Even before he recorded his first album, “Lucky As A Seven,” Peter McWhirter’s star was already shining brightly. The debut's moniker says a lot about this amazingly talented singer-songwriter. Barely out of his teens when he penned the opening track “Humm,” it raced straight to the top of the country music charts.
Now with a string of tunes ready for release, the 20-year-old now has his sights set on Nashville and is set to take on the music scene with his own unique signature of cross-over country.
"Lucky as a Seven" is an eclectic mix of songs, steeped in country and blues and infused with threads of indie pop. From the uplifting "I Will Stand By You," about never giving up, to the more bluesy "Ain't as Easy As It Looks", McWhirter has firmly established his own style.
"It's mixing a whole lot of different ideas in the music spectrum from rock, folk, country, blues and bringing it all together into one," McWhirter says.
The musical blend – recorded and produced in Nashville with the help of acclaimed producer Mark Moffatt – comes out of McWhirter's upbringing on the outskirts of Sydney in Campbelltown where he discovered his musical abilities at age ten, when he clutched his first guitar.
Indeed the album's catchy title - born out of a line from one of the tracks - could reflect McWhirter's own musical journey. It was a ride that began, not in the realms of country influences, but in traditional Australian rock. His heroes and inspiration came largely out of the Aussie pub scene.
"I guess it was seeing Jimmy Barnes on television. I love Cold Chisel and I got my first guitar when I was ten and I started singing around the same time," he says. "I started writing two or three years after that."
His growing love of country music came via regular duet sessions with a friend. "From there I started playing more country," he says. But it is his love of rock that sets McWhirter's sound apart, with Brad Paisley, Keith Urban and Toby Keith big influences.
"The thing that attracts me to country music is the technical skill that's involved in a guitar. Blues is also a variant of country music and I'm a big fan of the blues and love playing harmonica and listening to Muddy Waters," McWhirter says. "But country music is a story and I love the emotion of it."
The upbeat hit "Humm" is a contagious tune about enjoying life, best reflecting McWhirter's relaxed demeanor. The song itself was written within two hours.
"The story behind Humm is that I needed a song for a musical bootcamp I was doing in high school and they asked us to go home and write a song. I wrote the song in the wee hours of the morning," he says.
It was a long way from Nashville where he went on to record his new album, a town he sees very much in his future: "I'm going to retire in Nashville. I just know it," McWhirter says. "Nashville is just Music City and is one of those places where a musician can feel at home."
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