Indio
By Any Other Name
By Karen Bliss
Music Express © July 1989
Most artists would want their name stamped front cover and back on their debut recording, and some would have it echo subliminally from the grooves if it were possible. But Gordon Peterson chose to release Big Harvest under the project-title of Indio.
"It didn't seem right to release it under the guise of a solo record because too many people worked on it with me," explains Peterson.
"The people that played on it were just friends of friends. It wasn't really premeditated. I would hear an instrument I wanted to use and investigate who would be suited to play it. The whole thing was pretty much a little family by the end." Big family is more like it--some 20 people contributed to the project.
Outstanding names contributing to Big Harvest include David Rhodes, Larry Klein and his wife Joni Mitchell, Brenda Russell and sometime Robbie Robertson guitarist Bill Dillon; and intriguing sounding names involved were Indian violinist L. Subramaniam, percussionist Alex Alejandro Neciosup Acuna and drummers Vincent Colaiuta and Manny Elias. With its golden crop of seasoned professionals, Big Harvest makes a glistening debut.
But when A&M signed Peterson, the company took a definite gamble with the Hamilton, Ontario, native. He had neither a track record nor a stint in a local band he could lay claim to establishing--just two years of once-a-month gigs that no one would've noticed. To top it off, this guy was a late bloomer, musically speaking. Peterson was 19 before he taught himself to play guitar and piano, and it was another four years before he began to write songs.
"I only had about three songs when I got signed," the 27-year-old now recalls, "so I was writing the rest of the record while I was recording it. That's why it took a year-and-a-half to make. I'd record a batch of songs, then go back and write some more. Larry [Klein] happened to be in London. He had played with David [Rhodes] before, so we had him come down and play bass. We got along really well. He had just built a studio in his home, so I did five tracks in England, and the other half in Larry's house in America."
Most of Big Harvest is written from two angles: "Either personal searches or observations," Peterson says. The first Indio single Hard Sun, deals metaphorically with mankind's lack of spirituality and disregard for the environment, seen through a man and women's relationship. Particularly on this song, but also on most of the others, Peterson's voice is cool, calculated and remote. Musically, the pounding, hypnotic rhythms breathe boldness into the work.
It appears Peterson's self-proclaimed "musical illiteracy" has saved him from the cornering conventions of 4/4 time and led him to more exotic shores.