Pete Molinari: the complexityof simplicity

Fri 2nd Feb, 2007 in Features

Pete Molinari has been hailed as the next Bob Dylan by some, compared to the folk and blues artists of 60s by others, and also described as a modern day troubadour. Actually, on discovery of Mr Molinari’s My Space, it has been become clear that ‘Troubadour’ is not far from the truth (refer to his second video for visual evidence) – although the definition would change from singing love songs to girls to singing love songs to local punters in a pub. It seems so easy to label this young man, but if you really want to know what kind of music he plays ”...at the heart of it, its folk music”. Pete Molinari and his debut album Walking off the Map gives you the chance to witness a lost art in music, which is simply simplicity.

Even after a long morning of interviews, and the subsequent confusion caused by our telephone mediator, Pete is more than happy to continue chatting and answering my questions like he has never heard them before. I start by throwing the tough and boring questions at him of influences and inspiration, to which he coolly replies “Inspiration, I guess, comes from a lot of different areas. Mainly the music I listened to growing up…I had a lot of older brothers and sisters and listened to any records that they had which was rock and roll, blues and country.” Like any other true folk artist, the rest of his inspiration is drawn from the people he’s come across and the experiences he’s had. As well as receiving the answers I expected, I got the added bonus of learning that he is as grounded and as genuine as he comes across.

Walking off the Map was recorded live on half track in fellow folk/blues comrade Billy Childish’s kitchen. For Molinari, it was ”...a conscious choice to make this record with Billy, because I grew up in the same town as him and he made the kind of blues album that I really liked”. The use of the half track has imparted a rare type of aural simplicity on the album that is just not found nowadays. Molinari explains that he wanted “the first record… to sound stark and chilling in the same way that it kinda is (him) sitting in a room performing just as nature intended.”

And Walking of the Map has achieved exactly this. It is a triumph of content over style.

Molinari has managed to create something completely original and new by using a method that could be considered somewhat primitive in the musical sense. Although, Pete is not against Hi-Fi sound, in fact, he is currently in the process of recording his second album in the analogue based Toerag Studios in London, which is well known for producing vintage sounds. It has been host to other artists such as Holly Golightly, Billy Childish and The White Stripes.

I tried to play devil’s advocate and get an answer as to where he prefers playing more, but I was unsuccessful. When he’s not playing local pubs and clubs in London, he’s playing to new faces in New York. For Pete, his home town of London “was a bit of a hard nut to crack”, but this has not stopped him. He did admit that “New York really got a hold of (him)” but as a true poet, he was able to explain that “you could be in the biggest…most prestigious venue in the world, if the people are not going to appreciate you, then it can be…no good at all. It’s not about playing Carnegie hall or the Albert Hall, although that would be a great thing to do…if you are playing to five people in a café somewhere and they …really get what you are doing …that is much more important than playing to five thousand people in a big arena”

Pete Molinari will be visiting our fine Australian shores in March after he completes his European Tour supporting Holly Golightly and just before he hits the United States for some gigs. It seems that he is more than happy to exchange the dull and drab London weather for our sunny land – and I think that we would be more than willing to make room for this fine folk troubadour.

Pete Molinari Tour dates