When Peven Everett was growing up he had the uncanny ability to absorb all the music around him. He could play entire soundtracks for TV shows like Hill Street Blues on piano before he went on to score 100% at the Berklee College of Music’s Professor’s Test in 6th grade. “I got the memo pretty early in life about being unique and being an original,” Peven explains on the big influence his mum, sisters and brother had on his musical development. Well known for his sublime vocal contributions to Roy Davis Jr’s ‘Gabrielle’, Peven has gone on to be an artist in his own right. His current album ‘King Of Hearts’ on Makin Moves Records reveals a gorgeously funk-fueled collection of soulful music.
Words: HELENE STOKES
What is the track that reminds you of your childhood?
“That’s a very sharp-ended question. There were songs that built my persona and how I think about music, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve learned that that’s not really true, that what an artist really becomes is a muse for the actual situations that he or she has been in throughout their life. So the importance of those things is based on your recollection of them. So if you can remember something that’s one thing, but all things that you can’t remember are things that maybe affecting you and you just don’t see that they’re there. “It’s a big pool of stew now, I’ve filled my head up with so much stuff… I just try to find my way in this old marsh of a head that I’ve got. Now that I’ve got all this stuff in my brain… It’s a lot of stuff. “I really don’t see a way to truthfully answer that question. I guess Grover Washington Junior ‘Mister Magic’.”
What was the first record that you ever bought?
“Probably Miles Davies’ ‘Sketches of Spain’. I was coming out of 6th or 7th grade and that was my first purchase. The other stuff would have been accumulated with cassette tapes, you know radio, when you try to catch the title of the song that you really like. They used to play radio a lot different back in the day, you could get a bit of a tune and that would be OK. Now everybody’s got to have the whole apparatus. I remember the color, the red and the yellow, a very awesome cover, it let me think that music was something that was a really beautiful journey.”
What’s the most embarrassing record in your collection?
“That’s a guilty pleasure? I guess some of the rap stuff, like Jay Z, cos that was the kind of life that I was living and it was a place and a situation that I knew I wasn’t wanting to be living in. It’s really the soul music that was in those tracks that I was addicted to. We didn’t have access to all those kinds of soul records all the time. I think that’s why hip-hop reinvented the idea for me that soul music
was irreplaceable.” What’s the track that’s guaranteed to make you cry?
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“I can’t really listen to very much of my boss Betty Carter. I used to work for her, I was on a show in Switzerland and it was in a museum and she came on the loud speaker, one of the DJs put it on, it was a nice gesture but it caught me off guard because I hadn’t heard her voice since I’d had to play that particular song at her funeral. ‘All That A Man Could Want’, it was one that we did, it was a ballad.”
What’s an album that you’re into at the moment?
“I’ll always be a fan of the late ‘80s/’90s dance circuit stuff, from George Michael to Michael Jackson to Nirvana, there’s a lot of stuff that had open-ended probability and possibility. It was always interesting to me to see something that I thought, ‘oh how to get my hands on some of this stuff’ to play, period, that would be OK. And that gave me a voice of my own, it was very important to me to make sure that I never copied on any artist, because it’s very easy to do. “I would have to say I’m listening to the same stuff from the ‘90s. That’s when I was just starting out, thinking of definitely doing this for a living, that’s when I was coming into this for myself. That burst of inspiration that you have when you’re first moving towards your goals. That moment happened when that music was on the radio. ‘Off The Wall’.’’
What’s the most valuable record in your collection?
“With the internet the way it is now? It’s very different. I haven’t bought records, the tangible product has become so hard to do. My own records, ‘Studio Percussion’, I can’t part with that ‘cos I only got one copy of it, it’s been out of print for a while.”
What’s your all time
favorite track of all time?
“‘Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough’ by Michael Jackson. That’s the one. Michael got hot, right as my brother passed away, they probably in some way are connected in my psyche, like transitions from my brother to Michael, my perspective brother in my head if you will.”
PEVEN EVERETT
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