‘Nobody’s Daddy’

Singer-songwriter Peter Spencer will return to his East Coast roots to play John & Peter’s in New Hope.

By: Michael Redmond
   Peter Spencer has covered a lot of ground since the 1980s, when he was a co-founder of the Greenwich Village Musicians’ Cooperative and a familiar figure with Fast Folk Musicians. In those days, he was hanging around with the late, great Dave Van Ronk, along with Suzanne Vega, John Gorka, Steve Forbert, Frank Christian and other noteworthy singer-songwriters.
   It happens that the ground Mr. Spencer has covered is more than metaphorical — it’s continental. Long a resident of Rocky Hill and a familiar figure on the New Hope, Pa., concert scene, he now calls Washington State home. For the past year and a half he has been living on Bainbridge Island, west of Seattle, where he teaches guitar and hangs his hat when he isn’t performing up and down the Pacific Northwest.
   "People here don’t knock you down as much as East Coast folks do," he says during a phone interview. "If there’s something good going on, they want to be part of it."
   Mr. Spencer just can’t get away from the water, it seems — whether Puget Sound, the Delaware River or Lake Erie, where he grew up "on the south shore, between Cleveland and Buffalo. Erie, Pa., was one of those towns saved by radio. WLAC in Nashville, WWWV in Wheeling, CKLW in Windsor, Ont. — they sent in R&B and country roots music late at night, like the BBC broadcasting to France during World War II."
   So Mr. Spencer has been steeped in distinctively American music, and the influence of this music, its soundscapes as varied as a continent’s landscapes, can be heard in the songs he writes and in the guitar he plays. Folk, blues, country, ragtime, it’s all in Mr. Spencer’s mix, and quite remarkably so in New Hope and Wise Virgins (AutumnSong Recordings).
   Something for the literary-minded, even. If there’s another CD that offers a monologue by the aged Casanova ("Casanova’s Waltz") and a wild ride with Ambrose Bierce ("With Bierce in Mexico") in tandem with striking love songs ("Adam and Eve on a Raft," "Streets of Montreal") and quirky humor ("Godzilla Feet"), it doesn’t come to mind. Mr. Spencer’s tunes are infectious, his lyrics deft and his guitar playing something to write home about.
   Mr. Spencer will be returning to some of his old haunts to play a concert at John & Peter’s in New Hope Dec. 18.
   "New Hope is where I got the audience back," Mr. Spencer says. "I went there to open-mikes in the later ’90s, when I didn’t have a career as a writer anymore but could still play the guitar — better than ever, really. More important, it was where I started sounding the way I wanted to sound, not in terms of electronics, but just the personal dynamic of performing. John & Peter’s — and Havana and other river joints and private parties — that’s where it happened. Like a lot of people, I may not get to New Hope as often as I used to, but it’ll always be my town."
   Mr. Spencer’s other incarnation, during the ’90s, was as a music journalist. He wrote for Rolling Stone, Sing Out, The Star-Ledger and TimeOFF, and even knocked off a book, World Beat: A Listener’s Guide to Contemporary World Music on CD (University of Chicago Press). Family life was the priority. He has two children, Caleb, 20, and Cynthia, 15, who reside with their mother, Leyla Spencer, a mosaic artist, in Lambertville.
   Earlier this year, Mr. Spencer recorded Nobody’s Daddy, a CD of original stripped-back, bare-bones blues, featuring a memorable cover of "You Don’t Know Me" (1955), the Cindy Walker-Eddy Arnold country song that Ray Charles turned into a hit in 1962.
   "My favorite tunes on the record are ‘Under the Mountain’ and ‘Turn to Me,’" he says. "’Under the Mountain’ captures a feeling I get a lot, when I’m thinking about my children. And ‘Turn to Me’ is just a big soul ballad in the classic style. I’ve always wanted to write something like that, ever since I first heard Aretha Franklin."
   Due for release in the spring is Handsignal (IMG Media), which Mr. Spencer described as "more of a ‘song’ album than ‘Nobody’s Daddy,’ with more guitar than ‘New Hope and Wise Virgins.’ The recording’s history is torturous. It began in a trailer in Bucks where we had to stop taping every time it rained, then on to various garages and sheds — you know how it goes."
   Mr. Spencer first started teaching guitar at Mercer County Community College.
   "I’ve just loved it since then," he says. "Teaching remains the most invigorating mental exercise there can be. This is the first time I’ve had so many private guitar students, and sometimes what happens to a kid will just take your breath away. An eighth-grader went from being my worst to my best in six months."
   Mr. Spencer keeps his eyes and ears open, as one would expect, and he’s a realist about show business.
   "Like every performer, I’ve always wondered if or when I would find an audience, and worried that it would never happen," he says. "A lot of time has gone by — I started playing guitar 40 years ago this fall — so I’m allowed to wonder if I’ll ever have a career.
   "But even if I don’t," he continues, "I’m playing to people who really understand and appreciate what I’m playing. The audience is there because they get it, they know what I’m doing. The difference between this and major-label stardom is just a matter of scale."
   Mr. Spencer still has his dreams. For instance, he would like to jam with Eric Clapton, "except I might lose control…" and with Jerry Reed, Bert Jansch, Clarence White, Otis Rush, "players I’m in awe of." And he would willingly "go to hell and back if I could accompany Billie Holiday."
Peter Spencer will play John & Peter’s, 96 S. Main St., New Hope, Pa., Dec. 18, 3 p.m. No cover. For information, call (215) 862-5981. On the Web: www.johnandpeters.com. Peter Spencer on the Web: www.peterspencer.com