Since the release of her “career album” (NPR), 2012’s Hello Cruel World, two-time Grammy nominee Gretchen Peters has been in near-constant motion, touring for the past two years and releasing a live DVD and CD, Woman On The Wheel, in early 2013. Since 2012 she’s appeared at Glastonbury, Isle of Wight and Cambridge Folk Festivals; and in addition to headlining her own sold-out tours, she’s supported country and folk legends Guy Clark, Arlo Guthrie and John Prine (dueting with the latter at several shows).
The latest accolade for the Nashville-based singer-songwriter will be her induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in October 2014. There she’ll join the list of 192 existing inductees which includes Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell, Don & Phil Everly, Woody Guthrie, Merle Haggard, Tom T. Hall, Harlan Howard, Kris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton, Jimmy Webb and Hank Williams.
Peters has risen to the top of her craft by writing and recording songs that explore the deep corners of life with empathy and integrity. She has accumulated accolades as a songwriter for artists as diverse as Etta James, Bonnie Raitt, The Neville Brothers, Patty Loveless, George Strait, Bryan Adams and Faith Hill. Of her own recordings, the Associated Press said, “this is not jukebox music - the stuff that exists to fill in the pauses in conversation. This IS the conversation.”
Her own peers may be her biggest fans, though; Rodney Crowell (her duet partner on Hello Cruel World) called the record "beautiful, brave and poetic", while her frequent collaborator Tom Russell, called it "the best record I’ve heard in many, many years." A recent review of her 2013 “Woman On The Wheel” UK tour called her live performance “glorious, uplifting, heart-rendingly beautiful... an affirmation of positive human experience through endured pain.”
Her much-anticipated new album, Blackbirds, is due in early 2015.
