Ace songwriter will highlight Sisters Folk Festival

Gretchen Peters never really intended to become a hit Nashville songwriter. She always saw herself as a folkie, a woman with a guitar and something worthwhile to say in song.

She'll return to those roots next month as one of the featured performers at the Sisters Folk Festival, September 7-9.

"The first music that I latched onto - partly because you could do it with just a guitar - was folk music," Peters said.

Growing up in New York and then living in Colorado, she wrote and performed and never separated the singer from the songwriter.

"It wasn't until I came to Nashville that someone informed me that there was a choice to be made, that there was a fork in the road, so to speak," Peters told The Nugget.

Peters knew that she needed to write to get her foot in the door, and a publishing deal came quickly - and so did cuts by major artists like Patty Loveless, Faith Hill and Martina McBride. She had a major hit with McBride's version of her harrowing tale of a woman breaking free of domestic abuse, "Independence Day."

"My songwriting success always surprised me," Peters said.

Yet her most commercial work, when stripped down to the essence, goes back to the original source of her inspiration. For any listener who pays attention to the lyrics of "Independence Day," it's a folk song.

"That goes right back to the heart of what I loved, which was story songs," she said.

A few years back when she started to reconnect with her folkie roots, she got a boost from a master of the story song: Tom Russell. Russell, who has performed three times at the Sisters Folk Festival, talked up Peters at every opportunity and introduced her to the audience at the nation's premier folk festival in Kerrville, Texas.

"That was kind of like getting the Pope's blessing: 'She's from Nashville, but she's all right,'" Peters said. "Tom Russell has been my angel."

Peters has been playing festivals and listening rooms - "the folk circuit" as she calls it - and her clear and beautiful voice delivering her songs backed by guitar and piano have been well-received by audiences who often know nothing of her success as a songwriter for other singers.

Her current CD, "Burnt Toast & Offerings," has been described in a Barnes & Noble review as "deep and deeply beautiful..., a fully realized work of art."

In addition to her performances at the Sisters Folk Festival, Peters will be one of the instructors at the festival's Americana Song Academy, held at Caledera in the week leading up to the festival.

Peters said she doesn't think of herself as a teacher, but she thinks she has valuable things to share with writers - hard-won understanding of the perils, pitfalls and rewards of the creation of music.

"If the only thing you learn is that we're all in the same boat - that everybody goes through the same difficulties in writing - I think that helps," she said.

On her Web site, Peters acknowledges that she gets sick of the music business and sometimes even thinks she's had it with music, but then she listens to her favorite artists, and "I find myself with goose bumps or unexpected tears or joy bursting out of my chest like it's too big to be kept in there - then I remember what music is, what it does, and why I do it."

Tickets are still available for the Sisters Folk Festival. For more information visit http://www.sistersfolkfestival.org or call 549-4979.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

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