The Songs That Wouldn’t Let Him Go:
Pete Scales in Conversation
Pete Scales spent most of his life building a career as a psychologist while quietly sustaining a 55-year journey as a songwriter and performer, including years touring nationally as a contemporary Christian artist. His album "Blue Without You", which we reviewed recently, blends folk with elements of country, jazz, and blues through acoustic-driven songs that feel both reflective and deeply personal. Although not his first release, the album carries the spirit of a debut, shaped by songs with roots stretching far into the past and by Scales’ wholehearted, emotionally committed performances, resulting in a compelling and intimate listening experience. We sat down with Pete a few days ago to talk about his journey through life and music.
MBTM: Tell me about your childhood. Where did you grow up?
PS: I spent until 4th grade growing up on a farm in Pine Brook, New Jersey. My uncle was the foreman. It was the largest vegetable farm in Northern New Jersey at the time. I remember riding around on the back of farm trucks with no railings—and no doors either!
In the middle of 4th grade, we moved to Bloomfield, a suburban town about 10 miles due west of New York City. So I had a ton of times in the City in high school, hearing all sorts of street music and an occasional actual concert, but mostly the vibes of a city alive with music, from saxophonists in the subway to guitar players on 42nd street.
MBTM: What were your parents like?
PS: My wife says I had a Leave It to Beaver life. I’d say pretty typical post WWII working class family that moved up to middle class thanks to the GI Bill that paid for my Dad’s college. My Dad served in the Navy, then went to college and got a business degree and opened up his own commercial photography and print shop. My Mom was an RN who worked at the hospital where I was born. They were both moderate liberals, gregarious, especially my father, and both enjoyed discussions about current events and culture, so we talked a lot. I never felt like I couldn’t bring a subject up.
My Dad and I argued a lot about Vietnam, as so many young men and their parents did. But they always listened, and they came to change their minds, finally, deciding that the war was wrong and had to be opposed.
MBTM: Was music an important part of your home life growing up?
PS: Absolutely. My Mom had a fabulous soprano voice and played piano. I remember being in church and people turning around to sneak a look at who was singing like that, and it was my Mom they were looking at. My Dad didn’t play an instrument but was always playing records of big band and jazz and all the Great American Songbook vocalists of the 50s. I listened to a ton of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, and so forth. My sister played the accordion and I think won trophies, but I don’t think she liked it all that much.
My parents also wanted to hear the music I was listening to, so I played them everything from the Beatles to Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, to Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitcell. I don’t think they liked the music as much as they wanted to understand me by understanding the music that was important to me, which was great. My Nanie was a self-taught honky-tonk style piano player. She could cook! She really knew how to lose herself in the music. On the album, I tried to capture in "For You It Was Love" her style of honky-tonk.
MBTM: Your musical journey began in 1958 at a church talent show. Can you tell us more about that experience?
PS: Oh it was awful. Scared out of my mind. I had to play some clarinet and sing, to my Nanie’s piano accompaniment on "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling", and "With a Shillelagh Under Me Arm". This is a farm community and everyone knows everyone, and there had to be 200 people in that old church, including my friends. I was petrified. I remember nothing of how I played or sang. All I remember is, right before we went on, my Nanie said, “Just keep the beat, lovie—no matter what happens, keep the beat.” The best performing advice I ever got.
MBTM: Your first instrument was the clarinet, but that changed in 1968, didn’t it?
PS: Oh yeah. Turns out, you were cool in the 1940s and early 50s if you played clarinet, but in 1968, second part of my freshman year at Syracuse, I realized that the only chance I had of being musically and personally cool—read, have a girlfriend--was the guitar. So to my parents’ chagrin, I sold my last clarinet to buy my first guitar. Never regretted it!
MBTM: When did you start writing songs?
PS: Pretty soon after first learning to play. I learned enough of the songs that were hot at the time to be able to play halfway ok versions of them for fraternity parties and just hanging out. But then, I had always written poetry, and I started trying to put some of that to music. That really didn’t work, so I realized if I wanted to write I had to write about what was happening to me, what I was feeling, and tell a story about that. But it took a couple of years of writing stuff that was no good before I started getting the hang of the construction of a song.
MBTM: Your new album, Blue Without You, is very much a folk record, but it also draws from many different genres. Do you have a personal favourite track on the album, and why?
PS: I have been into a lot of different styles of music from the time I was a little kid. And I just kept on exposing my self to old jazz and blues guitar like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Robert Johnson, and the Rev. Gary Davis, as well as country and folk tunes, even as I was buying the pop hits of the day for my own collection. My first jazz record was Dave Brubeck’s Time Out, and I used to practice singing along with Paul Desmond’s sax piece on a beautiful track called "Softly William, Softly". It taught me more about vocal control and breathing than any other song, trying to turn my voice into a sax!
