Pete Grubbs
Brookville, Pennsylvania, United States
Music
Press
With the black fedora, and full beard, Brookville’s Pete Grubbs, looks like the typical blues singer, and sounds like them too, which is good.
This singer/songwriter sums it up himself when he says in his bio, “I don’t do much rap or hip-hop; I don’t play sing-through-the nose country and I don’t play polkas, ever. Not even for my mom. Other than that, I probably have one song in my playlist from what ever style you are looking for.”
That works for you Pete, keep the anti-polka sentiment going and doing what you do, cause it’s pretty good. - Times-Shamrock Communications
Great intro and outro. Near perfect lyrics. I could analyze them a little, but why get serious? I laughed out loud at one point. ("A friend in need is a pain") Loved the theme-line "The things that people say are not the things that people do.". . . I'll venture one observation which is that lyrics accomplish that magical status of being surprising and inevitable at the same time. It's a blues song, so much is predictable, yet there was only one line in the whole song that I got exactly right before it was sung ("in the arms of another guy"). Making the normal components of life new and fresh is art. - Herb Kauderer-- co-host Orthopedic Horsehoes Podcast
Discography
This Space for Rent -- 2001
Twistin' in the Wind -- 1991 ('Blues for Amy Jane rec'd local airplay and won an Honorable Mention and airplay in the 1992 Blues Deluxe Unsigned Bands contest)
Face the Flame -- 1986
Photos
Bio
Pete Grubbs is a singer/songwriter from rural Western Pennsylvania. He began performing as a singer while still in elementary school and landed his first professional gig as an undergraduate student in college. He has fronted several local bands in the past, but now prefers to focus upon his career as a solo musician.
Pete has played dozens of coffee shops and bars in towns and cities throughout Western Pennsylvania including Erie, Pittsburgh, Williamsport and points in between. He has also performed in such exotic locales as Akron, Ohio and Beaufort, South Carolina. He was the opening act for The Vogues when they appeared at the Oil City Heritage Days in 2001. In 1989, he became involved with the Science Fiction community and has been steadily active in it appearing as a music guest or Guest of Honor at conventions in Winnipeg, Canada (Conadian '94 & Keycon '95), Rye Town, NY (Lunacon '93, '94), Detroit, (Confusion '90 - '99), Chicago, (DuckCon '98, '01) and Columbus, OH (OVFF '96).
Pete first began writing and recording music in 1986 at Sound Cellar Studios (now defunct) and released his first album, Face the Flame, late that year. In 1991, he followed that effort with Twistin' In The Wind. Both releases were carried by a small (some might say 'microscopic'), independent label in Oakland California, Wail Songs (now defunct). In 2000, he installed an 8-track digital recording studio in his home and, in early 2001, released his first CD, This Space for Rent. This effort was completely recorded and mastered in his home facility, Grinning Dwarf Studios. He also burned all of the copies offered for sale in his studio, created all of the artwork and printed the booklets and inserts for the CD in his home.
I guess he doesn't sleep much.
As a composer, Pete draws from a number of disparate sources. He has been a parrothead for over 20 years and credits Jimmy Buffet for teaching him much of what he knows as a songwriter. He has also been deeply influenced by Southern rockers like the Allman Brothers and Lynerd Skynerd, blues artists B. B. King and Robert Johnson and classical guitarists Andre Segovia and Christopher Parkening. All of these voices can be found lurking in his recorded arrangements. As a guitarist, Pete is comfortable in a number of different genres. He has a very strong finger picking style which he uses most often on his Ibanez 7-string acoustic or one of his Martins, but can also be found blasting out power cords or blues riffs on a well-worn Strat. In recent years, he has begun developing a considerable repetoire on slide guitar, favoring open tunings in E and D. He has also studied some classical styles and has been known to include one or two pieces from this genre in his SF concert appearances. All of these different influences make their appearances in his original music blending to create songs which are as hard to pigeon-hole as they are easy to enjoy. As a lyricist, Pete draws from his deep background in English literature, his knowledge of traditional blues lyrics and from the stories in his family's past, handed down to him from his father. The songs which develop from these dizzyingly different sources can be highly refined and complex or disarmingly simple and earthy.
Not unlike the man himself.
--McMurdy, the Grinning Dwarf,
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