Dutch bass player Peter van Straten has been a respected sideman throughout this career, providing the low end for Nina Hagen,Eric Burdon, Herman Brood and Billy Preston. Currently living on the sticks of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, he started composing for the sheer fun of it, teaming up with Alex Ayuli who wrote most of the lyrics. The project is named Street and they end up with 40 songs. A change meeting with Gerry Rafferty, who convinced him that he should sing his own songs, gets the ball rolling. After getting in touch with a handful of seasoned Dutch musicians it becomes a larger scale project: Street & Stone. A studio is booked in Limmen, The Netherlands and the stack of songs is narrowed down to a dozen tracks for a full-length, Turn.
Van Straten has a rather fragile voice, but it fits the melancholy of the songs. Most of it mid-tempo melodic rock with a hint of psychedelica although he can channel Lou Reed too (in the first verses of verses of Peace) and slip into disco-tinged AOR (Paradise). It's all about intimacy and the need to belong (but not at any price, mind you). Turn is an album that grows on the listener. What took him so long to come forward as a front man? Well, let's be grateful that he did.
Street & Stone:
Peter van Straten: vocals, acoustic and electric guitar, bass, mellotron, piano, Hammond organ
Rene van Barneveld: pedal steel, acoustic guitar
Nico Brandsen: Wurlitzer piano, Hammond organ
Leon Klaasse: drums
Wouter Planteijdt: guitar
Allard Robert: French horns
Jan Kooper: saxophone
Turn is released on Injun Creek Records. Buy it from his website or iTunes.
Tracks:- Don't
- The Thief of Time
- Beginners Mind
- Glasses
- Paradise
- I Must Have Told You
- Peace
- Be Not so Fearful
- Can't Say Goodbye
- Nothing Is Enough
- Turn
- The Very Same Song