Peter Evans
Musician, Writer, and Producer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
I'm a jazz/blues/folk artist from metropolitan Philadelphia, with a lifetime history as a musician, studying guitar and voice with Philadelphia Folksong Society co-founder George Britton in the 1960’s. I've maintained my love of the music as an a cappella singer for 40 years, including a year with the Yale Whiffenpoofs, when I served as musical director.
My songwriting has recently been informed by a project I started in March, 2018 on US Route 1, the first Interstate highway in the United States. Ever since my days at Yale, I've wanted to take pictures on Route 1. That impetus evolved into a website, Route1Views.com, a geo-specific social media platform, celebrating the people who have lived and worked along the road. We are more divided as a country now than at any other point in my lifetime. If in some small way Route1Views helps us to realize how much we share and how deeply we are connected, then all of the effort will have been worth it.
Prior to exploring and documenting the highway, I was a producer for Drew Nugent, a jazz pianist, vocalist and trumpet player from Philadelphia. Drew and I spent 3 years collaborating as songwriters and penned 4 of the tracks on Drew’s “I’ll Never Be the Same” CD (2017), which features several members of Nugent’s Midnight Society, Rob Hyman (The Hooters), Alfred Goodrich (Alfred James Band) and other singers from the Orpheus Club of Philadelphia.
“Clockworks” (2016) resulted from four days of songwriting in Venice Beach and Downtown LA with Drew Nugent, Shayna Zaid and Cynthia Carle. There was a deliberate repurposing of music from the swing era of the 1920’s and 1930’s into an exuberant “neo-Swing” for the early 21st Century. Percussionist, Michael Jerome (Better Than Ezra, Richard Thompson Trio) added his magic bonding sauce to the mix during two recording sessions at Votiv Studios in the LA Arts District.
I released Miss Nomer’s Number in 2015, which was produced and co-written with Bradley Kohn, who encouraged me to combine my fascination for Gypsy swing with pop elements. We recorded in Los Angeles and Portland, OR.