CV Musician Releases First Solo Album
Castro Valley's Pete Gidlund has been playing in bands and has been a music educator for decades, but he is releasing his first solo CD and vinyl LP on Berkeley's Moon Scar Records on Friday, March 3.
He introduces the album in person Saturday, March 4, at 9 p.m. at the Little Hill Lounge in El Cerrito. Doors open at 8. The club is at 10753 San Pablo Avenue, just north of Moeser Lane.
"Instrumental Works 2014-2021" contains Gidlund's ambient work from the past seven years and evokes the landscape of the Southwest. Side A was originally recorded in a yurt outside Abiquiu, New Mexico, in 6 days in 2014, using only an iPad and its onboard microphone, a guitar, and a ukulele.
Short snippets were recorded during the day with his three small kids bouncing around, and the passages were edited into individual songs each night in the yurt after bedtime, he said.
"There are a lot of 15-second ideas there, but we performed recording magic on them so they all blended together smoothly," Gidlund said.
Americana and ambient genres blend together, and acoustic instruments are arranged more like electronic ones, according to a Moon Scar announcement.
Side B was recorded in a similar style over the next seven years, with passages recorded using the voice memo app on his iPhone or with a simple podcasting mic. They were collaged together during Gidlund's travels for work and with family across the US.
Gidlund came through the Castro Valley public school system, and his three children attend them now. He attended Chabot Elementary, Canyon Middle School, and Castro Valley High School but said he didn't get good grades or have a lot of friends for much of that time.
He'd been taking Castro Valley's many industrial arts classes at the time, partly because he could get good grades in those. But when he'd taken every shop class he could, he signed up for Ms. Sue Susoeff's guitar class. (Susoeff has since retired.)
"I actually learned to play guitar in Ms. Susoeff ‘s guitar class at CVHS the first year it was offered," he said. "And I have played music in bands ever since and have never stopped."
"Once I learned guitar, it was like a magic wand," Gidlund said. "I couldn't wait to get in front of audiences, and I made a lot of friends after they saw me playing."
He played in a number of underground and independent bands and toured with a few.
"I currently play in a really fun bar band called Lucy and the Long Haul," he said.
Once he found his calling in school, he stuck with education. He graduated from Castro Valley High School, Class of 1996, and went to Chabot College, then Cal State East Bay. He first became a teacher in the Berkeley Schools, teaching math and science before teaching music. He has taught music to students from elementary school through high school and even teaches tomorrow's music teachers in the Master's degree program in Music Education at San Jose State University.
Two decades later, he is director of the Berkeley district's Visual and Performing Arts program. Berkeley has an unusually strong music program for students, with each student learning an instrument and enough mobile music teachers to staff an elementary school if need be. A voter-passed bond issue provides the funding for that program, which includes art, dance, and drama, along with music, from elementary school through high school.
His album is the first release from Moon Scar Recording, a new record label working to bring distinctive music into the world. "We hunt for sounds that are new and familiar," they said in a release.
Gidlund said it was founded by his longtime friend and podcast co-host Matt Silas, who had found success at Pixar and as a literary editor.
"But he's also a music lover who had always wanted his own label," Gidlund added.