Music & Conversation with Joe Peters

SPEAKER_00 0:05

You're listening to Gramps Just Make Shit Up.

SPEAKER_04 0:08

You should listen to Just My Gramps.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hey there. And thank you for listening to Gramps Just Make Shit Up. I hope you'll be entertained with the original Americana and folk music created by the talented carbon bass singer songwriters that we talk with. I'm your award-winning host, Lou Gramps Cunio, and I have four grandchildren, Emma, Sam, JD, and Andy. They will most likely never listen to this podcast. You may also be exposed to some obscure trivia that, should you repeat it, will cause your friends and family to ask, where the hell did you hear that? But don't tell them. Oh, actually, I made that part up about award winning. Although I did win a fire prevention coloring contest when I was in the first grade that garnered me a cool certificate that I still have and a silver dollar that I don't have. Let's get started. Greg Graffin, Bad Religion, Dexter Holland of The Offspring, Milo Ackerman, Descendants, Bill Bruford of the band Yes, Sterling Morrison of The Velvet Underground, Greg Turner, Angry Samoans, Peter Weller, you know the Robocop guy, and Joe Peters. What do all these entertainers have in common? Well, they all have PhDs. Brian May has a PhD in astrophysics. Our guest today, Joe Peters, has a PhD in natural resources management. However, after talking with Joe and getting to know him over the past few months, I gotta believe that somebody should afford him a PhD in music. He's a wonderful lyricist, songwriter, he's masterful on the guitar, and he has a way of producing songs and albums with depth, texture, and a lot of feeling. I think you're gonna enjoy this conversation.

SPEAKER_03 2:12

I sing it the way I sing it because I sing it that way. I know it's not for everybody, so I will not be hateful if you go. Just give me one more show, two or three or four. If I want any more, I'll let you know.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Joe Peters, or should I say Dr. Joe Peters? You know, I had students that asked me that and I said, just Joe.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

I gotta ask, what is your first memory of music? That would be, you know, the music you hear at church, the choir, that sort of thing seeps into your consciousness, these voices and all. But uh beside that, the first music I really liked was music that my dad would play at home. He had eclectic tastes, I would say. But one thing he really liked was uh folk music from the early sixties. So it was it was the brothers four and the new Christie minstrels and the limelighters and those sorts of things. He would play those records. And um I really think I I liked the soothing gentleness of the folk music and I and as I do today. So probably earliest recollections of music would be his records. And it certainly accounts for about half of my musical taste in folk. And about how old were you? I'm gonna say, you know, in the tweens and thereabouts, and then by the time I know when I was fourteen, my mom bought a guitar for herself. And she didn't really have the musical talent, uh, she would say that herself, and gave the guitar a try, but like so many, the fingering hurt because pressing down those strings on the neck, and I don't think she gave it enough time to build up calluses. So she abandoned that later and then picked up the the dulcimer, the lap dulcimer and hammered dulcimer, which she did the rest of her life. But once she gave up that guitar, I I globbed onto it, and uh and that kind of at age 14, my I started tinkling around, and then in high school a buddy showed me the you know the G C D and I I was off and running. Those are the only three chords I know. It's great. My my musical mentor has a song where he says, She plays G C and D, the only three chords you know. And then he goes through all these songs, Smoke on the Water and and Led Zeppelin and other stuff, all using just G C and D.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Well, I guess I've learned enough. Uh of course you've been playing music for a long time now. And when did you decide to write your own lyrics?

