Profiles of Hope – PETE AND J
Monday, February 16th, 2009
Pete and J | Musicians
Pete: I remember being 14, I had just taken a biology test and I thought I got a C, and I remember thinking: That’s okay. I’m gonna play music anyway. I went to Amherst College, and, well, was a Latin America History major… but it led to playing music nonetheless!
J: I was already at Amherst, as a Music and Political Science major. And they have this thing there for freshman orientation that is a three day camping trip out into the woods, and I, as a 20 year old sophomore, was a trip leader. And when Pete came in as a freshman, he was in my group.
Pete: I was terrified. Actually, I wasn’t terrified until I met you.
J: So then we started hanging out. I asked Pete to join this a cappella group I was directing. Because, that’s what you do with guy friends. You ask them to be in your a cappella group. But, from the beginning we had a pretty good idea that we wanted to play music together.
Pete: We never talked about it, but we knew. We met each other and we were like, okay, this is so much better than anything else that’s going to come along.
J: It still sucks.
Pete: It still sucks, but maybe if we play together long enough, it will get better…
J: We moved to Williamsburg in 2005, after spending a summer living at my parents’ house outside Philadelphia, and playing open mics there every night of the week.
Pete: Yeah, until one night, at the dinner table, J’s mom called us freeloaders.
J: Which we were.
Pete: Which we were.
J: So we moved into a loft in Brooklyn with our drummer, Sarab, and a bassist. And it was terrible.
Pete: Terrible idea. And our bassist at the time pretty much told us that he hated our music. Which didn’t help things.
J: Yeah, if you’re gonna have a band, make sure they all like your music.
Pete: Yeah. J and I were both playing lead guitar, and I was like, Wait- let’s make some sense out of this. Why don’t you play lead guitar and I’ll play piano? So I went out and bought a keyboard and just started playing around with it. We both were writing, but the reason we worked so well together was that J was more inclined to write and I was more inclined to play.
J: We both come from a place where every song has to be saying something.
Pete: Yeah. Someone told us once, If you’re collaborating with someone, you should always trust the other person more than you trust yourself. I think the most amazing part of being a musician is the chance to be a part of that conversation that happens about art. The vision, for us, is just to be unimpeded in making the music we really want to make; the art we want to make.
