Say you're about to open a restaurant and you need a name that will attract business in a hurry. Hmmm … how about something like We Can't Cook? Uh, no. That makes about as much sense as naming your band Tone Deaf. Who's going to do that? Well, Ruth Peterson, vocalist and founding member of amusia, would. See, the band's moniker means “someone who can't recognize musical sounds” — an apt description of this year's Grammy committee, perhaps, but hardly a serious assessment of this six-year-old Boston-based group.
“I found the name in Word Lover's Dictionary, and it seemed appropriate and, hopefully, ironic,” says Peterson, cowriter (with guitarist Todd Russell) of standout tracks such as “Inside” and “Out of My Hands.” Earlier this year, Peterson, Russell, and bandmates David Sella (electric guitar), Matthew Russell (Todd's drumming brother), and Michael Calienes (bass) holed up inside their hometown's Q Division studios and laid down the basics for the acoustic-based rock quintet's new EP, Never Go, adding the finishing touches in Matthew Russell's own Pro Tools — equipped home studio.
“Prior to amusia, I'd been performing and writing songs in an acoustic vein,” says Peterson, “and I kind of brought that element to the band when we first got together.” A year after issuing its four-song EP debut, amusia (if you haven't already guessed, that lowercase a is intentional) countered with 1999's full-fledged Forever Ends, an album that matched Peterson's ethereal melodies and Russell's acoustic rhythm with the jagged electric-lead work of Sella. “Right away I realized what a unique contrast of sounds we had in our music,” says Peterson. “I don't know if there's anyone around here who has a style that's quite like ours.”
Fronting a full-on rhythm section full-time could have been a larynx-shredding endeavor for the previously unplugged Peterson, who decided to take her band's advice early on and sought the guidance of a vocal therapist. “If it hadn't been for those guys, I never would have gone,” says Peterson. “The vocal instruction and breath control has been incredibly helpful for me as a live performer — that and using an in-ear monitor, with just my vocals in the mix.”
Peterson (who punches the clock for a local law firm and handles amusia's bookings on her days off) believes it's necessary to maintain a healthy onstage attitude, in addition to staying vocally fit.
“Half of live performance is just enjoying yourself,” says Peterson, who helps keep things on the bright side with a Shure Beta 87A vocal mic. “Although I try to get us into the kind of venues that are better suited for our kind of music, obviously the response can vary from night to night. I don't ever let it bother me, though. I try to put myself in the audience while I'm up there. Because I know I wouldn't want to be watching someone who looks absolutely miserable onstage.”
In their quest to stay radio-active, amusia have taken advantage of Boston's teeming college-radio market and have also exploited online opportunities such as RadioBoston.com. Getting onto the mainstream airwaves has been considerably more challenging. Peterson's dad, Nashville-based author and professor Richard Peterson, believes he has the answer.
“My father keeps saying, ‘You really need to write more hooks,’” says Peterson. “He says, ‘How do you think ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’ got onto radio anyway?’ That's how he sees it. Still, we are who we are. I don't actively sit down thinking, ‘I'm going to write a hook right now.’ I just do what comes naturally, keep improving the songwriting, and hope that people keep getting it.”
