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Peter Wiegand (vocal and narration)

Peter was born in Freiburg, Germany in 1953 the son of Austrian and German parents. At the age of 30 he started to get itchy feet. He needed a way to open up the valve and let the pressure out, to express his turbulent experiences through his art. And what experiences they were, at the age of 10 he was convicted of truancy and vagrancy and sentenced to juvenile detention, and later placed in a foster home for troubled youth. As a young man he drifted from country to country, finding shelter in sub-standard housing, taking on odd jobs as a house painter, a hardware salesman, a coach driver and in an insurance office. A life like Jack Kerouac’s "On the Road”, his travels took him to Sweden, Holland, France, Greece, India and Israel where he lived on a Kibbutz. He marries, and lives with his wife in a self-sufficient commune in Bavaria. Kids are born. The family travels around the U.S. in a camper. Back in Europe, Peter opens the first German Tofu business which goes bankrupt, and ends not only in a financial disaster, but also in a family break-up. Alone again, and back on the streets he ends up in the U.S. again where he finds his way to the medium he was originally trained in, the theatre. Doors begin to open for him musically as well with projects with Mongolian singer Nan Chi Lac, Nick McCarthy and his band "Franz Ferdinand” and "Mahogony”, but the big breakthrough doesn’t happen. He discovers the music of Tom Waits relating deeply to the parallels between Wait’s songs and his own history. Finally he leaves the Wait’s image behind him in search of his own style. His mini-drama "Wien ist nicht Chicago” ("Vienna is not Chicago”) is a success. His quest to make his music as deeply layered and as full of contrast as real life is realized in his encounter with "Die Konferenz” and "Catch Him if You Dream”.

(Thomas Kraus / Paul Stowe)


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