{"id":14991,"date":"2022-10-04T09:58:54","date_gmt":"2022-10-04T14:58:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=14991"},"modified":"2022-10-07T10:29:28","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T15:29:28","slug":"peter-mulvey-and-sista-strings-take-us-to-a-promised-land-right-on-our-own-soil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=14991","title":{"rendered":"Peter Mulvey and SistaStrings imagine a promised land right on our own soil"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"Singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey (center) is touring with SistaStrings (Monique Ross, cello, and Chauntee Ross, violin) and drummer Nathan Kilen. Courtesy The Bluegrass Situation<\/em><\/p>\n

Peter Mulvey & SistaStrings will present album release performances at 7 p.m. Saturday, October 8 at The Bur Oak in Madison, and at 8 p.m. Sunday, October 9 at Colectivo Coffee Backroom, 2211 N. Prospect Avenue in Milwaukee.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

For tickets and the full tour schedule, visit:<\/strong>\u00a0https:\/\/www.petermulvey.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

ALBUM REVIEW: Peter Mulvey & SistaStrings Love is the Only Thing<\/em> (Righteous Babe Records)<\/strong><\/p>\n

If only we had more people of power and influence with the spiritual wiles and wisdom of singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey. We\u2019d be doing much better than barely muddling through as a society, even risking our democracy. Mulvey\u2019s new album, with the marvelous Milwaukee string-playing duo SistaStrings, delivers a variety of truths and revelations and invokes extraordinarily capacious compassion.<\/p>\n

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Album cover courtesy americanahighway.com<\/em><\/p>\n

First comes exquisite overtones on his acoustic guitar, introducing the traditional \u201cShenandoah,\u201d yearningly lovely, feeling like a ritual blessing. \u00a0\u201cSoft Animal\u201d ensues, with an idea from poet Mary Oliver, which evokes the \u201csoft animal\u201d within each of us, slightly Emersonian in its sense of inner sacredness, even as a breathing creature. Mulvey brings that animal vividly to life, with the Ross sisters\u2019 violin and cello boosting it with warmly vibrant utterances, here and consistently throughout.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh My Dear (The Demagogue)\u201d pulls back the curtain of illusion but doesn\u2019t simply point fingers: “What kind of storm blew through?\/ The demagogue, the general, the priest\/ who needed you most but loved you the least.\u201d Then it shifts from rhetorical second to first person: “I couldn\u2019t hear you while I was out in the wind\/ I traded your life for my original sin.”<\/p>\n

\u201cOld Men Drinking Seagram’s\u201d candidly scrutinizes the facile discriminations, bred of cultural isolation (or misinformation?), of the haves towards the have-nots. Why is it, the more people have, the more they resist, with a hollow righteousness, sharing it?<\/p>\n

Then, funky and caffeinated, \u201cYou and (Everybody Else)” eloquently bemoans another current reality, people addicted to “staring at a screen”: \u201cThey gave you everything that you could want\/ now you’re sitting there hungry like a ghost\u2026full of nothing that you want\/ you and everybody else.”<\/p>\n

\u201cPray for Rain,\u201d epigraphed with a James Baldwin quote, is the most pointedly political song: \u201cNow the better angels have fled this field\/ and the people sway to a devil\u2019s song\/ every bittersweet seed has come to fruit\/ common mercy deserts the throng\u2026” But notice how often Mulvey traffics in mythically terms rather than gratuitously naming names. This allows us to consider the historical roles of all humanity in our great failings.<\/p>\n

Mulvey switches gears to the profoundly personal on \u201cSee You on the Other Side,\u201d which grapples, finally affirmatively, with the murky metaphysics of death. Yet that ties in with poignant power to the album\u2019s most moving piece, \u201cSong for Michael Brown,\u201d the young black man infamously shot and left dead in a trail of blood on a Missouri street, which inspired the Black Lives Matter movement. Here, Mulvey and his extraordinarily simpatico accompanists plea for compassion for everyone<\/em> involved, of all colors and persuasions, “and most especially for the next child we know will fall.\u201d And then, as if imploring a wailing wall: \u201cI know God loves us. I know God loves us. I know God loves us. I don’t know how,\u201d sung with raw passion.<\/p>\n

Its gravitas buoyed by hope, this amounts to one of the most humanely open-hearted songs I\u2019ve heard in recent years. As elsewhere, the song conveys the intimacy of deep feeling in its textures of fine engineering, recorded live at Cafe Carpe, the almost-famous little Midwestern engine of singer-songwriting that always could.<\/p>\n

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Peter Mulvey. Courtesy The Bur Oak<\/em><\/p>\n

The album ends with the title song (written by Chuck Prophet) with the refrain, \u201cLove is a hurting thing. Ah, but love is the only thing!\u201d Throughout the album’s fetchingly hilly melodies, the tender textures of Mulvey’s scarred soul seem palpable in his voice. Sage-like, he poetically renders ideas revealing that compassion has many colors and many coats, and surely there\u2019s at least one to fit any listener, to make their heart grow stronger, and warmer. Mulvey, long an iconoclastic activist, embodies such broad possibilities.<\/p>\n

Canny and knowing of darkness and hatred, he remains persuasive, with extraordinary grace and street-smart artistry, which leaves no one left behind because, in the world he still envisions, love has long coattails. This is song-making of a high, healing order, just for these times.<\/p>\n

_____________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Singer-songwriter Peter Mulvey (center) is touring with SistaStrings (Monique Ross, cello, and Chauntee Ross, violin) and drummer Nathan Kilen. Courtesy The Bluegrass Situation Peter Mulvey & SistaStrings will present album release performances at 7 p.m. Saturday, October 8 at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1666,667,1665,1661,29,1660,1663,188,1492,1664,1662],"class_list":["post-14991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com","tag-black-lives-matter","tag-cafe-carpe","tag-chuck-prophet","tag-colectivo-coffee-backroom","tag-james-baldwin","tag-love-is-the-only-thing","tag-mary-oliver","tag-peter-mulvey","tag-sistastrings","tag-song-for-michael-brown","tag-the-bur-oak"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-3TN","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14991"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15005,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14991\/revisions\/15005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}