BeatRoute Magazine AB Edition May 2019

quo and make their own rules,
“like outlaws.”
Peck embraces the contradictions
of being a country musician;
a rebel and performer, clad in
rugged jeans and bedazzled satin
shirts, craving normalcy and seeking
freedom, embracing machismo
and homoeroticism. The phallic
imagery evoked by his 10-gallon
hat and fringed leather mask
is probably no accident. Within
these fluid binaries, he moulds
masculine western tropes into
something personal for him as a
queer musician.
At the core of this alchemy lies
a sense of respect for himself and
for country music listeners.
“A mainstream country radio
station would look at what I do
and think it’s too inappropriate for
their listeners,” Peck says. “But I
receive messages every day from
middle aged white men who live in
Alabama telling me they’re driving
their kids to school every day with
their wife and they’re all listening
to ‘Dead of Night’ in the car.”
Country music audiences are
dying for diversity and Peck feels
part of pushing for the genre’s
comeuppance. He harkens back
to his punk roots, laughing that
being a “weird country star” feels
like being a punk rocker because
he’s rallying against this “facade of
what people are still trying to push
as country music.”
His fans tell Peck they crave
fresh perspectives and idiosyncratic
stories. They want to outgrow
country music’s “stigma of
being a conservative, bland pedestrian
genre.”
Pony stands in bold opposition
to these stereotypes. Peck assembles
sprawling and sparkling landscapes
within which his cast of
outsiders love, lose, and long. On
opener “Dead of Night,” drawn
out chords craft a never-ending
desert for he and his man to drive
through.
Peck’s lingering, rumbling vocals
on “Big Sky” carve a skyscape
expansive enough to hold a lineage
of ex-lovers. And on “Buffalo Run,”
thrashing guitar and rhythmic
drums transmute into stampeding
buffalo.
Setting plays a major role in
Peck’s storytelling. “When I started
putting together these songs,
the places I’ve visited and the people
I’ve met, those are the things
that have really stuck with me.”
Having been on the move his
whole life, from the Pacific Northwest
to London, England, to Toronto,
Peck developed a strong
memory connection to environment.
“It’s definitely important to the
cowboy and western aesthetic because
it’s so much about travelling
and being this nomadic soul,” he
explains. “You leave a little piece
of yourself everywhere and you
take a little piece with you as well.”
These pieces sneak into Pony
in subtle ways. Peck draws inspiration
from his experiences on
the road as well as his personal
obsessions with theatre, cinema
and a slew of musical genres. He
cites new wave, gospel, girl groups,
punk and 80s rock as things he enjoys
that “just had to kind of creep
in for the record.” The end result
is a sound “rooted in outlaw country”
that can travel into rougher
territory and sometimes soars into
glittery falsetto.
“I think if you’re doing anything
with sincerity it will always have a
uniqueness to it,” he says.
Peck has just started his first full
North American tour. “I’m not really
a fan of apathy,” he says of performing.
“You can expect a lot of
drama and cool outfits and stories
wrapped up with sincerity, hopefully
to come and hang out in Orville
Peck’s world for a while.” ,