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My sister and I grew up in a house where books were revered. Dad was a rabbi who had two offices, one at home and one at the synagogue, to accommodate his vast library. As for Mom, she was a reading teacher who liked to joke that all day at work she dealt with one kind of reading problem—kids who couldn’t read—and then came home to another kind—kids who wouldn’t stop reading.
Naturally, my sister and I grew up wanting to write books. My first one, WOW! World’s Outstanding Women Athletes, was published in 1998. My sister’s first one, We Had Fun and Nobody Died: Adventures of a Milwaukee Music Promoter, about her friend Peter Jest, came out in June. This week she and I are on a road trip, in part to spend time together, in part so she can do promotional events at a public library in Brattleboro, VT, and at our mom’s former synagogue in Cape Cod. I figured I’d kick off the week with a promotional event of my own, a Q&A with my sis.
DW: What made you want to write this book?
AW: I was trying to think of a way to help my friend who was having a bad pandemic. Peter had a club and a concert promotion business, and obviously during the pandemic he wasn’t doing anything—except putting old contracts up on his web site because he thought they were interesting. He’d booked people like Alanis Morrisette after Jagged Little Pill came out but before it blew up, and paid her $500. He paid Pearl Jam $500 to open for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Smashing Pumpkins in 1991. He paid Marilyn Manson $1000—he was like, “I was so generous!”—and he put those contracts up.
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DW: And that led you to write a book because…
AW: His lawyer freaked out about the contracts. He was like, “Don’t put those out there! Write a book!”
DW: I think I need more clarity here, Sis.
AW: I remembered when I had Peter over to dinner in the early 90s. He has one of those brains where you could toss out a random date and he would tell you who he had booked at the club and who played that night. It was a really fun parlor game. His bar manager said he could also tell you the bar take and the gate count. He has that kind of stats brain. So I kind of ran that through my brain and went, remembers every date, saves every scrap of paper. Peter has been doing the same thing since he was 17 and I’ve done a lot of different things, and in the time between that dinner date and the pandemic I’d been to library school. I was like, we can build him a virtual version of his club and he can sail through the pandemic with an income stream. People are at home, starved for content. I called him and said, “You’re sitting on a gold mine” and he said “Let me talk to my lawyer.”
DW: So it was really the lawyer’s idea!
AW: I hadn’t thought about writing a book about him. I had a completely different vision but when he said, “My lawyer said I should write a book,” I said, “Oh, yeah!” Peter is really interesting. His story is really interesting. I didn’t know all the contours of it, but what little I knew about it and him, I knew it would be engaging. I could turn it into the kind of book I really like reading, which is a good story about somebody who has done something unusual.
DW: What did you learn about Peter that you didn’t know?
AW: Let’s start with what I did know: I knew that he was really direct, didn’t play mind games, and had a strong moral code. He’s very ethical and very consistent but I didn’t know how he got his start in the business, and that was fascinating, especially the part about him winning more than 1200 radio contests when he was a kid and a teenager. I knew he had pets, but I didn’t know the extent of his menagerie. He and his wife take in animals nobody else wants—like, they adopted a blind, deaf, 18-year-old beagle whose owner didn’t want an old dog. Animals love Peter. If he wasn’t a promoter, I think he’d own an animal refuge.
DW: How does that love for animals, refusal to play mind games, and strong moral code translate into somebody who has become a successful independent music promotor in a business that’s grown increasingly corporate throughout his 42-year (and counting) career?
AW: It’s about the relationships with people. The corporate promoters are more interested in the business part of the music part of the music business. They could be selling body parts or cars. Peter cares as much about the music and the people who make it as he does about the business.
DW: You’ve got some really good examples in the book about some of those relationships—including the friendships he’s built over the years with incredible musicians like Arlo Guthrie, Leon Redbone, and the late John Prine. There’s also a cool story in there about Patti Smith and a scarf.
AW: If you’ve read any of Patti’s books, you know that objects are really important to her. She played a show in Milwaukee in 2013, her first visit to perform there in 38 years. The next day Peter got an email from her tour manager asking if he’d seen a scarf—maybe she’d dropped it in the car on the way to or from the venue? It had been a gift from her late husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith. Peter chased around town until he found the scarf, in a hotel coffee shop. He Fed-exed it to Smith’s next gig, in Pittsburgh. She and her team were so grateful they sent him a tour jacket as a thank-you.
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DW: You said he would have done that for anybody—that’s just how he is.
AW: He’s not starstruck. I think there are people who end up in the music business because they really wanted to be on stage. They really wanted to be out there performing and for whatever reasons, it didn’t work out. A frustrated performer who is a promoter has a really different outlook on what they’re doing than a person like Peter who said, “This is what I want to do, this is where I belong, this is what I love.” He is as good at what he does as any of those people on stage are at what they do and he’s really happy with what he does, and he loves what he does, and the performers can see that. A person like John Prine or Leon Redbone can see that. These friendships happened organically. Peter didn’t initiate them because Peter’s just going to let this artist do what they do and then leave them alone.
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DW: But hey, you’re an artist, a writer, and he didn’t let you alone when you were working on the book.
AW: Well, to be fair, he didn’t know what a writer does. He thought we went into a room and the words just flowed like water from a faucet, and there were times when he was frustrated that the book wasn’t happening faster. At one point he said to [my husband], “Lock her in her room! Get her to do this already!” And I wanted to call him and say, “Peter, when you booked Leonard Cohen, how often did you call him to say, ‘Have you done your set list? Have you hired your musicians? Are you practicing?’” Because I knew Peter would never dream of doing that. Peter understands that you just leave the musicians alone and let them do what they do. But he had no frame of reference for how that worked with writers.
DW: Okay, change of subject: How did the Wisconsin Historical Society Press come to publish the book?
AW: They were my first choice. It’s a universal story, but it’s a really great Wisconsin story, and if it made any money, I wanted that money to stay in Wisconsin.
DW: So, are you rich? Can you treat me to Starbucks on this road trip?
AW: Anybody who thinks writing a book is going to make them a lot of money is Stephen King or insane. And I bought you a $9 smoothie for breakfast so leave me alone.
DW: Alright, so where can everyone reading this Q&A buy the book, so you can buy me more beverages?
AW: Your favorite independent bookseller. Jeff Bezos has enough money. Or ask your library to buy it. I’m a librarian. You can borrow it! Just bring it back.
Wow, what an interesting author interview and now I'm going to find Amy's book. And make sure the Appleton Public Library has a copy. Oh, and I just thought of someone who this will make the perfect gift! Three copies and counting....
This is the best Q&A I've ever read, down to the $9 smoothie. I actually think you two should have a podcast. Think about it. I'll be buying this book and requesting it at our library, and respected that Amy wanted the proceeds to stay in Wisconsin. I also liked that Peter himself seems to have retained kindness and authenticity in a business you don't ever associate with those words.