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Yeah, so I did I played music, you know, from fourteen on up until in my forties, playing other people's music. I honestly, Lou, thought I didn't have a creative bone in my body with regards to music. I had a college roommate who wrote songs daily, just never clicked with me, and we would do his songs and we would do covers and so on and so on and so forth. And then with my with my academics, I was always writing scientific papers and and those types of that type of writing. But in the uh mid-90s, I left my academic position and and joined my wife overseas, and suddenly without the constraints of academic writing, my writing turned towards songs, and I distinctly remember I was actually with a friend on the top of Mount Bromo. It's an active volcano in East Java, because that's where my wife had her postdoc. And I had an Indonesian phrase book, and I was inspired by the moment. It was sunrise at the top of this the Mount Bromo is the name of it, uh this volcano. And I just started writing some lyrics down. I don't know exactly where they came from, but you know, you've listened to music all your life. You kind of even subconsciously get the idea that this is what a song sounds like. It's you know, verse, chorus, maybe a bridge, these sorts of things. So that was my my first writing. I was uh 42 years old. It kind of unleashed a floodgate, and now I don't know, 15 albums or so later, still writing.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Well, that is quite prolific uh when you're you're talking about uh the other things that are in your life as well. How do you make time for that?

SPEAKER_02 6:20

Well, mm that you know, you write songs too, Luther. You you get it, you know, it's just kind of something that's just part of you. You know, you get up and you breathe and you write. And initially, I will say, I did write lyrics first, uh, mostly because the situations I was in, this was mostly in Indonesia and and China and Vietnam, and I was often without an instrument. But those experiences prompted me to write, and I would write down lyrics and later put them to music. Since that time, uh I'm almost never without an instrument, and so they usually evolve together these days, the music and words. Sometimes I'll I'll come up with the riffs first and get them recorded and later revisit them and come up with a song with with lyrics.

SPEAKER_00 7:06

But you bring up two interesting things. One of them is instruments and the other one is language. You say you rarely travel without an instrument. Uh do you play other instruments besides the guitar?

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Right. So I've got a little mandolin over here that I initially bought in I think 81 when I I look I went to China for a year, 81, 82, and you know, I had a big old guitar, but I didn't know how I was gonna really get that there safely. So I bought a mandolin because I knew I could stick it in the overhead bin on the plane. But I wasn't writing songs back then. I hadn't I was fifteen years still away from writing songs. So I've kept that mandolin around, played it off and on over the years, like I haven't picked it up in virtually five years that I've been here in California. But in the early 2000s, Dai was my wife was living in in Nairobi, Kenya, um, and I would go out to visit her for months at a time over a three-year period, and I would take the mandolin with me, again, because of its ease. And so I I wrote like three albums of songs on a mandolin. Only two of them ended up being mandolin songs, but you know, any instrument's good for for writing. I've I've written quite a bit on the mandolin, but it's been a while now. And ever since I bought a little Taylor GS Mini, it travels well on the plane too. It's small enough for the overhead bin. So I generally now have that guitar with me, and I've written a lot of songs on it.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Well, I have to confess that I followed your lead. Recently I was looking for another guitar that was a little smaller format.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

Oh, you you bought the GS Mini, Lou?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

It's hanging on the wall right there. Oh, how splendid. I I think you'll like it. I I love mine. Uh it's it's it's beautiful toned, but more than anything, it uh it accommodates my belly. Uh you don't have that issue, but I do. I used to uh admire the ovation guitars and the the uh but I just couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_01 8:56

They just slide right off, don't they? It it it it intentionally you know slides flat. So yes. Soon it looks like you're playing a dobro. It's flat on your lap.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Yeah, that was a problem. But the other comment that you mentioned was language. I'm imagining just based on the little bit we've talked about, you speak Chinese?

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Mandarin Chinese is pretty much a second language for me. Yeah. And do you write music in Mandarin? You know, actually I've learned four languages over my life. English, of course, the first, but uh also Spanish, French, and and Chinese because of places I've worked and needed those languages. But interestingly, you know, and a lot of people, you know, even like Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits, he has a song called Je suis désolée, and it you know, it works just in works with this French phrase in the midst of a otherwise English song, and I really like it. It's just it's never occurred to me to do that, and I've never sat down and made myself do that. So no, I've never written in another language. I sing some songs in Chinese, but they're traditional folk songs, they're not songs I wrote. In fact, I have one I actually recorded and put on an album because uh it's just like, well, here's another aspect of me that my fans have never heard, and you know, it was fun to do. But no, I I don't. It's still a challenge. Uh I think I will at some point, but it hasn't happened yet.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

