Red Hunter of Peter and the Wolf Succinctly Chronicles His South By Southwest Week:

“Highlights of SXSW: Dirty Projectors, this one rad chick, and blacking out onstage at our showcase.”

“Lowlights of SXSW: This one guy, that lame dude, and blacking out onstage at our showcase.”

Red Hunter, during the time we were in Austin and up until he left for the U.S. tour that he’s currently on, lived in a small house just around the corner from Big Orange studio, on the same block. When we recorded this session on March 13 th, just after lunchtime – though I don’t think anything was eaten, just Tecate drinkin’, he just walked over with his guitar and the funny lookin’, goatskin instrument with a bow and some strings. It wasn’t raining yet, but when he got to the studio, the droplets began pelting the roof and they didn’t stop for hours. Sometimes they fell harder, as if being thrown, and that’s when we had to pause the tape rolling. The rain had become louder than Hunter and with the special things he was doing, that would not stand. Hunter played that day in a gray T-shirt that had copious amounts of battery-acid-created holes all over it and in the cowboy boots that he was seen in on every occasion over the week. He told us about the 16-member choir he was rehearsing for some of his SXSW shows that week and we desperately wanted to hear them. With the way these songs turned out though, there are no complaints. – Sean Moeller

First song
Where Summer Goes (Peter and The Wolf) [2.20MB] [3626 downloads]


— unreleased
This is another idea I’ve been revising again and again — the concept of following the summer as it goes around the globe, being wise like migrating birds.  We recorded a big arrangement of this in Los Angeles for the new record, Sunchasers so this is the stripped-down version.

Second song
Lightness - Alternate Version (Peter and The Wolf) [1.86MB] [3250 downloads]



I had an alternate version of this title track from our first official release this past winter which worked well as a solo folk song but didnt lend itself to arrangement the way the slower version (the one we chose for the record) did, so it remained a sketch until yall gave me a chance to record it with you!

Third song
Silent Movies (Peter and The Wolf) [2.36MB] [3289 downloads]


— original version appears on Lightness
The boys from SOUND Team have that upright piano at the studio where we were recording these Daytrotter sessions, and I thought it’d be cool to do it Tin Pan Alley-style. This song was whispered to me by a ghost during a blizzard and I was lucky enough to write it down on a napkin.

Fourth song
The Fall - Tuvan Igil version (Peter and The Wolf) [2.24MB] [3157 downloads]


— unreleased
I wrote this song a long time back, like in ’03, and have constantly changed and rearranged it looking for new ways of expressing the idea.  I found this rare instrument in San Francisco made by the only igil maker in the U.S. and thought its homemade, goatskin sound would go really well with the song’s post-apocalyptic setting.