Peven Everett Interview
by Doug Brandt | Published February 2006 | Features Archives
ABOUT TO TURN 30, Peven Everett has accomplished more than most of us will in a lifetime. Actually, he accomplished more before he turned 20 than most of us will accomplish in a lifetime.
Peven Everett was born in Harvey, Illinois, on June 2, 1976. That makes him a Gemini, for all of you keeping track.
"Harvey was nice growing up," Peven explained. "You had your barrio feel with taco stands, but there wasn't much commerce. We had a mall, until the Blues Brothers came and tore that up. A $5 million mall, and they had to drive all kinds of cars through it.
"Harvey was about surviving. I lost my brother early on, to the same neighborhood and the same kind of mentality that resides in some of the worst neighborhoods in the Chicago metropolitan area... When that happened, I knew that there was a whole 'nother purpose.
"He died at 22. I was about 8 or 9. It was one of the weirdest, but still one of the most effective times of my life. It strengthened me, it gave me compassion. It showed me about pain, suffering, beauty and pain, suffering. And it was a really crucial point in my learning experience musically.
"At 4 or 5 I'm playing the piano and drums, but I'm just playing what I'm hearing. But I'm not playing for something to heal me out of the machine... That started happening when my brother passed. When I started looking further into the machine, I kinda dived into the music. And I haven't come out of it, quite frankly."
His life changed dramatically again when he was offered a full scholarship to study at Berkley School of Music. Quickly, though, his spotlight talent presented him with an agonizing dilemma - to study at coveted Berkley, or, barely out of high school, to go on tour with jazz greats Branford and Wynton Marsalis and Betty Carter.
"Man, that was hell on me," he said. "I can't front - it was terrible. The first two or three days, I went through a lot of emotional stuff. Am I really screwing my life up? I was really, really hurting about that [decision.]"
But he decided to go on tour, and no one at Berkley could blame him. Still, it wasn't as fun as he thought it was going to be. "It was work in the worst way: that ass-kicking, thrashing work. And [Wynton] really whipped me in the kind of shape that I don't think he even understood. I don't think he knew at the time how much he taught me. He'll know now though, when he hears the music come out."
New York City gave Peven amazing experiences and life lessons. His first gig out of town, ever, still barely out of high school, was at Carnegie Hall. And Bill Cosby was the emcee.
"He was backstage laughing at me," tells Peven. "He was tapping me on the shoulder, saying 'You're the young brother with the trumpet case.'"
Earlier that night, Peven had the feeling he had forgotten something. When he got to Carnegie Hall, it hit him.
"This is the first time I had ever come close to peeing my pants," he said. "I had never been that scared before. I thought I was going to be fired. I'm never gonna work anywhere again. This is the biggest gig of my life, Lord, help me please!"
Peven forgot the key to his trumpet case.
Quickly a man found a crowbar and pried Peven's trumpet case open, breaking the latches off. Shards went everywhere. Peven snatched the trumpet out of his case and ran to the stage. Ten minutes later, he had to hit cold turkey.
"It was unbelievable, but it was good. It all worked out. Standing O, everything was cool - they liked me. I lucked out."
Although still a teenager, he had the maturity to learn from this. "Everything went wrong. Everything that was supposed to go right went wrong. That was definitely one of the gigs I'll be telling my kid about for awhile. That one taught me so many lessons: Preparedness. Don't be forgetful. Realize that you can be forgetful if you're hysterical or nervous."
The biggest lesson? "Know what to say in front of Bill Cosby," Peven chuckled. "He was making jokes, but he was clearly irritated. But for real, now I can say, 'I done pissed off Bill!'"
Peven's second love is playing music. (I'll get to his first love later on.) He has difficulty saying how many instruments he plays, because he's fooled around with so many.
"I don't know how to play all the woodwinds, like the oboe or bassoon - all the stuff that's probably more European-based. But the things that were in the big bands, jazz bands and regular orchestras, I'm pretty proficient at those."
In general, though, chalk him up for keys (piano, organ, electronic keyboard), percussion (drums, African and Latin drums, anything you can shake or hit), guitars (electric, acoustic, bass), horns (trumpet, trombone), and some woodwinds (alto sax, flute). What's left?
"I'd like to see what the harp sounds like. It's being used a lot in hip-hop lately, too, so to be able to play around with that a little bit would be cool."
