On an early evening in late December, I noticed that the famous club Cafe Wha? on MacDougal Street in the Village was beginning their entertainment unusually early — 6:30 pm. So, I thought I’d swing by to see what talent they had scheduled for the early slot.
I wasn’t familiar with R&B artist Peter Collins, who would be performing solo that evening. After a quick Google search, I could see that he is a young and highly respected singer/guitarist/composer who has performed around the world.
After further watching some of his YouTube videos, it soon became abundantly clear that Collins skillfully combines the R&B, gospel, folk and jazz genres to tell touching stories through his soulful melodies.
The Singer
Peter Collins is a great singer who evokes strong emotions from his listeners. His soulful R&B lines clearly mix strong jazz, folk, and gospel influences in such an encompassing way that will soothe your inner soul.
He draws from a rich toolbox of modern and iconic classic R&B, jazz, gospel, andsongs from the American songbook, such as “Let’s Stay Together,” “Is This Love,” and “Issss== Don’t Feel Noways Tired” as a platform to display his beautiful vocalizations. Collins even performed a few Christmas songs, namely “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and “The Christmas Song” which perfectly suited his easy style. Through his song choices and musical spirit, Collins is melding together the old and new.
What I clearly noticed throughout his captivating solo performance was that with seemingly little effort, Collins can deftly switch between his robust full chest voice into a beautiful soft falsetto, while independently playing complex chords of rich harmonic content on his instrument all over the fretboard behind his vocals.
However, the overarching theme that enthralls me most is his continual return to sounds of spiritual music. I can sense that Collins has strong roots in Gospel music that is clearly evident throughout every song. Go to YouTube, watch and listen to Collins performance with Infinity Song of “I Don’t Feel Noways Tired” by Reverend James Cleveland. It might make you emotional.
Acoustic Guitar Style
Collins mainly uses his nylon or steel string acoustic guitars as a harmonic support instrument for his superb vocals, although he will occasionally throw in some unusual chord voicing and interesting finger-style flare, such as trills and two-handed tapping.
He predominantly uses a finger-style picking approach, where he simultaneously pinches the chords with his right picking hand to create beautifully rich canvases of sound, while also dampening the strings to eliminate any unwanted open strings from ringing. His left-hand is fingering the chords on the fretboard.
Collins also uses his right-hand palm to create a rhythmic backbeat pulse while landing on and dampening the strings near the sound hole, while he is playing to simulate a “natural drummer.” This is a very popular and highly effective technique for solo guitarists to create a much “bigger sound,” tricking the audience into believing there is more than one musical instrument performing the piece.
What I noticed about Collins’ chord playing, is that he is using several unorthodox fingerings with his left fretting hand, particularly when playing min7th chords, which is consistent with the fact that Collins is a self-trained musician.
He is never too busy with his playing, as his guitar is only there to support “the boss,” which is his excellent moving vocals.
A Clear Audience Favorite
By far, Collins’ Cafe Wha? best song performance that night was “Let’s Stay Together,” which was requested for someone’s anniversary.
Almost instantly, he went into a rhythmic vamp which was the guitar intro, and soon Collins was crooning such warm and gorgeous R&B-tinged vocal melodies over beautifully rich harmonic chords. The Al Green classic tune dressed in Peter Collins’ easy soulful style truly embodied a new milieu.
My only quibble was that toward the end of the set, Collins appeared to run out of material. The last two to three songs appeared to be improvised melodies over random chord changes, that vamped repetitively without taking the audience anywhere. Even Collins admitted with a sheepish grin that he wasn’t sure what to play next. I know, as a performing musician myself, I’ve been there on several occasions. We’ve all at some point been there.
Still, this was a minimal damper to Collins’ overall strong and moving solo performance.
Link to the Village View article: https://villageview.nyc/2024/02/08/peter-collins/
Kaju Roberto is an accomplished musician, singer/ songwriter, journalist, and an award-winning producer. He is the artist Rad Jet on Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/artist/32si7c4nk210HPuqbXvhJg