Friday, October 28, 2011

P.U.L.P



ArtSpiel: Makin' it


September 2009 Issue

Making it in the arts is a wacko process. Last season's American Idol phenomenon, Adam Lambert,fell to a kid with one-tenth Lambert's talent. I saw some old friends on the super-finale of American Idol. Certainly you know one of them, Steve Martin, but I doubt you know the other, David P. Jackson, who played back-up bass for Martin.

Jackson stopped by my place in Pueblo West while doing minor gigs in Colorado a couple of weeks before that performance. He reminded me that Martin was a big fan of my art in the 60s when the three of us were Hollywood buddies struggling to make it. I told him that Martin admired one of my drawings but regretted that he couldn't afford it. If I'd known then what I know now, that Martin would become a superstar and a major collector of American art, I'd have wrapped that drawing in my own flesh and given it to him.

None of us was rich or famous, but we were kick-ass happy trying to get there. With all those big talents we hung out with, we celebrated every step along the way. We believed in ourselves; we believed in each other.

But life is weird in the arts. Talent does not guarantee fame.

I met the talented Peter Burg years ago performing original poetry at Pueblo's classic Tumbleweed Bookstore. He showed tremendous skill at the art I love. I learned afterwards that Burg is best known in Pueblo as a blues man performing everywhere with his group Peter Burg and Blue Suburban. Guess what? As a kid he worked in a Pacific Palisades music store where thee Randy Newman hung out, and they talked about the songs Burg was recording!

Guess what else? Burg is an excellent visual artist with a degree from CSU-Pueblo. He also drives a school bus and lives better than many musicians because he drives a bus.

The mellow-voiced music man began his journey in 7th grade with his first band, The Valours. He went on to write acoustic songs, was one of the first professional skateboarders, was a singing waiter and appeared on radio and TV. In 1980, he did the Hollywood circuit with his own pop/rock band. At 23, he pierced his ear with a friend and they, "dedicated their lives to music." But Burg's ADHD and multi-talents kept him restless. In 1983, after a three-month Alaskan tour where he performed at the Anchorage Sheraton, he landed in the mountains of southern Colorado where he figured life would be more affordable than his old southern California stomps.

His background in art is considerable. His father was a professional artist and his three sisters have art degrees. He enjoys making art and does custom framing to pick up a buck here and there to augment his music career. But each of his attempts to open a gallery, in Blende in 1993 and Rye in 1995, tanked. In 1993, he won Best 2/D Art in the USC Student Art Exhibit and received the Occhiato University Center Art Purchase Award. In 1997, he graduated from USC with a B.A. in art and was awarded the Robert Taylor Memorial Scholarship. While President of the Pueblo Songwriters and Musicians Association, he received the 2004 Excellence in the Arts Award. Did I mention he worked at the Sangre de Cristo Arts Center in 1989 as Assistant Curator and Collections Manager? He was held on probation for one year by Executive Director Maggie Divelbiss and then fired for poor job performance.

Here we've got a maturing dude with a heap of enviable capabilities in music, poetry and art. He is well known and admired in this community for each of them and he drives a school bus in Rye. He receives a fixed salary with benefits and has the summers off to escape from the school kids who remind him of the turmoil he'd forgotten growing up.

Burg had his shot at That Hollywood Town long before Simon Cowell ever said, "You're going to Hollywood!" At the same time Steve Martin, David P. Jackson and I, and other really talented friends, were padding each other's egos whenever the chips were down on making it. Peter Burg was on that same scene.

Frankly, Burg's poetry is among the best I've heard around here. His nude drawings are sensuous and elegant. The art on the cover of his 2007 poetry collection, "Whistles," knocks me out. I presume it's a self-portrait: a whimsical sketch of a torso-heavy man with broad California-beach pecs, a silly red-lipped grin and wide-open eyes focused straight ahead saying: "Here I am!"

Does he still wish for a breakthrough with his music career?

"Sure I do," he tells me, "but realistically it won't happen. Pueblo is not a musical hub."

The Poet Spiel is a lifelong artist whose work is published internationally in scores of independent journals. Learn more about him at: www.thepoetspiel.name

The Pueblo Chieftain

Greenhorn Valley play revisits


Dust Bowl era

Posted: Friday, September 16, 2011 12:00 am

The Greenhorn Valley Players will bring the work of a local playwright and musician to the stage next weekend.

"Dust Angels" is written by Peter Burg, a well-known musician and longtime Rye resident. The play is set in 1934 in a rural Southeastern Colorado community.

"It's about three groups of people who end up on this ranch," said Burg. "It's reminiscent of what's happening today. . . . It's about hardship, struggle, faith, people's differences — everything that happens throughout life, in a nutshell, is in this play."

The lives of the eight people living on the ranch intertwine in unexpected ways, he said. Their interactions become their saving grace as they deal with personal tragedies, brutal weather and a terrible economy.

