Peter Mulvey: The Best Musician I Have Ever Stabbed

Peter Mulvey is truly a world class guitar player, singer-songwriter, and storyteller.  If you haven’t heard his music yet then there’s about 20 years of catching up to do on his catalog of amazing tunes. I have also stabbed him and besides Marilyn Manson is the only other famous musician type person to ever hock a loogie in my direction (Not for the same reason.).  I bet Mr. Mulvey never thought he would be lumped in with Mr. Manson and visa versa.    And no I’m not going to tell you the story until the end of this lil blog: you just don’t waste great headlines like that.

First let’s tackle Peter Mulvey’s guitar playing ability:

One thing about Peter Mulvey is that he never stops touring.  Never has and never will unless there’s a comet strike or some governing body takes away his life purpose license.  The last time I spoke with him he said something paraphrasey like this, “I have only been at this for about 20 years which means I am probably only a third of the way there.”  He even tours by bicycle and not just to the corner coffee shop venue we are talking about several hundred mile monsters. And then performs. This is a dude I ate with at a Pizza Hut once and he pulled out a small chunk of the Berlin Wall from his denim jacket to show me his souvenir.  He’s no spring chicken here folks. I mean who wears a denim jacket in a Pizza Hut?

In his 20 year career Peter Mulvey has released more music than you can listen to in a day but it would be a damn good day if you tried.  Okay maybe if you missed a nap you could do it.  Here’s one of my fave tunes by Mr. Mulvey:

So how the heck did I come to stab good ol’ Pete?  Well way back in the long long ago we worked at a Renaissance Fair together in southern Wisconsin.  It’s the kind of place that has low level malaria outbreaks and lots of stumps.   Peter would go on to play the part of Robin Hood’s son and I was the evil sheriff’s kid.  We spent our 14 hour days beating the crap out of each other in the streets for the fair patron’s enjoyment and one day my blade missed its mark. If wasn’t for those thick costumes we wore it would have done a lot more damage than it did.  (Yeah I know, like most sensationalist headlines the truth didn’t measure up.  Oh well.)   And the reason he spit on me is because one time I was beating his head into the ground with a couple hundred people watching and it was just a damn good street theater thing to do.  The first time I met Peter he was playing guitar, singing songs, and telling stories while sitting on one of those Wisconsin stumps.  Now he travels the world stump jumping and telling stories like this one: