As a lead-in to his performance tonight at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, TN, The Tennessean.com is featuring a story about David Peterson. David’s band 1946 has recently released a new CD titled In The Mountaintops To Roam and tonight’s performance event is to celebrate that release. We also recently featured an interview with David in The GrassCast.
The Tennessean article takes a look at Davids philosophy of bluegrass music. It’s sometimes controversial when he suggests that artists should not try to emulate the popular appeal of country music.
In our desire to make it more palatable to a wider audience, we may be removing the very thing that makes it attractive to people. Let bluegrass be bluegrass. If you start concentrating too much on a hip image, you’re going to take away the things that make it unique from everything else.
He does go on to say that he’s not against creativity and innovation, he just thinks every performer should play the music in a way that moves them, and not in a way they think will move others.
Let people do what they want to do and what they feel they need to do. But as for me, I’ve accepted the fact that I’m not an extremely commercial entity, so I’m going to make the music that moves me. If I’m true to that, maybe somebody else will be moved.
