Peter Marinari: home // about

Peter Marinari has been writing an album's worth of songs every year since 1998, but he will only play you the catchy ones.

Peter got his start playing songs in the halls of his high school between every class. A self-taught guitartist inspired by his teenage favorites Ani DiFranco, Peter Mulvey, David Bowie, and Tracy Bonham, his songs were a blend of alternate-tuning agressive folk and lyrically deft radio rock.

High school halls transformed into the city streets of the campus of Drexel University, where Peter undertook a minor in music so he could engineer his first studio demo LP - Relief - while honing his songwriting chops in class and at open mic nights.

"As I began to play open mics and meet other local artists I started seeing the danger of having a certain formula to my sound. If I wrote a funky little folk song, the next song had to be chunky power chords. A ballad had to be followed by an unadulterated pop song.

"For a few years it was a little maddening, but now that I'm on the other side I have a certain coherency to me."

After a string of solo sets and a stint in a professional acappella group, in 2007 Peter put his solo music on hold to play as Arcati Crisis with his best friend, Gina Martinelli. They released four CDs in two years and blazed across the Philly music scene, bringing their kitschy, harmony-ladenl indie rock to venues including Doc Watsons, Tin Angel, and the Tritone.

With Arcati Crisis increasingly a fixture on the Philly music scene, Peter turned his attention back to his solo music - playing a new collection of acoustic power pop tunes intermingled with covers from the biggest women in pop (Madonna, Kelly Clarkson, Lady Gaga).

Over a decade after his start Peter remains an entirely DIY artist. All songwriting, promotion, music production, graphic design, and web development is 100% the work of Peter, with assistance from his wife, Elise - the lead singer of Philly rock band Filmstar.

Peter Marinari plays Breedlove, Alvarez, and Epiphone guitars, and uses D'addario EXP strings and Dunlop picks. Peter's vocal development is due to the efforts of Dr. Emily Anna Bridges, Becky Oehlers, Dr. Stephen Powell, and William Pollock.

Download Download Peter's Brown Bag Demos, Vol. 1 album for free!