Peter Wolf

×

Expand

Dennis DiBrizzi

Duke Pearson (with guitar) and Peter Wolf.

$40 ($35 adv.). Doors 6:30 pm. press release: In a musical career spanning half a century, Peter Wolf has earned a reputation as one of rock 'n' roll's most compelling performers, while consistently making distinctive, personally charged music that demonstrates his mastery of a bottomless well of American musical styles.

Wolf continues his musical journey with A Cure for Loneliness, his eighth solo release and his April 8, 2016, Concord debut. The 12-song album is another adventurous and accomplished work, showcasing his irrepressible charisma while encompassing his effortless affinity for country, blues, R&B and rock 'n' roll.

A Cure for Loneliness includes nine new Wolf originals, four of them co-written with Grammy/Academy Award-winning songwriter Will Jennings. The wide-ranging material ranges from loose-limbed gospel boogie to rousing rock, from acoustic reverie to swinging big-band swagger, from introspective balladry to bluegrass and honky tonk.

Wolf recorded A Cure for Loneliness with a prestigious group of musicians that includes several longtime collaborators such as, keyboardist Kenny White, who co-produced the album with Wolf, and the members of his touring band, the Midnight Travelers: guitarists Duke Levine and Kevin Barry, bassist Marty Ballou, drummers Tom Arey and Shawn Pelton.

"I try to work with musicians where there's compatibility in personalities and musical vision," Wolf notes. "What's nice is the camaraderie that you develop when you're collaborating with the same group of people over a long period of time. And it's exciting to see what comes together when you're working with artists of enormous talents. I always go in prepared, but you never really know how things are going to work out. Maybe a song that you expected to be a ballad becomes an uptempo song in rehearsal, or vice versa, and that's where the value and excitement of collaboration comes in.

"The technology has changed over the years, but I come out of the era where albums had a beginning, a middle and an end, and I still feel like it's my obligation to the art form that an album should have a certain flow to it, and that's still the formula I guide myself by.  Does it feel complete?  Does it have enough variety?”

A Cure for Loneliness achieves an expansive flow by combining studio recordings along with several live performances that capture the humor and spontaneity for which Wolf is renowned.  "Performing in front of an audience is one of the things I enjoy most, and it's a different energy from the energy that comes out in the studio. So mixing studio and live tracks is like using different lighting for different scenes in a film."

"I see this album as a continuation of a body of work that I've been creating for a long, long time," Wolf concludes. “Each album is a challenge and every one of them has been a learning experience. I think that they've become more personal and revealing as I've continued. I still feel the way I felt when I started out decades ago, I'm just trying to prevail and continue to grow as an artist… and to keep rolling on with music as a cure for loneliness."