So French, Spanish, uh, Chinese, English, uh, those are the languages of the Olympic committee.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

So you knew that. I don't, but I can believe it because those those langu, those four languages, I'm not gonna say it's covers the globe, but it comes pretty close. It's only half the languages that Dai's learned over over the course of our 43 years together. But uh, she has uh a knack and a talent, and I I I not so much. Hey, do you have any musical influences? Uh yeah, you bet. I think we all do, and as I've mentioned, some of those early folk um influences from my father's music and and mom too. She became quite the folk musician playing the Appalachian dulcimer and the hammered dulcimer, so a lot of those traditional songs. Um as far as like being really excited about music, I'm gonna put it, of course, throughout the 60s, listening to Motown and and so on. Growing up in the Midwest, I would tune into WLS that's out of Chicago was, and there was a DJ everybody loved called Larry Loujack, and spun all the top 40 and a lot of Motown and grew up on that just loving it. And but then, you know, like about 1970, out comes things like Cat Stevens Tea for the Tillerman, you know, and the moody blues question of balance. And then we get into Pink Floyd and Deep Dark Side of the Moon and those sorts of things. So definitely Kat Stevens is one who totally turned me on in terms of the content of his lyrics. And and I don't know if you recall or not, but that album that he had called Tea for the Tillerman, he wrote when he was recovering from tuberculosis at uh an asylum. I think they called him a sanitarium because you would go there to recover from serious illness. And uh those those sort of introspective lyrics and his gentle approach to to instrumentation, acoustic guitars, acoustic piano, that sort of thing strongly appealed to me, but it had a bit of a rock sensibility. It wasn't my parents' music, it was our music. And so uh that's probably um one person, not even probably, I'd say Kat Stevens was probably my my greatest musical influence. Of course, it they evolve as you become acquainted with other artists and so forth, but also like the moody blues got me through many, you know, we all have times of uh less enthusiasm. Yeah, I wouldn't call it depression. I've never been depressed. It's just like times that are difficult, and and sometimes we turn to music to help us through those, and and definitely the moody blues just soothed me inside out. And so I think my own music is reflective of that in the sense that I don't even try. It's just I am a gentle voice, and I would like my music to soothe and comfort people.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Well, having experienced uh some of your recordings, but also your live performances there at the places like the mud puddle. Yeah, you have a your voice is very soothing and uh very comforting. Thank you. I love listening to to your songs, and and of course, in uh in this episode, we're gonna be listening to at least a couple of them because I want to make sure that our listeners have an opportunity to click the links on the show notes to go right to uh where we can find your music, and uh they'll see what we mean. Well, cool.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Thank you, Luke. I appreciate uh you helping me introduce my music to uh to other folks.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

It's an honor. It is an honor.

SPEAKER_02 13:28

Everybody wanna do what's right, everybody wanna save the day, everybody wanna sleep at night, everybody wanna sail away. Everybody wanna sail away, everybody wanna see, nobody wanna do what's wrong, nobody wanna lose control. Nobody wanna not be lost, nobody wanna sell.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

Nobody wanna serve Somebody wanna join the face Anybody wanna be the first Everybody wanna live anybody wanna free the joke Everybody wanna see, wanna see anybody wanna live, wanna live Everybody wanna go to heaven, nobody wanna go to hell. Somebody wanna throw a seven, anybody wanna ring a bell.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Getting into influences, is there a favorite chord that you automatically go to when you pick up the guitar and something's gotten you know rattling around in your brain? Do you have got a favorite chord?

