A busker plays Alaska

Frontiersman reporter

PALMER -- When Peter Mulvey brings his songs to Alaska this week, audiences from Homer to Palmer to Fairbanks will hear a performer who honed his skills not in a living room by the wood stove but on the crowded concrete environs of sidewalks and train stops with a guitar case open at his feet.

Mulvey has been writing songs and playing guitar since he was in high school in Milwaukee, Wisc., but since the late 1980s he has been a busker or street performer. He first tried busking for money while in Ireland attending graduate school at St. Patrick's in Maynooth. The relatively metropolitan city of Dublin and its 1 million potential listeners were a short commute away.

"On weekends -- and frankly sometimes during class -- I would go down and see people play and sometimes play with them. I met a young man who was standing on the street corner playing Blister in the Sun," Mulvey said in a telephone interview last week.

Mulvey thought it was remarkable that a song written in his hometown had made it halfway around the world.

"Gordon Gano went to Rufus King High School -- the same high school I went to -- and all the way across the ocean here was this guy that new about him," Mulvey said.

When Mulvey returned to the states he found a busker-friendly city in Boston. In his press bio, he writes that he found his calling at a Boston subway stop known as the Davis Square T-stop. In the last decade he has recorded six albums of original songs and played about 160 shows a year in coffee shops and concert halls. But when he's in Boston he makes time to return Davis Square.

And it's likely he'll become known for that. This year, he released Ten Thousand Mornings, an album recorded at the T-stop and it's getting more ink and radio attention than any of the other six.

"It's seeing a lot more daylight than some of my other records," Mulvey said. "In a way, I wish every record I made had a built-in story line to go with it. Of course they all do have their own stories, but it's never anything so simple as to fit into a sound byte," Mulvey said.

Ten Thousand Mornings is also composed entirely of other artist's songs. Marvin Gaye, Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan and others are interpreted by Mulvey with his powerful baritone and an acoustic guitar that refuses to play the songs the way we last heard them on the radio.

Mulvey recognizes that if sales of Ten Thousand Mornings eclipse his other recordings he could become known as that guy who plays covers but he's comfortable with that.

"It's a strange position to be in, but I'll take it," Mulvey said. "In the end, how it effects my shows is what's important to me, because that's what I am. I'm a guy who goes around and

sits in rooms and plays songs for people."

Mulvey wants his own songs heard, and he plays mostly original work in concert. But as a busker, he recognizes that music is as much about sharing as it is about creating -- and always has been.

"It's a human exchange, and it's what we've been doing all along. You go into these rooms and you huddle together and there's an exchange.

"Hopefully whatever happens in that room makes you more prepared to go back out. And hopefully, that's true for both me and the audience," he added.

Venue

Peter Mulvey plays at Vagabond Blues in Palmer on Friday, Nov. 22. at 7:30 p.m. He will be accompanied by David Goodrich.

Australian guitarist and songwriter Jeff Lang will also perform. Lang is a veteran of the Australian blues band Chain and has recorded seven solo albums. Lang plays acoustic six string, "National" style steel guitar and lap guitars. He has been receiving critical acclaim and has opened for acts such as Ani di Franco and Richard Thompson.

Writing for Rolling Stone's editor's choice column, Jeff Aptor called Lang's guitar playing "evocative." Mulvey calls Lang "a fearsome musician."

"He just cranks," Mulvey said, "He makes a lot of noise for one guy -- He makes a lot of good noise, I should point out."

Mulvey also plays Thurs., Nov. 21, 7:30 p.m. at Alice's Champagne Palace in Homer; Sat., Nov. 23 at 7:30 p.m. in the Wilda Marston Theater at the Z. J. Loussac Library in Anchorage; and Sun., Nov. 24, 7 p.m., at Peninsula Grace Brethren Church in Soldotna.