Peter Mulvey

Urban art-folksier Peter Mulvey has lived an artist's life since adolescence — he was a college theater major, spent time busking in Dublin, Ireland, and founded the Milwaukee band Big Sky, all before his early twenties. But his professional music career didn't really begin until 1991, when was fired from a job at a Kinko's Copiers in Boston. Flat broke and in need of immediate cash to entertain his visiting brother, Mulvey starting playing his guitar in the subway. He supported himself that way for a couple of years, working ten-hour days in the smog-drenched underground. In the meantime, he released two CDs on his own (Brother Rabbit Speaks in 1992; Rain in 1993). Mulvey's rising star hit the accelerator in 1994 when he won the Boston Acoustic Underground competition. In 1996, he signed with Eastern Front Records and recorded the Boston Award-nominated Rapture, which won consistent raves for his dazzlingly funky acoustic fretwork. He tossed off an acoustic EP (Goodbye Bob) before releasing a much more aggressive acoustic modern rock album in 1997 (Deep Blue, also on Eastern Front). As a side project, the prolific guitarist also rejoined his old colleagues from Big Sky in 1997, to record a CD entitled Lately under the band name Little Sky. The solo The Trouble with Poets followed in the spring of 2000.