SPEAKER_02 15:30

You know, um as I reflect more and more on it, I suppose if I listen to keys or whatever that I've written songs in, I'm often drawn to to B minor. I'm not exactly sure why. So if I'm writing a song in a minor key, that's often where I'll go. Otherwise, if it's a major chord, I'll often drop the E string down to a D and play in a D tuning. But even easier than that, I found in recent decades, I'm gonna say, is taking my Chaiser capo and capoing the the five bottom strings and then leaving that low E open. I don't put the capo on the low E, just on the other four, and I put it on the second fret. So then when you play a D chord position, it's an E, but you've got that booming E of it sounds like a dropped E tuning, if you will. So I I've used that a lot. So that's that's a favorite chord of mine. And when I discovered it and found out the bass sound that that can give you, I've you I've used that a lot.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

One of the things that I appreciate about your music is the opening riffs. I wanted to dig in a little bit about that. Because that's very different than the lyrics and the melody, of course. But it's the thing that oftentimes, and I'm right now I'm thinking of the Beatles, um, you know, had some riffs that were just earworms more than anything else.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Pull you right in, right off the bat. Exactly. So tell me your secret. Tell anybody. Lou, we're on a podcast.

SPEAKER_02 16:56

I think we're telling everybody. But you know, since we're in California, I can tell you, you know, I'll uh of an evening I'll often get stoned. And then I just pick up my guitar and just start noodling because I mean there's nothing I'd rather do than than than play on the guitar. And so I just start playing around, and if it if it sounds like something that might be usable, I'll immediately record the riff or the progression or whatever, however much has developed thus far on my little, you know, just voice memo app on the iPhone and grab those. So I have a bank of of riffs that that I've created. And and again, truly, it's mostly at night and mostly just very personal and private, just noodling around. And at that's my happy spot. I I love doing that. I love seeing what comes out of that process. And then later, sometimes I'll get the the notion right then and there that this is a song and I want to work with it right now. Otherwise, I'll revisit them and see where they go. During this pandemic, I released a double album called Collaboration. And because we were all cloistered and sequestered, I bought some home recording equipment and folks with friends and so on. Um, I I reached out to them and said, If you've got lyrics or poems, you know, send them to me. I'm happy to work with them because and I found such joy. It was a double album, and I I wrote very few lyrics for it. I have a few songs on there, but it's mostly other people's songs, but I did the music for them. And I've really have enjoyed now working a lot with lyricists and putting somebody else's lyrics to music. One, they're not musicians, so they they need help. Two, I just so thoroughly enjoy the musical side of songwriting. I've I've written a lot of wordy, heavy stuff over the decades, and to step back from my own storyline and to let somebody else's story come through a song that I've had a hand in. That's just right now it's the epitome for me. I just thoroughly enjoy that. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

You just had a quote that I'm I'm gonna hang on to. They're not musicians, they need help. They they would admit that, though. That must have been uh very satisfying to open up your world to other people and the words that they can create. And I've listened to all of the album. It's beautiful. I mean, it really is interesting to to see that. And of course, that opens up some vulnerability to the people that are collaborating with you because as you pointed out, they need help. And uh so how did that work?

