Eric Peters is way cool. He played a gig here in the ATL area on Friday, and we were fortunate enough to be in attendance. We did have fun finding the venue, the Vertical Grounds coffee house. The directions on the website were mostly good, although it would have been easier if they had mentioned that the coffeehouse was in the Korean Community Presbyterian Church. But, we finally found it. It was a neat setup, and the church is holding these coffeehouses on a monthly basis, having started a few months back. Eric was the first act recruited from outside the church, and they've got some good acts lined up for the future (like Randall Goodgame in May, which will be cool).

Despite a few technical issues, the show was pretty good. Eric was accompanied by Gabe "The Legend" Scott, who has recently been touring with Bebo. Gabe's guitar/dobro/accordian/vocal skills definitely helped flesh out EP's songs. Make no mistake: Eric Peters is a tremendous solo performer. But, his songs definitely lend themselves to "bigger" arrangements to draw out the richness of his music. Eric has just released a new disc, Bookmark, which is more of a stripped-down acoustic "live" album. The disc contains re-worked versions of a few old favorites (including a mellow, cool version of the Ridgley song "Clenched Fist") and a handful of new ones. One of the new ones, "September Sunday," is a fictitious song dealing with his wife's death (which hopefully won't happen anytime soon!). A tad morbid (and he made a point to apologize in advance), but very poignant.

A mighty fine night of music, and to ice the cake, we got a real life exhibition of Mr. Peters dancing kookily. Priceless.