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Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Alice Peacock: Welcome to Wonderland
By Joelle Jacinto
For the upcoming recording artist Alice Peacock, the key to creating great music is being real and truthful.
"If you write from an honest place, good things will happen," she says. On the strength of "Real Day," her sole self-released CD, Peacock earned high critical acclaim, sold nearly 10,000 copies, established a national touring presence, and won herself a major label recording deal. Her amazing D.I.Y. success story is obviously just the beginning.
From the first notes of her self-titled debut, "Alice Peacock," there are unmistakable influences ranging from pop, rock and folk that all blend into something greater. The songs speak to the listener with the sweet and smart voice of a dear friend, talking about love and loss, struggle and triumph, inner thoughts and human existence. The sound is modern yet rooted in a rich musical past.
It's an album that imbues the charmingly familiar with a bracing blast of fresh as heard on the initial single, "I'll Be The One," where Alice turns tables on a lover as the track mixes a soulful rhythm with Beatlelesque pop-rock touches. Peacock's piquant blend of pop hooks, rock potency and solid folk-based songcraft also abounds on such numbers as "Leading With My Heart," "I Hear You Say" and "Parallel Life."
She weaves hypnotic spells on "Bliss," "Imagination" and "All Consuming Love," lights a rocking fire on "Into The Light," issues a stirring call to patriotic action with "I'll Start With Me," and closes out the album with the country-folk hoedown of "Send My Heart Back Home." From the stirring opener of "Alabama Boy" to the classic chanteuse style g! race note of the hidden track, "Northern Star," Peacock covers a wide swath of musical territory and makes it all her own.
Alice Peacock perhaps had been quite fortunate in making friends because they all came out in droves to help the newcomer out. The album features friends she has made over the course of the recent past including Indigo Girl Emily Saliers, John Mayer, singer-songwriter Kristen Hall, new folk icon John Gorka and drummer Charley Drayton (known for his work with Keith Richards, The Divinyls and The B-52's, among others). Despite the stellar support, this much is Alice's show. She has been compared by critics to such luminaries as Joni Mitchell, Sheryl Crow, Shawn Colvin and the likes, and reflects the influence of rockers like Neil Young and Tom Petty.
Peacock's rise to musical prominence began just a few years ago when she released her first album, "Real Day," all on her own. But her musical background extends almost to the cradle. Raised in a family of six children in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, even as a toddler she was so consumed by the music from her transistor radio her father dubbed her "Radio Free Alice." She was weaned on folk music, old time string band and bluegrass and eventually even to Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones.
Although Alice played piano and sang while growing up, she followed the family's dramatic bent at Lawrence University and studied theater. Yet she also audited a major's worth of music classes, sang with the school's jazz band, and was the lead singer of a local rock band. After graduating, Alice spent some time in Los Angeles, where she appeared in national TV commercials, and San Francisco, where she was a backup singer in the house band at Slim's, the famed showcase club owned by Boz Scaggs. She also finally picked up the guitar and, using open tunings she stumbled upon herself, began to write songs.
"I said at a very young age that I didn't want to later look back and say, 'what if I had given it a shot?' Music for me is my salvation as well as a gift. It is what has comforted me in my low times and kept me happy," she says.
Alice then went to Chicago, the central city of her Midwestern homeland. She started playing open mics, studied guitar (including lessons at the legendary Old Town School of Folk Music from alternative country hero Robbie Fulks), and eventually formed a band. When she found voiceover work in commercials thanks to her singing abilities, it enabled her to quit her day jobs, start writing with such Nashville rock and roots songwriters as Tom Littlefield and Angelo, and eventually record "Real Day."
She sent a demo CD toAmazon.com for its Advantage Program for independent acts and ended up one of Amazon's Top 10 Emerging Artists. Bruce Warren, program director of
Philadelphia's influential public radio station WXPN, bought the CD from Amazon, and duly impressed, called Alice to advise her on how to release it professionally herself.
The success of her first album gave Alice the opportunity to cut a second one in Minnesota with the production help of an old friend from her college days, Joel Sayles. She was set to release it again - with a rave review by Dave Hoekstra in the June 2002 issue of Playboy on the way - when an offer came that she couldn't refuse. Gregg Latterman of Chicago's Aware Records - the innovative company behind the rise of Train, Five For Fighting and John Mayer - had been following Peacock's rise, and picked up the disc for his Aware/Columbia imprint.
"I feel lucky and grateful," she enthuses. Yet she also knows that her hard work on both her craft and career helped enable her brilliance to shine through in a very crowded marketplace. "I do believe you have to be present to win, and work hard and follow through. And I've also had to have the courage to not be afraid of being successful."
But success as Alice defines it isn't merely jumping from do-it-yourself to a major label in the course of a single record. Nor is it earning press raves. Rather, it's about getting to the heart of what matters in her words and melodies, and then conveying what she discovers on record and stage in a manner that not only wins the ears of listeners, but their hearts and minds as well.
"That's my whole journey: figuring out what's my truth and maybe writing about it. And if people can identify with it, then that's wonderful." And a listen to Alice Peacock, the album, should convince you to step into her very own musical wonderland. |
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