All 12 songs are there for a reason, so they’re all my favorites in a way. The title cut I think is just a really nice folk-country-pop ballad that has commercial appeal, whereas "Mary Lou" you’ve got to get up and dance to. "Melissa" and "Arouse Me" have some of the nicest jazz licks. "For Awhile and She Can Do Me" I like for the guitar work that I very much wanted to sound like Joni Mitchell, and Leo Kottke, respectively, and because I workshopped them for years in Larchmont, NY playing in her house just with my long-lost friend, Amy Howard, who could have been a star on her own but didn’t want it. Huge musical influence on me. "For Awhile" is not the most commercial song—it’s too long. But it’s my little symphony. There are movements to it, intentionally. It’s really intricate on the inside but I tried to make it sound simple on the outside. Worked on that one for 20 years to get it right.
MBTM: How did the album come together?
PS: In 2025, I retired after 50+ years as a research psychologist, at age 75, and I realized I probably had one more chance to go over my catalog and see if there was anything worth putting out. I stopped playing years ago, so I wasn’t going to record again. So I just started listening to the hundreds of songs I wrote over the years and going yes/no/maybe. And when it was over and I had the 12, I realized it was a nice reflection of the different eras of my musical career, and that I was ok with these 12 standing for what I did and tried to do as a musician, in terms of craft and musicianship. I never wanted to be the artist, though I gigged years in the Syracuse-Ithaca, New York corridor. I just wanted to be someone who wrote a few good songs, and did the vocal and guitar work that other musicians would say was solid and worthy and sounds like it would be fun to play it. That’s it.
MBTM: Can you tell us more about the track “Melissa”? It’s one of my favourites on the album.
PS: Ha. Well that is an amalgam of several relationships I had, where we had background differences that she thought would make it impossible for us to click, and also that some men wanted to have girlfriends as almost a therapist. So I wrote, “It doesn’t matter if you’re poor or rich, I’ve had my troubles and I’ve had my sense of position, don’t need to lean on you. Just leave a little light on and I’ll be there." So it’s two independent people allowing that space while figuring out how to be together. And I knew it had to be a nice jazz groove.
MBTM: You’ve performed at the Grand Ole Opry. How did that opportunity come about?
PS: The Nashville Network at the time had a TV show called Be A Star, and you could just submit cassettes (yes!) to be invited to come to Nashville to audition for the show. I sent in one of my originals and I guess they thought it was good enough to have me come down. They did the auditions right out on the Opry stage, which can be a bit overwhelming if you think about all the great artists who have stood there and played. And now you’re standing there. I didn’t perform very well that day, the pressure got to me, and so I didn’t make the show. But what an experience. I learned a lot from it.
MBTM: Between 2002 and 2023, you worked as a solo contemporary Christian singer, performing at church services and funerals across the United States. What inspired that direction in your career? Did it feel like a change in direction to you?
PS: Not a change in direction. We were a church-going family when I was a kid so I always enjoyed singing the old hymns—Methodist, Presbyterian. Then in 2002, we joined a church that had a huge choir and we both signed up for it. But they stuck me as a tenor—which I am, basically---but which meant I had to read and sing bass clef. That was like singing in Latin to me. I was always a soprano in a tenor’s body—wanted to sing, heard, felt, the melody line. So I started doing the solos, and left the choir after 2 years. Solo was so fulfilling. It’s so powerful to realize you can make people cry with how you sing. I always managed to get into a little bubble up on stage, singing the church songs—nothing like my talent show in 1958! I was only semi-aware of me. I was pretty lost in giving the message of the song. I was good at it and people loved it. I only stopped because even though I could still sing, I had lost a little range and started being too self-aware on stage, instead of being totally lost in singing the message. So the last time I sang people are clapping as I leave the stage, and I know, totally, that this was the last time.
MBTM: You also built a career as a psychologist. Was that always part of the plan?
PS: Oh, there was never really a plan! I was going to be a counseling/clinical psychologist and had a graduate assistantship awarded to go to Miami of Ohio, but my girlfriend at the time had one more year at Syracuse, so I stayed and got offered an assistantship by one of my undergrad professors who had a big research program in sex education and family planning. I lost the girlfriend but gained a mentor who gave me my first research opportunities. I loved it and it took off from there.
MBTM: What was the most rewarding aspect of being a psychologist?
PS: I got to design surveys and write hundreds of articles and books on what adolescents need. The surveys have been used all over the world (my other identity, Dr. Peter C. Scales), by more than 6 million young people, and the results used by thousands of communities to improve conditions for young people to grow up. And I’ve had a chance to affect children and youth policy at the federal, state, and local school board levels in ways that research says creates a better environment for kids to develop in. Not many people can say they’re had that kind of impact, so that has been incredibly rewarding.
MBTM: What’s your philosophy on life?
PS: Oh, another book is coming! Find something you love to do, that makes time disappear you’re so engaged in it. Then figure out how to get paid to do that, so that it’s never really “work.” I’m always “working,” meaning scraps of ideas come to me and I jot them down, and later on figure out if there’s any there and whether I can use them. But always creating. It’s fun. Know that your relationships are the most important asset you’ll ever have--spend the time to grow them and take care of them. Don’t let work take over those relationships. Get rid of negative people in your life, and stop chasing people who don’t want you, personally or professionally. Dance with the girl who wants to dance with you.
Listen to the album here: Blue Without You
Explore further:
Pete Scales website
Pete Scales Facebook
Pete Scales Spotify
Interview by staff at MBTM
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