Posts from the songwriting front line – some insights into Gretchen Peters’ latest batch of songs

Life is pretty busy between work, family, gigs, listening to music and general stuff so it’s not often I get beyond the selected blogs and the live discussions here on the ND site.

The other day, on account of being laid up with a heavy cold, I had a rummage through the blogs and came across Gretchen Peters post Woman On The Wheel where she provides some background to this song which will be on her new record, “Hello Cruel World”.  Not a dissertation by any means but a nice perspective from the horses’s mouth on what the song means.

At the top of the post, she writes it’s the sixth in a series.  So with the help of the “Previous” button I worked my way back to Post no 1 and sat down to follow a series of fascinating stories plus a video link that didn’t seem to work and an audio link that did each providing a pen picture whether of the characters or just the thoughts behind the compositions.

I’d heard her perform the song Five Minutes earlier in the year; it’s not often a brand new song has the audience sit up and go Wow but this one did.  Next time we hear it we’ll have the benefit of the notes to point the way.  This is the one where the video link didn’t work for me.

Another tune, Dark Angel is a duet with Rodney Crowell and deals with both faith and uncertainty without being preachy.  The blog gives an insight into the personal observations underpinning the tune.  It would normally be a cold day in hell (as in absolute zero cold) before you’d find me clicking a link to beliefnet.com but Peters’ commentary had piqued the curiosity.

If anyone else out there gets to read this, I can recommend all of these posts wholeheartedly.  Hopefully Gretchen will see her way to sharing some more.