SPEAKER_02 19:22

You know, it's all personal relationships, I think, are based on a mutual trust and respect. And of course, that's earned and not automatic. So over the course of experimenting, you do even maybe sometimes before you go duly noted, I don't think I can really work with this person because they really want it a certain way. And I wouldn't enjoy that. I don't know if I could do that even make it, you know, I want it this way. It's like, let's see where the song wants to go. So I've been very fortunate to have collaborators who are trusting and respectful. And when given free reign, it's just like, no, yeah, sure. I'll just I've got stacks here that I'm still working on as kind of a backlog of projects and things to work on. And you know, it's a subconscious process too. Sometimes just something will grab you and you go, This is what I need to be working on, you know, this set of lyrics. And often putting a guitar into a different tuning or something, that maybe one that I've not even used ever before will prompt something new and different. And that happened just last week with a set of lyrics my lyricist friend sent to me, put it in a C tuning, and it's like sounds really different. This will work with this song. So collaboration for me is just probably the epitome of musical joy. I like music, making music in private. I do it every single day. But then to be able to make music with others and even that creative process is really wonderful. The one thing that I've really never quite done is like what I saw in the Beatles Get Back documentary. I don't know if you've seen that or not, the one that's out on Disney Plus that Peter Jackson filmed, like a six hours. What I learned from that that the Beatles, I mean, they would come in with a vague idea, maybe, and they'd bounce things back and forth, and they'd just create nonsense stream of consciousness, and then sometimes something would stick, or it was such this iterative process between people who had mutual respect and trust with each other. And it I mean and look at the and listen to the songs, right? It's so it's like, oh man, I need to be less private and more open about this. So I did recently write a song with a friend back in Indiana. It was of course it's virtual, but the song's called Family Farm, and she grew up on a family farm. She's a third-generation family farmer, so she really helped me. She wrote a verse for it, or a half verse, and helped me on the chorus and so on. Forest welcomes autumn, leaves a shimmering hole. I'm walking through the gentle woods so far from Rogue. I know that I have found my way. I start. Stand alone there before me I can see the story of my home Granddad killed the late ground here But the bills kept on the near on the near family fine is by the thread collection day Drop the planet bottom land the floods at left is filled They read it for the harvest The Corn Cribs Bill the first follow this land of the crib first now been lost. This grandson forced to sell nothing sure except death and tax. Evening mostly on Wednesdays, and you can bring songs to them and get critiques and feedback and so on. And I've recently worked on a lot of songs uh with their help, and I do believe it makes them better, and you've got all this talent listening and offering ideas, you know, and it's still you still get to pick and choose what you want to use or not use from what they've suggested. But in the end, I do believe it it's a good thing for the song. So I'm I'm trying to open up, be less private and and more open to critique. I don't have much of an inner critic, I don't shut myself down at all. I've just never been that sort of person, so I think that's a key to my being prolific. On the other hand, as Dye often points out, Leonard Cohen took five years and wrote 300 verses to Hallelujah before he knew that song was finished, and it's a perfect song. She said, You're putting out an album so fast that your listeners can't even absorb it, and you've moved on to the next one. That's my nature, but you know, reigning in my nature might not be a bad idea.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

That's a challenge for many of us. Truly. How do you know when your song is done? Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

So that's evolving. So in the past, you know, there are people who who work and rework a song. I can see that Leonard Cohen's that type of person. Certainly Michael McNevin is that type of person. But I've I've listened to interviews with other folks that uh whose songs I admire. John Mellencamp is one of a fellow Hoosier. And I grew up on John's music, even when he was Johnny Cougar, you know, and performing there in Bloomington where I live. You know, he says, uh, I'm one of those writers, inspiration strikes and I write. And I don't go back and rework much stuff. And I've always been that kind of writer. Possibly because I want to just keep creating. And, you know, sometimes I'm sure my music suffers from not revisiting it and reworking it. But I'm evolving. We'll see.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Well, you're definitely an inspiration for budding songwriters like myself to hear the tips and tricks, shall we say. Uh because you haven't been doing it a long time, you're always second guessing yourself about uh you know how you do it. Well, especially I can't speak for for the people that started in younger in life where you're a lot more free, but I'm always judging myself and always unfortunately comparing. And that is, as I've learned, that is a way to sort of kill your creative spirit by you know doing any comparison, actually for anything.

