Peter One
It’s altogether fitting that Come Back to Me, the major label debut album by Nashville singer, songwriter and guitarist Peter One, sounds like it’s designed to bring an African-born pop master to the mass audience he’s wanted for decades. Come Back to Me could have suffered from the sort of over-determined approach that ambitious Americana artists who record in Nashville and overdub in Memphis sometimes fall prey to, but Peter One — a singer influenced by country and folk music, and a big star in the 1980s in his native Ivory Coast — sounds as relaxed as exemplars like Don Williams and Graham Nash throughout Come Back to Me, which will be out Friday via Verve Forecast. It’s a record of radical simplicity and elegant design that ranks with the finest folk-rock of any era.
Peter One was born Pierre-Evrard Tra in Bonoua, Ivory Coast, in 1956. Come Back to Me is the second album he has released under his name since he moved from the politically embattled West African country to the United States in 1995. Talking to the Scene from his home in Nashville, where he’s lived since 2014, he mentions that he put out a home-recorded full-length titled Alesso in 2009.
“I’ve learned a lot from meeting people — songwriter meetups and playing with musicians here and there,” Peter One says about living in Nashville. “Being in the real music business now, I’ve learned a lot by touring, and the reality of what is behind the scenes — way more than I knew before.”
Still, he was already a veteran of the West African music scene before he landed in New York in 1995. He planned to stay in the land of Don Williams and John Fogerty long enough to learn the tricks of the music business and then return home to the Ivorian capital city of Abidjan. With fellow guitarist and singer Jess Sah Bi, Peter One gained notice in the early ’80s in Ivory Coast, performing on radio and television and on concert stages. Their 1985 album Our Garden Needs Its Flowers became a hit, and their music fused the harmonies of Crosby, Stills & Nash with impassioned playing by local stalwarts like guitarist N’Guessan Santa.
Our Garden Needs Its Flowers was recorded in Abidjan at JBZ Studio, which operated there from 1981 until 2018. Along with pioneering work by reggae artist Alpha Blondy and Malian rock-fusion band Les Ambassadeurs, Our Garden makes a case for JBZ as a world-historic recording studio. (The album was reissued in 2018, and Peter One says he’s currently in talks to acquire the master tapes from producer Etienne Theo.) Meanwhile, Peter One cut Come Back to Me with producer Matt Ross-Spang at a couple of equally storied Tennessee studios. The tracking was done at Berry Hill’s Creative Workshop, with additional work at Memphis’ Sam Phillips Recording.
With playing from Nashville musicians like drummer Ken Coomer and multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone — and turns by Memphis saxophonist Jim Spake — Come Back to Me modernizes Peter One’s sound without distracting from his liquid singing and deft guitar work. I ask Peter One about his take on the difference between modern recording techniques and the process he remembers from his days at JBZ Studio.
“It’s a little bit easier, and it’s a little bit trickier,” he says about digital recording. “I would say the difference is the sound. The sound is not as great as the sound we had with the tapes [at JBZ Studio]. The computer thing is good — it makes the workflow easier. But the end sound is less strong, less hot.”
I can hear what he’s referring to in the airy grooves of Come Back to Me. But the improved technology also brings the style of a great pop singer into the era of Jason Isbell and Allison Russell. The latter makes an appearance on the album’s closing track, “Birds Go Die out of Sight,” and Peter One has recently toured with Isbell. The album even sports a blues song, “Staring Into the Blues,” written by Nashville songwriter and Crave On leader Patrick Orr, who contributes guitar to the track.
Come Back to Me is a triumph of pop internationalism, and it stands as a testimony to the determination of a 67-year-old musician who has made his way in the tough Nashville music scene. He plays a show at Third Man Records’ Blue Room Saturday night, and he tells me about his April 14 debut performance on the Grand Ole Opry, where he played a couple of his songs.
“It went very well. I heard about the Grand Ole Opry only, I would say, about four years ago. I knew, every time I passed by, that there was a mall there. But I didn’t know it was a venue until a friend told me about that.”