His third love is writing music. Unless he's doing a cover, he writes all the lyrics that he sings and the music that he plays.
Peven's fourth love is singing. As a vocalist, his long-standing claim-to-fame is "Gabriel," a Roy Davis Jr. joint, but other hits include his own "I Can't Believe I Loved Her" and his current release, "Easy Livin'."
Fifth, Peven is a producer. With rare exception, he plays all instrumentation on all his recordings, and handles all the writing and arrangement to boot. On top of all that, he oversees the creative and production aspects, and still finds time to perform with his band, SČance Divine.
Last, he is a businessman. This could be lumped with being a producer, but Peven actually owns the business and runs it himself. With seven record labels, he is able to assign everything to one of his labels: soul goes to Studio Confessions; hip-hop goes to Satellite Soundscape; Latin samba and Bombossa go to Samba Kid; jazz goes to Feather Plume; African world-beat goes to Muchalo; alternative rock goes to Loud Mouth; and house and pop go to Mogul.
Only one of Peven's seven record labels is House.
"The scene," explained Peven about the state of House Music in Chicago, "is built off of a bunch of Paul McCartneys who are trying to slap the crap out of a Lennon. That's how I feel. There are a few Lennons here and there that make the scene up, and all the Paul McCartneys are crapping on them. All the side guys are crapping on the people who actually make the thing crack here in the city.
"House wasn't invented in Chicago," he continues. "It was invented in 1950-something in Detroit's go-go circuit or something, back in the rat pack days. Soul music sped up then. So quit saying that House music is this new thing that happened in the '80s or late '70s. This stuff only changed because nobody could afford to learn how to play instruments. Everyone got lazy, freaked out and started going to Guitar Center, getting beat machines. After that, the whole thing went downhill.
"Now if we're going to be responsible for saying when it happened, I'm thinking maybe Aretha and church folks. From the '50s and '60s, from fusion to disco. Myles put a wah pedal on his trumpet, which went from organic to electronic, there's your fusion right there. Point blank, it happened much earlier. Sorry, it's been around. Soul music has been around."
"We have to take the House connotation off of it because it cheapens it, quite frankly, to me. It cheapens it. I'm going to use that word. It's a very deadly word to use in this particular piece here, but it cheapens it. It doesn't make it worth what it really means to people like me.
"But the people who read this magazine, who actually care about the history of it, and who really want to know what really went down, what really went down is DJs have always played records. The House scene isn't made of DJs, it's made of the records they play. It's all for the DJ, but let's get off of that. Let's get more into who produced the record. If you DJ too, that's a good talent to have, it's not an easy thing to do. But it's about the record."
Don't misunderstand, Peven loves Chicago. Despite opportunities to live almost anywhere in the country, he came back home after six years living in New York City.
"[Chicago] is where I learned how to go to New York. All the things I learned that gave me the reason to go to New York I learned here. I came back to the place where I knew I could learn it, not where I might learn it. And that's what happened. I came back home, and after that, it was about building off my jazz knowledge and my orchestral knowledge.
"All the stuff I picked up from Wynton, I had to use it. I had to use all of this. If I don't, I'm gonna feel stupid, I'm gonna feel useless. Why go out and learn a bunch of stuff if you're not gonna put it to good use? People taught me, so I gotta teach other people."
Peven is pretty low-key and down-to-earth, and he's cool as hell. He's the coolest guy I've met since Theaster Gates or Dana Russell. One of the first things he said was, "Dang, another interview!" Although things are really starting to pick up for him, he's still got a kid-at-heart excitement. He hasn't exactly hit the big time yet, but it's coming.
"So far, things are slowly making themselves apparent to me, based on me taking very small steps, walking very gingerly, I think. Being as careful as I can with the people I come into contact with, making sure I'm thinking things through, while I'm conversing, while I'm connecting with people. All of these kinds of things that get taken for granted in your upbringing sometimes. While you're growing up and becoming a teenager, you tend to forget the things here or there that are very key to keep in your belt. Your personality falls apart if you don't have it.
"Not that I was falling apart, but I'm glad that I'm the person I am now, rather than the person I was, and I hope to keep growing."
So what is Peven's first love?
"I have a little girl, and when she was born, that's when it happened. She's five now, and that's all I think about every single day, every night. It's one of the best things that I can say I've ever been a part of in my life. I'm telling you man, this is the business."
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