Meet Griff Peters | Solo music recording artist and independent record label owner.

We had the good fortune of connecting with Griff Peters and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Griff, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Having my own record label, Impropriety Records, allows me to have total artistic control over my music, my image, and my business structure. I can keep my creative operations in alignment with my overall artistic ethos. I enjoy being the one who decides what music I release and when and how I release it. I’ve been in so many situations as a sideman guitarist where the artist I’m working for is beholden contractually to beancounters who don’t know or care anything about music. Now, as a solo artist and music record label owner, I get to steer the ship from a more pure artistic compass.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
The Griff Peters debut solo album, Canyons and Waves, on Impropriety Records consists of all-original music conceived, composed, performed, recorded, and engineered by an individual with a pure and unconstrained artistic vision expressing beauty through color and sound with the intent to heal and transform darkness and pain into joy, celebration and light. It’s a work of rare artistic freedom where the creator insisted on claiming the right to do whatever he wanted in pursuit of realizing and manifesting the music in his head to painstaking perfection and depth. In a modern world riddled with sampled auto-tuned AI-generated mediocrity, the Canyons and Waves album features expert musicians playing and interacting live with sensitivity, mastery and power. The title track, for example, captured a live in-the-moment improvisation deep in a red sandstone slot canyon in rural Utah, with the echoes and sounds of the crickets deep in the night. I insisted on not only getting authentic performances by master musicians, but I also insisted on releasing the Canyons and Waves album on 45rpm 12″ double-vinyl, which is the ultimate recording medium with unbeatable combination of stellar audio quality and proven longevity. These creative decisions were never in doubt. I had deep faith. My album. My mantra. My quality. My standards. My values. My choice. Maintaining a purist vision on this project was incredibly difficult and time-consuming, but I’m so very glad I stuck to my guns and stayed the course. I now have a worthy solo album to present to the world that I can be deeply proud of.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
San Diego County 1-week adventure:

Day 1 – Palomar Observatory and Boucher Tower on Mt Palomar. Then Jeremy’s in Wynola for dinner.
Day 2 – Mt Soledad in La Jolla, then El Pescador for lunch.
Day 3 – Great Maple in Hillcrest for breakfast then Balboa Park.
Day 4 – Birch Aquarium in am then beach day at La Jolla Shores.
Day 5 – Drive up Sunrise Hwy to Mt Laguna, then through Anza-Borrego Desert to Agua Caliente Hot Springs.
Day 6 – Pannakin Tea breakfast and Lou’s Records in Leucadia then Swami’s Beach and SRF Fellowship Gardens in Encinitas
Day 7 – Waterski at Mission Bay then Cabrillo Monument at Pt Loma

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I wish to shout out to the music educators in the world. I am deeply indebted to many wonderful people who crossed my path and helped to teach me music and also those who inspired me to play and practice and do the hard work necessary to reach mastery of a challenging and complex art form. My parents and my grandparents were themselves steeped in music, art and academia, so it was natural for them to encourage and support me along my way. They never told me to quit music and get a “real job”. The best way to teach is to inspire, so I shout out to all the accomplished masters who’ve blessed the world with amazing music of all kinds. Experiencing top-notch artists perform live, in-person, right in front of my eyes has been life-changing for me. As I continue deeper along my path composing, recording, and performing my own original music, I see more than ever how both challenging and rewarding this journey can be. I give deep gratitude and respect to those who have gone before me and paved the way for newer artists like me to explore and succeed.

Other: https://linktr.ee/Grifftone

Image Credits
All images by Griff Peters.