The first time I saw Peter Baldwin perform, I was mesmerized. The Orlando alt-soul artist played a short tweener set at Broken Mold’s Christmas Party in December and held me (and most of those around me) rapt with merely an electric guitar and his sexy, silky smooth falsetto, hitting notes so high I could almost see them soaring up through the rafters into the starry sky above. After two original numbers, a raw but gripping rendition of MGMT’s popular disco funk number, “Electric Feel,” and some adept scat singing and vocal acrobatics, I was hooked.
I finally got the chance to chat with Baldwin over coffee and cheese toast at Tre Amici last week. On this particular sunny afternoon, he wears dark sunglasses in place of his usual black spectacles. He is a gracious young artist, earnest but sweet-tempered, armed with an endearing smile and easy laugh that balances his more quiet moments.
We discuss his upbringing. He was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, the youngest in a family, with three older sisters (though he only grew up with two), a father who was both a banker and the founder and pastor of a small area church, and a retired Air Force mother who served as the church’s worship leader and choir director. “That’s how I kind of got started, singing in the choir,” he explains. He also learned to play drums and sax.
Unfortunately, his parents didn’t have varied taste in music. “In my house, all I really heard was gospel music the whole the time … and that’s pretty much all I knew until high school.” That’s when he discovered Miles Davis and Jackson 5, and found inspiration in the drumming of Steve Jordan on John Mayer Trio’s 2005 live album, Try!. “He changed my perspective on how to play that instrument. It affected my playing a lot.”
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2010.