Peter Walker
Live at Third Man Records
scum stats: 100 copies on split color, the rest on black…
Peter Walker recently had his house in Woodstock, NY burn down.
https://www.gofundme.com/
Having had something very similar happen to me ten years ago, it’s impossible to tell you how much this truly sucks.
If you don’t know, Peter is the last of the great original psychedelic folk guitarists. The world of John Fahey, Sandy Bull, Robbie Basho, he was a player in back then in the Sixties. He’s helped inspire modern folks like William Tyler, Jack Rose, Ben Chasny/Six Organs of Admittance, etc.
Peter Walker is very, very important and I STILL don’t think the man has received his proper due.
When I think back on his live performance at TMR (and similarly, his live performance a few months earlier at the Nashville Quaker Meeting House) I’m just flooded with the feels in my chest of being left completely agog.
If ever a proper time to use the word “virtuoso” for a guitar player, this is it.
Peter’s mastery of open-tuned guitars in the hypnotic raga style, to the flowery, soft, nylon string flamenco style…I honestly think he is the best guitar player I will ever see in my lifetime.
When he played Third Man, the original idea was for him to do direct-to-acetate, with one side being 4-5 songs and the other side being a 20-minute-long improvised raga.
This was my idea. What can I say, I like to overdo things.
He walked it back (wisely, to be honest) and decided he wanted to showcase a lot of music he has with vocals (a LOT of his stuff has historically not had singing with it) and record to tape so he could edit, if necessary.
We rented a piano, he instructed us to tell the piano tuner to have it “tempered to C” which, the tuner said, he’d never been asked to do before in his illustrious career of Nashville piano tuning.
The plan was still to do the show with the idea of dedicated 20 minutes each for both sides to start, and then he could do an encore or whatever. About two songs in, he gave the metaphorical “fuck it” and just let go. Marijuana may have had something to do with it.
I think he did THREE encores. The man could not get enough. The CROWD could not get enough. I think the show clocked in at an hour and 45 minutes.
Just one man, a guitar, a piano. That’s it. The crowd was enraptured from start to finish.
When he walked off-stage, in a sweat, I asked him “What happened to the plan? You know, record the songs for the LP as the first 40 minutes?” he said “ah, I’m sure there’s a good 40 minutes in there somewhere.”
And sure enough, there was. His solo acoustic pieces are as pastoral and welcoming as you could imagine. His vocal pieces, particularly his covers of of Judy Mayhan’s “Turning Round in Circles” and Raul Danks’ “Nightingale”, are achingly evocative.
“Me and My Lady”, probably my favorite song of his, goddamn, it’s just absolutely magical. Transports you out of those dull gray days. When he sings out “Has anyone seen our freedoms?” it felt like a shot of truth to the heart. I felt electrified.
I mean, how badass are you when you’ve got an album cover that’s just a photo of yourself and Bill Kunstler hanging out at the Garwood Mansion?
To top it all off, the album ends with “Chandranandan” a song written by Ali Akbar Khan’s father, that is absolutely EVERYTHING I wanted from my suggested twenty-minute improv raga. Peter killed it with the verve of a man a quarter his age.
I am SOO proud to have this record on TMR and really hope more people will discover it, especially in light of his current predicament.
I’ve got the last ten copies of the black-and-blue split color here pulled from my closet. Anyone who donates $70 to his Go Fund Me gets one sent to them from Third Man.
If you’re crazy enough to want a test pressing, donate $140 and we’ll send you the test pressing straight to your door. I’ve only got five of those.
Send your proof of donation to inquiries@thirdmanrecords.com
There’s never a good time for a fire, but Peter is closing in on 80 years old next month and I’d like to do our small part to help the guy.
Rock and roll.
