Pete Mason

I am a solo singer-songwriter, born and raised in a small town in northwest Montana. Though I didn't begin to pursue music in any way until I got to college I have always been completely captivated by it's ability to take me places within that nothing else in life can. In that light, I love what I do because I get to see music that I have crafted take people places and inspire them in unique ways. It also transcends so much of what my mouth and mind could ever say.

The greatest influence for my music is my friend, Marshall McLean, a fingerstyle/folk songwriter who I met at my first live performance in college. Through the years I have learned two things from Marshall that I aspire to: 1) Not everything is spoken in words -- the music alone is sometimes the clearest tongue; 2) Say it with your own voice -- don't try and say it like everybody else.

My other great influence in music is Jon Foreman from Switchfoot. In several interviews I have watched of him he has talked about the process of how he writes. Jon says that the songs he writes don't become great necessarily because of his ability to craft great music. Instead he says that there are transcendent, timeless truths that the human heart has and always will relate to and when a song contains these and releases them it becomes great. This is one other thing I aspire to -- that I would write music that connects with something beyond me, something timeless. It's nothing new, these things. But I hope that I can learn to see it all with my own eyes and say it with my own voice.