England Blues by Gretchen Peters

Album: Burnt Toast And Offerings (2007)

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Gretchen Peters loves England. She admits to being sentimental about the many tours she's embarked upon there. The English, she says, "are very appreciative of lyrics, especially." And since Peters is a prolific songwriter and lyricist, it's a natural path they've taken to the depths of her heart.

"England Blues," explains Peters, "is a completely autobiographical real factual account of all the traveling that we've done in England in the last 3-4 years. And one of the things that gave me unmitigated joy while I was going through a lot of hell with the divorce was going on tour and playing music for those people. And my partner (Barry Walsh) and I have done at least 7 or 8 tours over there. We've been over there a lot. So this song was just trying to sort of convey the exhilaration and the fun that we felt. The happy memories of going over there."
While Peters' songs have found homes - and Grammys - with country music artists, her personal musical style is more about the lyrics and the emotion that goes along. The English provide an audience that would be perhaps equivalent to the American folk circuit, she says. "They've been wonderful to me. For some reason I was the perfect fit over there, and I've been touring over there for 10, 11 years now. It was a perfect fit between me and that audience. The folk audience here, they're very similar in that they're pretty well educated, they're well-read, they love lyrics, they love words, which is a perfect kind of an audience for me. But I wasn't really working in that world over here for 10 years. So that's a new audience for me. But I have a very, very, very soft spot in my heart for the English, because they just embraced me as an artist from the very first album, and it's been kind of a love affair ever since." (Check out our interview with Gretchen Peters. Her website is gretchenpeters.com.)

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