so, around 2001 and '02, as Pettersen describes it, "I started hitting my stride, with my own voice as a writer. People had been comparing my music to Bruce Springsteen, but now they were starting to say, "That sounds like Ed Pettersen." Not coincidentally, he pulled up his East Coast stakes at that same time and moved to Nashville. Settling alone into an apartment ,his wife would follow later from Pennsylvania, he began writing and cutting the new material. The songs came almost too fast; they'd shake him from sleep long enough to jot a few notes, and then a few hours later, as the sun rose, he'd flesh them out on bedside demos. After a few months Pettersen started showing his work to his new friend and neighbor Bob Olhsson, a world-famous engineer who helped define the Motown sound of the sixties. Olhsson, who had also relocated to Music City, made suggestions and helped connect Pettersen to a whole new layer of musical talent. "I started recording the album on my own in my home studio. But as I worked with Bob the changes were immediate," Pettersen says. "The more I listened to Bob, the better the music got. The mixes improved. The vocals improved. With the pressure of co-writing on Music Row and just being in Nashville, the songs improved, I mean, even the hat-act songs you hear at songwriter rounds here are very well crafted. Some musicians end up intimidated by Nashville, but I loved it! My songs not only started getting better, some of them were getting more socially conscious than anything I'd written before. Everything, the songwriting, the production, the heart, came together." With that, Pettersen hit the studio to finish the record, where once more Olhsson played a critical role, at the console but also on the phone as he lined up an assembly of demigods: session aces David Hungate, Catherine Styron-Marx, and Ed Greene, Motown bass icon Bob Babbitt, and the incomparable guitarist Reggie Young. Pettersen's irrepressible pop influences were also aided from across the pond by bass player Leif Johansen (of A-HA) and former Average White Band drummer Pete Abbott from their Norwegian studio base. For all the polish they brought to the table, this assembly of veteran players infused Pettersen's songs with garage-band empathy, balancing insight and innocence in proportions that even studio pros find hard to achieve. And that, essentially, is the story of The New Punk Blues of Ed Pettersen. There's more to Ed's story but he doesn't want to bore you. We haven'½t even touched on his second-degree black belt, the legendary musicians he's written with recently, the career he's building as a producer in Nashville, or even his magnum opus in progress, production of The Song of America a history of the American people's music going from the early seventeenth century to the present. At the end of the day, for Pettersen all that matters is the song. "When the audience is breathing with me, I know I got it right." "His infectious good spirits and engaging set of solo acoustic Rock n Roll brought smiles to even the most tired and testy weekend warriors." No Depression #41, Sept/Oct 2002 "Roots-rockin and country-rollin' is one way to sum up Ed Pettersen's fine approach to laying down some great songs." Gavin, July 1997 "the personal warmth with which Pettersen creates will call to mind the traveling troubadour of a Woody Guthrie." John Blenn Long Island Entertainment, Oct 1997 "John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen, and Elvis are abducted by aliens who not only probe them but mix and match their parts." Fairfield County Weekly, Aug 1997 "Strong songwriting and good rock n roll chops dominate this collection..." (CRLM) Dirty Linen, Dec 1997 www.edpettersen.com www.myspace.com/edpettersen | |
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Uncommon Ground Past Show Dates | |
| 2007-06-08 (408 days) | divineMAGgees |
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| 2007-02-10 (526 days) | Catsplash! |
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