SPEAKER_02 26:23

Couldn't agree more, Lou. It does carry over. Yeah. I've never been prone to comparing myself to others because I, you know, I knew I would always not not look good. Um but I I will I will say that early in my songwriting process, the first couple albums just came. I think I had, you know, 40 years of music bottled up and and you know, so it just flowed. But then, you know, things do slow down and you start experimenting. And I picked up a book called The Artist Way. It's written by Julia Cameron, who used to be married to Martin Scorsese, actually. So she's uh she's on a certain level and wrote this marvelous book called The Artist Way. It has a lot of information, but the important take home was something she called the morning pages. She said, get up in the morning before you do anything else, write three pages of stream of consciousness, just let it go. Everything, let your inner critic out on the page. The idea was that you would it's not a journal you're gonna share with others. You may never ever revisit it yourself either, but it's part of a subconscious process that lets the critic get out there on the paper. So then when you go to do your creation, you've already let it all out. It's the the critic's not there anymore. It's shut down and allows you to not second guess yourself and not, you know, stop the process before it even begins because you're saying, oh, this isn't going to be good enough or whatever, you know. I found doing the morning pages for a number of years was exceedingly helpful. And I've shared that with others too. The very first record I did was with some friends and including my college roommate, and there were six of us who contributed songs to an album called Collective Works from White River. He had a studio called White River in Indiana. But then I met this guy, Michael Kelsey, in Indiana. And the from the first time I saw him play, I go to myself, that's who I want to record with. And I had I had written about two albums worth of material overseas, like I said, in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and had made, I had a four-track recorder at that time. And I think having the ability to produce my own home recordings, multi-tracking, was essential in my songwriting process. It really allowed that next step. So now you've got a song, words, and lyrics, but what's it gonna sound like? You know, how how's it gonna be? How are you gonna actually work it out? And that recorder, it was a Yamaha four-track cassette recorder, allowed me to do that a lot. It was a really great experience just diving into that uh on my own. So I took these tapes to this Michael Kelsey and when I first met him, and I said, Hey, I've been doing some songwriting, I'd love to record with you. I know that you, I told him, I said, you used to have a professional recording studio. It was called Kelsey's Playground. It was back in the 80s when hair bands were big, and he was in a band with Shannon Hoon. He's a kind of a famous Hoosier who unfortunately uh met his demise by his own, anyway, an overdose back in the 90s. A band called um Blind Melon, and they had some some major hits on the radio. Michael actually was out on tour opening for them when Shannon overdosed. But I knew he had had this professional recording studio, but I knew he'd discontinued it. But I thought, well, maybe he'd record. He likes it. So he went on a road trip, came back, and said, let's do it. And so I've I've never looked back. He's been my musical muse, mentor, partner, collaborator, extraordinaire, and he's one of the most unique guitar players you will ever see. He's his recordings are fine, but he needs to be experienced live. He's uh so in the moment. He makes up songs on the fly. Just a remarkable artist. I have nothing but the deepest admiration. In 2004, he won Guitar Centers. They used to have a contest, I don't know if they still do. It was called Guitar Mageddon, and it was starts out local and then regional and then a national competition for the best unsigned guitarist in America, you know, someone who doesn't have a record deal. And in 2004, my friend Michael won that and performed at Eric Clapton's Crossroads down in Texas, I believe. So he's he's a local hero, definitely definitely a Hoosier treasure, and one of these uh players who does things that nobody else does. And I've just been very, I feel very blessed, fortunate in to have had this musical career with him. All of our albums are released as the Joe Die Warriors, Die being my wife and me being Joe. And people just called us that. We met in 1977 when the Jedi Knights from Star Wars were a big thing. You know, Star Wars just came out, and so people just started calling us Joe Die and then Joe Die Warriors. And so that just became the name that I've always used for for the albums I've done with Michael over the decades.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

It's a wonderful story. I'm sure that he has recordings himself that might be available people can find out. Oh goodness, he does, yes. And I think he dropped his name, people are gonna want to go, Well, what who's he talking about? So we need to uh make sure we include him. Careers that you've enjoyed and continuing to enjoy, do you think they feed one another in any way?

