Songwriter Peter Mulvey won’t shy away from social commentary on inauguration day

While the songs on Peter Mulvey’s upcoming 17th album, “Are You Listening?” (out this March) aren’t overtly political, the Wisconsin-based singer-songwriter’s work has grown more so in the last couple of years.

The song “Take Down Your Flag,” which he wrote shortly after the church shooting in Charleston, took on a life of its own with other artists – like Ani Difranco, who produced his new album – adding their own verses, each honoring an individual who died that night.

Mulvey’s body of socially conscious tunes is growing. He’ll share some Friday at Evening Muse.

“I wrote ‘Song for Michael Brown’ because I wanted to emphatically say that we need to start from a place of compassion for everyone. I wrote that song and predictably some people were ticked off, but a lot of people were moved by the song,” he explains, calling from his home Tuesday. “I wrote ‘Take Down Your Flag’ after the shootings in Charleston. That’s where Ani and I bonded. I’ve written songs called ‘Maryam on the Train’ (about Syrian refugees) and ‘Jesus Wants To Take Your Guns Away.’”

He released those songs on YouTube and plays them live, but they don’t appear on the new album.

“I didn’t feel comfortable selling those songs on a record so I put them on a free EP. The EP says, this is free and on the back it says, ‘but by picking it up you’re promising me you’ll join, donate to, get on the mailing list of the ACLU or Planned Parenthood,’” he continues, adding anti-gun and environmental protection organizations to the list.

“Maybe if I were making the record now I would put them on there,” he adds. “In the end my life’s work is the live show I’ll be singing those songs at the shows.”

Although, like Difranco and Chuck Prophet, who produced his last album, Mulvey may play folk-based music and tell poignant stories, but he isn’t a typical folkie. He’s an accomplished guitarist and a poet who spikes albums and concerts with spoken word. He wrote an entire record using letters written to his nieces and nephews as babies and for the last 15 years he’s played a surprise concert in a cave in rural West Virginia for the top teen science students in the country who attend Camp Pocahontas there each summer.

He recently published an illustrated book about an Czechoslovakian engineer named Vlad he met at the camp, who per Mulvey’s query attempted to explain why aliens haven’t made contact with earthlings.

He’s also not a completely solitary writer allowing peers Difranco and Prophet to help shape recent albums.

“Chuck is contentious to the point of being combative. He’s just amazing. If you throw an idea up, he’s like why does it have to be this way? We had a ball once I realized this was his process,” he says.

On Difranco: “Ani was Captain, My Captain. It’s a shame she doesn’t run for president. She’d hate the job, but she takes people seriously. Look at the way she is with an audience. She’s so tuned into them. In the studio she’d absorb everyone’s idea and she would make the call.”

For his next album, he tentatively plans to work with a string duo and Difranco’s bassist, Todd Sickafoose producing. He’s also taken on a sort of mentor role to songwriter Anna Tivel, who sings backup on the new album and will tour with him out west.

“Chris Smither was my mentor. I was 22 years old and Chris was in his late 40s. I was opening shows for him then. Now I’m in my late forties,” Mulvey ponders. “Anna’s around 30, so I don’t feel so ridiculously old.”

This story was originally published January 20, 2017 at 11:34 AM with the headline "Songwriter Peter Mulvey won’t shy away from social commentary on inauguration day."