Local musician Pete Curry has broken away from the many bands he’s played in for years and decided to take the solo route, with a new record label
Local musician Pete Curry has broken away from the many bands he’s played in for years and decided to take the solo route, with a new record label, new single and fresh album that drops tomorrow.
Curry recently released “Don’t Ask Me”, his first single off his upcoming album, Advice on Love via his new label Crystal Pistol Records, which he launched with bandmate Justin Black, who plays bass in his live band.
Advice on Love was recorded in three days at the all-analog Virginia Moonwalker studio in Mechanicsville.
Curry, who has been working on the new album for about a year, said with this new project he was trying to channel the laid-back vibe of Velvet Underground.
“I had been recording a lot of stuff on an old four-track cassette machine that I’ve had forever and experimenting with things that work well in those limitations, and one of those things is “less is more,'” said the Philly native.
It seems as though this album especially after listening to the first single, is going to be very personal.
“I had a lot on my mind around then about relationships and also the idea of people ‘owning’ each other as a romantic sentiment,” he said.
Curry describes the new album as a mix of “jangly ballads to spazzy rock.”
“I had access to my friend Doug Fuller(from Kindling Kind, Welcome Hips, and my current band)’s vintage Fender gear, which has a distinctive jangly clean retro reverb sound,” Curry said.
Richmond has been his home for the last five years and prior to going solo, Curry was in a number of bands. He started out on bass in Kindling Kind about three years ago.
“…was a lot of fun because I had been away from playing in bands for a while and was just playing a lot of piano and writing, so it was nice to get up on stage and rock again and discover that Richmond had an awesome music scene,” he said.
He was also in Welcome Hips a local rock band, for a little while before choosing to venture out on his own.
“We had a lot of fun doing a kind of crazy rock n roll thing but I was starting to really need to just be in control of what was happening musically because I’ll write all the parts for a song in my head just biking or walking around thinking about it and trying things mentally, so it’s just better for everybody if we’re not pretending that the songs arrangements supposed to be a collaborative effort,” he said.
Despite the solo album being his main focus, Curry is still dabbling in a few projects including a party-punk band called You Go Girls, and Death Birds Surf Club, a surf rock outfit in which Curry plays drums. Black, the other half of Curry’s record label and bandmate also has a band called Black Water Gold which Curry plays bass in.
Curry’s next show is at Strange Matter this Sunday October 11. $10 in advance. 9 pm showtime.