SPEAKER_02 31:13

Certainly. Um my my natural resources management work overseas led me into situations that prompted my earliest songwriting. As as I did mention, most of it was written overseas initially. So naturally, experiences that you're having overseas will, you know, inform your music. Living in in a rural area of China, I have a song called Bamboo Grove. It was inspired by my daily walks through this bamboo grove. Other songs, uh, there's another song I wrote called Golden Heart, and it was me witnessing my wife working with these villagers, and it just seemed to me she had this golden heart. So, work and music, since I started writing music after I sort of left work to some degree. They fed each other, but that one was sort of a springboard. I had uh all this interest in in nature and the environment, and and that those are strong themes through a lot of my music, the natural world, trees, forests, so forth come up in in my music all the time. And certainly having lived and worked abroad so much, uh, again, those international experiences uh are there in the music. You can hear them. There's a you know, sometimes it's very overt and obvious. I have a song on one album, the song's called Timpu. And Timpu is the capital of Bhutan. It's a tiny Buddhist kingdom nestled between China and India. And I had an opportunity to visit a friend who was working there um back in the late 90s. And again, I mean, it's this all this is gonna make me sound like a stoner, but cannabis grows all over naturally in the Himalayas, and uh so right all around his house is all this cannabis. I'd just go, you know, pick some and light up a bowl. And just sitting in the doorway, I just kind of this poem came to me, and then I kind of put a droning uh sort of instrumentation behind it. It's all about just what I was observing from this doorway of my friends in in Timpu, the capital of Bhutan. So most definitely it does work that that way, and and sometimes my songs will be part of a mm-what do we want? I don't want to say a crusade, but definitely, folks, let's wake up to what's happening to our natural world, or or we will, you know, lose it. And also, like, you know, I I used to teach at Grand Valley State University in in Michigan, and my favorite class of teaching was environmental ethics. And the field of ethics allows you to bring in all your influences in life: economics, political, religious, social, econom, you know, on and on. So it's a suite of things that inform your your view of nature and what your relationship with nature should be. So I I just I love teaching environmental ethics because often the students, you you would dive deeply into things that they'd never thought about, like where their food comes from and what about the ethics of farm factory farming and so forth. But in Southwest Michigan, my classrooms were almost evenly divided and pretty much split down the middle of the classroom. Over here were the Dutch Reformed Christians, and over here were the evolutionary biologists. And they they have pretty much very different views of of the world, how it was created, and what our relationship with the natural world should be. So we discuss all these questions, and they'd often look to the teacher for answers, you know. Um, but I've never been that kind of teacher, you know. Don't look to me for answers. Look, look inside yourself. These are your ethics. What do you I can just point directions and I can open up, you know, banks of knowledge for you. So I wrote a song called Did God Make You and Me? And it's about this debate about was Darwin right or or you know, are the fundamentalists right? You know, and and basically I said, Don't ask me. So absolutely. Um, those things have pretty much gone hand in hand, and and since I I really am retired now and have been for a good 15 years. My songwriting has gone, it's allowed me to go in different rec directions with my songwriting. And some of it's more domestic now because I've spent a lot more time in the U.S. now than than overseas. So it's an evolutionary process in itself.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

What do you think you have sacrificed, if anything, for the pursuit of creating music?

