Peter Mulvey

Peter Mulvey, a singer-songwriter drawing from folk, rock, and jazz while leaning toward contemporary folk, has embraced an artist’s existence from his teenage years forward. College theater studies, street performances in Dublin, Ireland, and the creation of Milwaukee’s Big Sky band all took place before he reached his early twenties. His paid music path opened only in 1991 after dismissal from a Boston Kinko’s post. With no funds to host his visiting brother, Mulvey began strumming guitar in the subway system and sustained himself there for roughly two years through ten-hour shifts beneath the city’s polluted air. During that interval he issued two independent discs: 1992’s Brother Rabbit Speaks and 1993’s Rain.

Momentum built sharply once Mulvey captured the 1994 Boston Acoustic Underground prize. Eastern Front Records signed him the following year; the resulting album Rapture earned a Boston Award nomination and steady praise for its intricate, groove-laden acoustic guitar work. An acoustic EP titled Goodbye Bob appeared next, after which the more assertive modern-rock effort Deep Blue arrived on the same label in 1997. That same year he reunited with former Big Sky associates under the name Little Sky to record Lately. Black Walnut Records released the live solo set Glencree in 1999, prompting a move to Signature Sounds Recordings, where he remained for more than ten years beginning with the spring 2000 release The Trouble with Poets.

Ten Thousand Mornings, a 2002 collection of covers spanning Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and Elvis Costello, came next. Original material returned on 2004’s Kitchen Radio, while 2006’s The Knuckleball Suite incorporated one outside song, U2’s “The Fly.” Notes from Elsewhere followed in 2007, gathering career-spanning selections re-recorded for solo voice and guitar. Written during travel to see his nieces and nephews, 2009’s Letters from a Flying Machine interwove songs with spoken letters; two years later he collaborated with composer and guitarist David Goodrich on the instrumental album Nine Days Wonder. The solo outing The Good Stuff appeared in 2012, and Silver Ladder, issued in 2014, featured drumming by longtime Bob Dylan sideman David Kemper.

During a June 17, 2015 tour date opening for Ani DiFranco, Mulvey composed “Take Down Your Flag” in reaction to the mass shooting at a Charleston, South Carolina church, an incident later classified as a federal hate crime. DiFranco performed the song in her own sets shortly afterward, after which dozens of other artists, among them Peter Yarrow and Keb’ Mo’, offered their own versions. DiFranco also produced Mulvey’s subsequent album Are You Listening?, issued in 2017 on Righteous Babe Records.