New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Austin based artist
Peter More has released his debut LP Beautiful Disrepair today. The record was produced by Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, and happens to be the first full-length produced by Fagen (outside
Steely Dan and Walker Becker's 1994 solo record). Additionally,
Peter More released the video for title-track "Beautiful Disrepair" via Ultimate Classic Rock. The video was directed by
Christina Voros (Yellowstone,
Queen Sugar).
Peter More tells Ultimate Classic Rock: "We shot this video in San
Miguel de Allende and a little ghost town called Pozos in central Mexico. 'Beautiful Disrepair' was written and recorded in San
Miguel so we felt it was only appropriate to shoot the video there and we took off on four wheelers around town looking for different locations. Some serendipitous moments came about while filming that helped craft the storyline, like the little girl who walked over and gave me flowers on the hill at the end. We then visited the old mining town of Pozos nearby that offered an element of desuetude that contrasted well thematically with San Miguel."
Donald Fagen talks about producing Beautiful Disrepair: "Peter More is a great songwriter with a fine, original voice, and he's put together a stellar group of players. After starting out with a few sessions in a home studio in Mexico, we moved on to Fort Worth (Pete's hometown), then upstate New York, and finally mixed the album at Pat Dillett's studio in Manhattan. Plus, the guys taught me and my wife Libby how to talk Texan. And on the last day, the band presented me with a twelve-gallon black Stetson, a bullwhip, and a pair of pink, wooly, batwing chaps. Is that fun or what?"
A soulful nonchalance underscores much of Beautiful Disrepair, perhaps because it came together so fatefully. More had a chance encounter with
Donald Fagen and his musician-wife Libby Titus in San
Miguel de Allende a lush, colonial enclave in central Mexico. It's a second home to the frontman, a Fort Worth native, who had visited the city since childhood. His free-spirited grandmother was an interior-design enthusiast who built a home there in the 1950s. She collaborated with artisans to create a fabled space that friends and family would visit for years to come.
After hearing a live version of "Beautiful Disrepair," Fagen asked More to sit in at a local show, then invited him to Woodstock to attend Levon Helm's final Midnight Ramble concert. A few months later, Fagen emailed More to say that he'd love to help out with an album. They recorded Beautiful Disrepair with guitarist José Juan Poyatos, bassist
Diego Noyola, drummer Adrien Faunce -working around Fagen's various projects-in San
Miguel de Allende, Fort Worth, New York City, and Woodstock.
"In my mind, there is no specific theme to the album," More says. But if there is a commonality tying his songs together, it's emotional and physical wanderlust. "Definitely a lot of different places, different dynamics," he says of Beautiful Disrepair's sprawl of experiences, wherein he confronts moments of sadness and disappointment to make peace with them.
