Earlier this month, Chicago songster Peven Everett released his 11th artist album, King of Hearts. It’s a quite astounding body of work, even for someone as restlessly creative as Everett clearly is. Here, Defected's Ben Lovett caught up with the voice - and soul - of a generation
“I keep picturing natives living on the sands of a desert island, and you’re on a boat full of food,” singer, songwriter, DJ and producer Peven Everett opens rather cryptically. “The food lasts for a while but eventually there’s the question of asking the natives for new supplies. When you do those natives freak out, firing arrows at you...you beat a hasty retreat, starving. That’s kind of how I see my new album. With love on my spirit I needed to create something nourishing for the soul; something that would encourage self-sufficiency. Therefore, I could remain on my boat, perfectly happy, sailing wherever I wanted. I call this record my ‘photo album’....”
His 11th album, in fact, King Of Hearts takes several vivid, highly emotive snapshots of Everett’s personal life over the past year or so. It is both raw and musical; an intimate, ‘photo-real’ record of Everett’s recent wellbeing, spun across the genres of R&B, power soul, funk, hip-hop and, of course, soulful house.
“It was a bunch of songs that needed to go together” he confesses. “They were about my personal life and my relationships, what I’d done and experienced. What I knew. I couldn’t let them become vault records because I really knew something about them. But at the same I couldn’t plan this. The album is about loving and losing love, which happens organically and that largely dictated the production. The songs came together over a period of around 18 months, because I needed to be feeling something real before writing anything; otherwise I’d have missed the mark. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be accurate in terms of my personal feelings; I wanted to be authentic because that shows I care.”
Over time, Everett realised he had enough “pure” material to make an even more poignant, persuasive statement about the human condition – his own. He updated some of the older songs, to provide sonic freshness but King Of Hearts remained an organic, free-flowing work. The initial reaction of his peers would suggest it is his best album yet; an emphatic evolution far beyond hackneyed interview quotes about moving forwards with every new release.
“Put it this way, I needed time to know myself, to fully understand myself at this moment in my life. That I think has made this record very special for me” Everett muses. “Billie Jewell [Everett’s long-term label signing] thought the title King Of Hearts summed this record and I up perfectly. It does, I think, reflect my fullest progression and outlook. That said I’ve only just started to race. There’s a long, long way to go yet!”
Everett’s story is already a long and impactful one. He started playing household objects as instruments at the age of three and remembers using a phone book to reach the piano. By four he was drumming jazz-funk standards. Everett’s family was deeply musical, based in the Illinois city of Harvey (just outside Chicago) and closely allied to gospel, jazz, soul and Afro. Once his mother bought him a professional drum kit, he never looked back.
At grammar school, the multi-instrumentalist teen played for Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis as part of a jazz band whose prowess would ultimately secure him a scholarship for Boston’s prestigious Berkeley School of Music. Everett was 17, and ready, remarkably, to reject it for an equally unique opportunity to be tutored by jazz great Wynton Marsalis. Everett now moved to New York where he performed regularly with legendary jazz singer Betty Carter as her Music Director. Tellingly, perhaps, his first professional gig was at the world renowned Carnegie Hall. Big things lay ahead.
In time, Everett returned to Chicago and, there, his career really started to accelerate. Studio time with local DJ Roy Davis Jr, and former band mate Frank Parker Jr, catalysed his minimal garage anthem Gabriel, which upon release in 1996 quickly earned him underground club fame across the globe. Well-placed support from media such as Time Out, the New York Times and BBC Radio One (via Gilles Peterson) further fanned the flames of hype and provided the perfect springboard for Everett’s subsequent weighty discography.
Everett has been incredibly busy. Over the past 12 years, he has released 10 studio albums ranging from 2001’s acclaimed debut Studio Confessions to 2009’s slickly upbeat Party Of The Year; his last outing prior to King Of Hearts. Singles, like albums, have dropped on a wide range of club labels strongly associated with soul-house including Soul Heaven, Diaspora, King Street offshoot Nite Grooves and Defected’s ITH. But as his CV demonstrates, upbeat 4-4 is just one of several sonic mediums comfortably to hand.