The eight-person cast includes Burg, Cliff Pattison (founder and artistic director of the theater group), Elizabeth Smith, Kira Hughes, Jon Hannan, Marissa Porter, Michael Davis and Nic Hannan.

Burg co-directs the play with Pattison and wrote original music for it. A slide show and monologue will give the audience background about the Dust Bowl era and the people who lived through it.

Tickets are $6 in advance or $7 at the door. For information, call 489-2099.

  • Amy Matthew

    The Pueblo Chieftain

Dust Angels A Play by Peter Edward Burg











PETER BURG’S “DUST ANGELS”AT THE GREENHORN VALLEY PLAYERS PLAYHOUSE ON 23RD, 24TH AND 25TH SEPTEMBER

Rye musician and writer, Peter Burg’s second play, “Dust Angels”, will be performed at the Greenhorn Valley Players Playhouse, Rye, on the 23rd, 24th at 7.30pm and 25th September at 2.30pm. This is Mr. Burg’s second original play, the first being “Clown Town” which was put on here in 2009.


“Dust Angels” is set during the Dust Bowl era in 1934 and is about a small rural community on the fringe of a prairie in southeastern Colorado near the Kansas line. Remnants of three broken families have banded together to form an alliance against the hardship of their existence. The characters are all poor. Some are educated, others are rich with life experience, and others downright ignorant but all have an innate ability for survival with a strong belief in the hard work ethic. They persevere, believing that this strange weather and economic upheaval will subside soon and better times will eventually come.


But the bleak day to day existence is their only reward for their endeavors. These people have been at the bottom of the heap and can’t get any lower.

Helplessness begins to eat away at the group. Their interaction together is their only saving grace. Their only news of the nation is from the radio. As they interact with it, some view it as both a life line and a curse. Some confess their sins and others tell stories.

It was inconceivable that America could falter. And as it did Americans were dumbfounded, becoming mentally mute. This once virile country was now impotent. How does one reckon with a fallen angel?

This is both an historical story and one that is bitingly topical in terms of today’s deep economic depression. How does one come to terms with a world apparently without prospects and without hope? This small but resilient group has dug in on an isolated southeastern Colorado farm, to do battle with nature itself, theirown inner turmoil, the economic crisis, and their luck of the draw. It is difficult to see through the dust but there is surely something ahead! This is a very relevant modern play about the trials of life, the strength of the human spirit and about man’s eternal sense of hope. Above all, it is a play about the pressures that affect every one of us everyday and about how we cope with this adversity, how we deal with personal relationships and about the commonality and love that in the end binds us all together. That- then and now- we will eventually survive adversity is a given. We are a race of survivalists and therefore have no other option but to prevail. It is the “how” that is the lesson here. The solution and transcendence must come in spite of who we are. Jean- Paul Sartre, the French philosopher and playwright, once wrote at the conclusion of his play “No Exit” that “L’Enfer- sont les autres- Hell is other people.” Happily Peter Burg realizes at the end of “Dust Angels” that in the end, all we have is one another- faults, problems and all. All the characters in this play will end up on the side of the angels.

There will be original music composed for the play by Peter Burg and a slide show of archival black and white photographs of the Dust Bowl period. The play is directed by Cliff Pattison and Peter Burg with a cast of eight local actors and actresses, whose ages range from nine to Eighty one.

Please come and support this original production solely created and performed by local residents of our community. In life and in the theater, there are those of us who are actors and those that are audience- but neither can exist without the other!

The Greenhorn Valley Players Playhouse is at 2090 Main Street, Rye, Colorado Tel # 719 489-2099

Tickets are $6.00 in advance, $7.00 at the door.


Directors-----------------Peter Burg and Cliff Pattison (Founder and Artistic Director of Greenhorn Valley Players, founded in 1989.)



Characters and Cast

Alondra Steepleton----------------------------------------Elizabeth Smith

Jersey McLanahand---------------------------------------Kira Hughes

Oscar Valentine--------------------------------------------Cliff Pattison

Jordan Hardy-----------------------------------------------Jon Hannan

Tess Hardy-------------------------------------------------Marissa Porter

Ezra Hastings----------------------------------------------Michael Davis

Durrell Plains ---------------------------------------------Peter Burg

Estaban Louis Zappata (Louie)------------------------Nic Hannan









Sound, Stage Construction, Lighting----------------Robert Humphrey

Choreography Consultant --------------------------Cyrisse Cooley

Stage and Wind Consultant----------------Leslie Baldwin Archer (L.A, Design)

Music, Stage Design/Painting, Multimedia----------Peter Burg

Projector Loan-------------------------------------Jonathan Waugh

Program Artwork----------------------------------Laura Burg Robertson

Mac Lap Top---------------------------------------Joe Kellogg

Program/Tickets-----------------------------------Rochelle Harman

Curtain/Stage Hand--------------------------------Nitai Morano

Costumes/Make-Up-------------------------------Cast

Article( www.greenhornvalleyview.com )-Jonathan S. Evans www.jonathanevans-batikart.com