SPEAKER_02 35:22

It's uh I thought it was a wonderful question, and I'm really um pleased to be able to respond to it because I don't see it that way. You know, I've got to say that music has brought me nothing but benefit. I don't I don't every moment that I've spent doing music has been a pleasure to me. It's never never been work. Now, admittedly, I I've been in a position that I feel very fortunate. I've never had to make my living doing music. I'm sure that would be a different calculus for sure for those who who for whom it is a livelihood. For me, it's always been a passion. For for ten years it was a it was a hobby or passion that did was full-time, all-consuming. I played hundreds of shows, did, you know, done all these recordings over the years. But it was always a joy, a pleasure, and a privilege. I don't feel like I've ever sacrificed for music because it's just I in fact, I just feel so blessed that I had this previous career and it was so fulfilling and led me all around the world and so on. And then thanks to my, you know, my parents' aging and needing help, uh, it brought me back home and and what am I gonna do there? You know, I turned that my university asked me back, and I was thinking, well, Dye's overseas. If I go to Michigan, my folks are in Indiana, that doesn't make any sense. So I turned down the last offer they gave me and and just left academia and to to be with my folks, but before, you know, playing a few open mics, and then you know, people hear what you do and they say, Oh, you should check these places, they're booking, you know. So I you know, it snowballs, and uh, I was at a place where I could have a second career. I did nothing but music for 10 years in Indiana, and it was just the most uh you know incredible thing to me to be able to do what you've always admired and and dreamed of doing, and to be able to do it under the best possible circumstances where you can pick and choose and you have enough financial ability to to support yourself without making music that support. So uh no sacrifice here. Um I nothing but joy and benefit through music for me, every second, every moment, even schlepping heavy gear and all that. Heavy gear like that mandolin. That's that's one thing. But I I was in a folk trio with two gals um and marvelous folks, uh incredible singers, harmonies, and so forth, called Deep and Simple. And I did all the the the the schlepping of gear, they didn't have gear, so you know you know, 38-pound speakers and so on and so forth. But it's like, nope, that's what I do. This this is who I am and what I do. Was there a bass fiddle involved in any way? You know, that's that's one instrument that I have never except one time in the mud puddle, like for one song when Dawn was there with her stand-up bass when she first came into the to the mud puddle. I've never been able to play with this with a you know a bass fiddle, if you will. And still uh still on my bucket list.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

Yeah, she is amazing, isn't she? I see her slap that thing around a couple of times and she wields it like it's you know a ukulele. Boy, she plays the hell out of that thing. Totally.

SPEAKER_02 38:21

It's so so fun. So, and of course, she and her daughter had that porch thing going on during the pandemic where they would play from their porch in Alameda, and uh it was out on Zoom, and it was always fun to tune in because they're just sitting there, the daughter plays the fiddle, and then their their dog Shasta. Yeah. Always a major part of the trio.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

Yeah, they I think they entertained quite a few people during some very dark days. Uh, during this pandemic. Very much so. So is there anything else that you'd like to expose yourself with?

SPEAKER_02 38:52

Well, uh Lou, you've you've just done such a marvelous, comprehensive uh um journey here that uh I wouldn't have anything to add um because you've covered the bases and allowed me to speak way more than than I deserve.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

I really do appreciate your time, and I look forward to seeing you in person again here sometime soon. Well, I looked at my analytics uh not too long ago about the podcast, and I got like three or four listeners, so uh chances are the demand is gonna go way up here.

SPEAKER_01 39:22

So you're preaching to the choir, Lou. Well, we do what we gotta do. It's an imperative, you know.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

I think when I wake up, I can't I cannot not go hiking and uh and I can't not pick up a guitar and create. I appreciate you so much and we'll look forward to hearing from you. Same. It's mutual, Lou. Thanks so much. It's been a blast talking to you. All right, brother. You take care of yourself. Oh, you too. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

Love to hang around and talk a little more, but it's show time. I have to go. But it's show time. I have to go.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

But it's show time. Well, that was a fun and informative time for me to talk with Joe. I hope you enjoyed it as well. I think you'll agree that any interview that includes lessons in geography, linguistics, natural resources management, environmental ethics, well, that's time well spent. Not to mention learning the potential benefits of cannabis consumption. And what about the pop culture history references, including terms like hairbands? And of course, we learned about music writing. Our conversation includes the names of other singer-songwriters, Don Ellerbeck, stand-up bass player out of Alameda, California, Niles, California's own talented singer-songwriter Michael McNevin, who also, by the way, hosts the shows at the mud puddle that Joe mentioned, and of course, master guitarist Michael Kelsey. The songs you heard in this podcast included East Glacier during the introduction, Sail Away, One of a Kind, and One More Show. Check the show notes for links that will take you to the music of Joe Peters. So I was recently admitted to the hospital. I told everyone not to worry, I'd be out in a few days. My granddaughter Emma, she stopped by for a visit. While I was really happy to see her, she spent most of her time looking at her phone. Finally, I had to say something. Your generation relies way too much on technology. She looks up from her phone slowly. She looks around the room and she says, No, Grant, your generation relies too much on technology.