The Way You Move Me

by

Gretchen Peters

Album: Burnt Toast And Offerings      Released: 2007

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Although not reflected in the sequencing of the CD, this is the first song singer/songwriter Gretchen Peters wrote for this album. And when she wrote it, she was not thinking about her husband. "In this whole course of this thing, I ended up falling in love with - and ultimately living with - my piano player (Barry Walsh). At the time, 14 years I guess we'd been playing together, touring together, doing everything together. We were old, old friends. And at that point we were still friends. But that is who it is about."

And this many-layered triangle was particularly tough to straighten out. "I was still married, but I was dealing with how do I get out of this? How's this going to work?" she confesses. "In a marriage of 23 years, which is not just a marriage but a very complicated business relationship, too. It wasn't so much I left one day; it was a coming undone that took probably a couple of years. So it's not as though there was a point where I left him and it was over."

She continues, "I think it's hard for people that haven't been together that long, and also with this added layer of the whole business relationship, which is a big part of a marriage, it's hard for them to understand just how unthinkable it is, just the logistics of it. How do we untangle this? I mean, how in the world do we untangle this? I think that we both knew at that point that it was going to have to be untangled. But it wasn't just like undoing a long-term marriage. There's all the business stuff. I mean, I was leaving my manager, my record producer, my booking agent, my publishing liaison, everything, all wrapped up in one person. So it was quite overwhelming. And it took quite a while to figure out how that was all going to work. It was terrifying."

Peters doesn't believe in the term "amicable divorce." Though in the grand scheme, she says, hers was. But whatever strands of a working relationship that still clung together during that time have been severed. Peters, however, has no regrets. "It became obvious to me that part of what I needed to do was give him the independence. And so I don't work with him anymore. I really needed my professional freedom."

This song turned out to be precognitive. Peters wrote it for her piano player of 14 years before their relationship became anything outside of friends and colleagues. "It has happened many times when I've written a song and the song has sort of come true later. And that was definitely the case with this one." (Thanks to Gretchen Peters for speaking with us about this song. Read her full interview in the Songfacts interviews section. Her website is gretchenpeters.com.)

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