According to Everett “the art” should always come first: “The craft, the emotion, the feeling...all of it should progress the artist and the genres they end up working in. It should never be the other way round. If more people thought like this then things really would be different.”
What sort of an artist, then, does he think he is? “I define myself as an artist who has lived through a wave of real artists coming on” he explains. “They’ve become my direct reference points. They really did the job... I’m talking about people like Miles Davis, Cedar Walton, Max Roach.... these classic jazz types. I was fortunate enough to know some of these people professionally, even personally, and kept them close. They link me to the bare roots of an honourable time, when artists were ‘in the craft.”
It’s a time-honoured way of musical life Everett is keen to protect and, where possible, extend. Where tracks today can be made in auto-piloted nanoseconds on a bedroom laptop, before instant, impersonal digital seeding around the world, Everett is keen to reassert the value of a patient, fully immersive creative process; driven, as it so often is, by talented musicians, sharp songwriting and impassioned groove. “Some of the craft...the art... has been lost today. There’s a point of no return and the music industry has passed it for worse, not for the better” he says. “I’ve fought hard and long, and people didn’t expect that from me. I stuck by what I believed in...loving music...and that’s why I think I’ve stood the test of time.”
Everett’s fight has also extended to battling the traditional dominance of DJs and producers when it comes to vocalists releasing club music: “A great deal of inspiration goes to the DJ. The vocalist’s star power is weakened, in consequence. Therefore, your force of character is vital. I do everything where possible. Because if you ‘make’ the product then you control the brand and can build brand consistency. That again is the reason, I think, I’m here. I’ve fought for control...to be the one leading the way.”
This summer Everett will re-launch his live show, in support of King Of Hearts. “I want to sharpen things up” he enthuses. “For the first time, I’ll be singing songs with distinct beginnings and ends. The breaks make it easier for people to post videos online; I’m commercialising things, making them digital friendly.” But not at the expense of underground integrity: “I’m a commercial artist with an underground heart. I want to be part of that wider community so that I can show them I haven’t forgotten them. It’s still my vision; I just want to show as many people as possible this is what I do.”
He has also been working with protégé Billie Jewell – a key signing to his Studio Confession stable – on her debut album (due late this year), whilst progressing their double-act PBJ, nurturing elite hip-hop project Upper Esh and prepping new EPs for Studio Confession.
“It’s about being able to protect your heritage but gauge the market also and prepare for the future. Otherwise this industry will leave you behind,” Everett reflects. His illustrious past, it seems, is nothing without his future. “The pace of music today is staggering and you have to keep up before you can even consider cutting through the noise. There are lots of projects I’m currently working on and Jewell is a great example of my belief that it is the art that progresses the artist. She doesn’t have a comfy spot...her music and emotion leads her into so many different genres. That’s really exciting.”
Everett is confident he can advance his “loving music” agenda in what he feels is an increasingly barren music climate. “All over the world there’s a drought effect” he rails. “People need to feel something, but these hybrids of what has gone before don’t cut it. People want something new; not the industry forcing something on them. I share their belief. Ultimately record labels, big and small, must support the taste of the artist. No artist wants to destroy their career so there should be greater consistency in supporting their tastes and encouraging a two-way transaction with the listener. Unfortunately, negative PR from the media and industry politics harms this ideal.
“Music can still exist beyond the point of no return it has now passed, but it is being driven so much by marketing and the opinions of the major TV owners. Music has become a visual medium, much less about the ear. All I can do is keep responding to anything I feel goes against my principles of loving music. I’m still in the race and fighting hard.”
Words: Ben Lovett
Peven Everett’s new album King Of Hearts is out now on Makin’ Moves Records (UK). Double A-side single Taking Me Back/When I Want Someone It’s You is also out now.
