Gretchen Peters is a revered songwriter who’s poetic lyrics have touched the hearts and lives of people all around the world. Peters first came to the UK 25 years ago to perform a select run of dates in small, intimate settings. Since then, Peters has kept coming back and each time, the crowd has grown a little larger, the venues have got bigger and the amount of dates on each leg has increased. All the while the gap between each run of shows would get smaller as Peters relationship with the UK audience grew stronger.
Now as she looks to wind down from touring, Peters releases a beautiful live album that captures the essence of one her shows here in the UK. “I owe so much to the audiences in the UK. I’m quite sure my career would have looked very different had it not been for the constant support of UK fans,” Peters begins. She is currently on tour here and played a breathtaking set at The Long Road Festival over the August bank holiday weekend. “We’ve been having this musical conversation for 25 years now, and they’ve been with me through everything. My touring career in the US was very late getting off the ground for a variety of reasons, but I came to the UK immediately on the release of my first album and never stopped coming, because there was an acceptance of who I was, musically.”
Peters is a powerful and emotive songwriter who had a number of hits for other artists before releasing her own records and with her skillset, she understandably didn’t want to be pigeon-holed just as a Nashville songwriter. She quickly picked up on the warm reception that the UK embraced her with as an artist, “Whereas in the US I had to work to lose the “Nashville songwriter” identity (it’s certainly part of who I am but nothing close to the entirety), in the UK I was simply a singer-songwriter, and felt the freedom to explore that territory and not concern myself with fitting into a particular genre. The audiences didn’t care. They were there for the songs.”
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