Duke Special

Lisburn, a town near Belfast in Northern Ireland, might seem an improbable origin for a bohemian singer and poet obsessed with vaudeville, yet it produced Peter Wilson, who performs under the stage name Duke Special. He describes his aesthetic as "hobo chic," an approach that informs both his singular stage attire and his polished reinterpretation of music-hall and vaudeville traditions. On his own, he appears with only a piano and an aged, creaking gramophone; when joined by a full ensemble the result often evokes a bustling domestic kitchen rather than a conventional gig, complete with egg beaters and cheese graters among the instruments.

After earlier, little-noticed work with groups in Swindon, England, and Belfast, Wilson launched his solo identity in 2002, adopting Duke Special—the first word a nod to common vaudeville billing, the second acknowledging the glamorous side of his persona. The EPs Lucky Me (2002) and My Villain Heart (2004) were later compiled as Adventures in Gramophone in 2005, his debut long-player, while a further EP, Your Vandal, appeared the same year. Exposure on the fourth season of RTÉ’s Other Voices in 2006 elevated him from regional favorite to national cult figure; viewers selected his two-song performance over those by Rufus Wainwright, Trashcan Sinatras, and Bell X1 as the most requested segment in the series’ closing compilation.

His second album, Songs from the Deep Forest, arrived in May 2006 as a sequence of six 7-inch singles on Izumi Records; that month he also signed with V2 Music. A CD edition followed in October, and a deluxe version including a ten-track live recording with the Ulster Philharmonic Orchestra was issued in September 2007. The next year brought the studio album I Never Thought This Day Would Come. In 2010 he released both Mother Courage & Her Children, songs written for a National Theatre production of the Berthold Brecht play, and The Silent World of Hector Mann, a Steve Albini-produced collection drawn from the fictional silent-film actor in Paul Auster’s 2002 novel The Book of Illusions. A further suite, Under the Dark Cloth, inspired by photographers Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Steichen, appeared in 2011, succeeded by Oh Pioneer in 2012 and Look Out Machines! in 2015.