Orville Peck Became the Life of the Party

Orville Peck always wanted to make a duets album. It’s an art form as old as country music itself, perfected by the likes of Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Johnny and June Carter Cash, and Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. While the tradition has waned in recent decades, it’s something of a rite of passage in the genre. Peck wasn’t quite sure when his time to enter those echelons would come, at least not until a few years ago, after Willie Nelson asked him to do a duet of “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other”—a West Texas waltz penned by Ned Sublette in 1981.

When Nelson himself covered the song in 2006, it was lauded as the first gay-themed country track to hit the mainstream. So, when Nelson came to Peck with the idea to sing it together after Bronco came out in 2022, it became a restorative, life-affirming connection. “It was incredibly validating for me as an artist, and also for me as a person and a fan of Willie Nelson,” Peck says. “I’m 36 and I grew up, for most of my life, especially when I was young, with very, very few figures that I felt like represented me in culture and media. There was Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Will & Grace, k.d. lang and Melissa Etheridge. Getting that invite from Willie, and the fact that it was his idea, that is the most comforting thing, as a queer person. It did a lot of healing for me, that I didn’t even realize I needed, from when I was little.”

After singing with Nelson, it became clear that the time had come for Peck to finally go all-in on a full-blown duets album. “I asked the next person and the next person and, as people said yes, it started snowballing,” he says. Elton joined the guest list, as did Noah Cyrus, Kylie Minogue, Debbii Dawson, Margo Price and Nathaniel Rateliff, just to name a few. After the final additions of Teddy Swims and Bu Cuaron, Stampede—Peck’s third full-length album as a solo artist—was born. Making Stampede was a much more sporadic endeavor than that of Bronco, as Peck and his collaborators had to make the former in increments. “I would ask someone if they were interested in being on the album,” Peck says, “and then, they would say yes and we would have to figure out if it would be possible for us to be in the same studio at the same time.” Some recording sessions would be scheduled months out in advance. His link-up with Elton came six months after he asked him to be a part of the record. It was a meticulous process that accounted for busy schedules, different time zones and blocks of songwriting.

Peck, who was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in the late 1980s, learned how to play music with a Casio keyboard. As a kid, he did voice-acting work for cartoons and took ballet for over a decade before going on national tours for the musicals he was starring in. He even snagged an acting degree from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art 10 years ago. But that was before Orville Peck had adopted the stage name we all know him by now. At the age of 31, he signed a deal with Sub Pop and wrote, produced and played nearly every instrument on his debut album, Pony—a record so good it scored him a Polaris Music Prize longlist spot and a Juno Award nomination for Alternative Album of the Year in 2020. He maintained a level of anonymity, galvanized by his most essential wardrobe accessory: a fringed mask that camouflaged his true identity. When Peck was doing press for Bronco in 2022, he claimed to have had 60 masks in his arsenal. Two years later, and he’s confident that the number has soared to well over 200, some still brandishing those OG fringes and some that only cover his eyes, like the ones he’s been donning during this Stampede press run. “I’ve gone through four versions of the mask, and I’ve probably got around 50 of each,” he laughs.

What drew me to Peck’s work five years ago—long before the inclusion of “Dead of Night” in Euphoria’s second season snapped my focus back onto his work after briefly falling out of touch with it—was his ability to make age-old spaces his own. At his shows, drag queens stand next to oldhead country fans, punks and kids coming into their own identities. His congregation is as hard to pin down as his life behind the mask. Peck grew up in a welcoming, inclusive household. His family gave him the freedom to be unequivocally himself—and they encouraged him in those pursuits. He didn’t need to frame art in a way that suited his life, but he’s done it over and over again since Pony came out in 2019—flipping the idea of communal, cosmic country music on its head by playing to rooms where hordes of different people find the same comforts in his songs. “I was told on a daily basis that, no matter who I was going to be, that didn’t make me any different or any less than anybody,” Peck says. “I think it’s okay for us to frame our experiences through people who are different than us. That’s a really cool way to grow as a person, especially as a young person—to learn experiences through not exactly a mirror of ourselves.”

But living as an intersex person who doesn’t have much to latch onto, visibility-wise, in film, TV and music, I found solace in Peck’s reclamation of country spaces once built by the Merle Haggards and the George Joneses of the world. When you’re young and queer, you try to make those stories fit into the shape of your own life. You build your own canon. You discover that, in due time, the separation between you and your heroes is only a separation presented by the people who want you to feel othered. “When I was a kid, I didn’t understand the difference between me and Merle Haggard,” Peck continues. “I just liked that there were people writing this kind of music and telling these kinds of stories. The only barrier that comes up is the artificial and made up one that society then places between us and whoever else. As we get older, we get excluded from enjoying those things and we get pushed out the door when, in reality, we should all be enjoying each other’s music no matter what. We don’t have to necessarily reflect one another. I think we can complement one another, and I think that’s how it should be, but we’re not allowed to.”

From the jump, Peck became a torch-bearer for queer country artists, as his love songs about men in a genre lacking such critical perspectives quickly garnered attention from mainstream and underground listeners alike. Being on one of the most notorious, elemental and formative alt-rock labels ever certainly didn’t hurt the likability of his innate mystique and rhinestone-sequined aura. And his Wild West-pilled songs and his ongoing thread of horse-themed album titles have always been pretty good, too. If anyone was going to cut through the noise of bro country, it was going to be Orville Peck. And after the buzz around Pony reached an apex, he inked a deal with Columbia records and put out the Show Pony EP and Bronco before jumping to Warner Records this year. And, after making moody, affectionate and time-honored cowboy music for nearly half-a-decade, Peck decided to call up his closest friends to make his third LP a full-blown, rabble-rousing party of pleasure, nostalgia and foot-tapping soundscapes that are as allergic to boxes, categories and preconceptions as they are catchy and delicious.

Most artists aren’t so keen on giving up the mic so early in their career, but Peck’s comfortability in his own voice and stardom on Stampede is its own two-piece force of nature. He’s standing tall with some of his greatest peers, like Allison Russell and Molly Tuttle, sharing the spotlight and forging bulletproof, canon-worthy music that touches everything from bluegrass and outlaw country to disco and funk in the process. “I’m a fan of music, I’m a fan of Molly Tuttle and a fan of Elton John and a fan of all these people that are on my album,” Peck says. “So, the fact that they all wanted to be on my album is really where my focus goes.” Peck doesn’t have the other perspective, but it’s obvious that the coterie of players on Stampede believe in his brilliance and believe in his vision. And, just a year removed from postponing a tour to focus on his mental and physical health after a period of burnout, Peck sounds as confident, grateful and happy as ever.

In a world where country duets are, if anything, a pretty straight and white custom, him singing genre songs with folks like Elton John and Debbii Dawson and Beck and Mickey Guyton is a remarkable entry. Stampede, a convergence of cover songs and original works, is Orville Peck’s greatest turn yet. And that turn wouldn’t have been possible without the mutual respect shared between the 18 voices present. You can have the most technically impressive instrumentation, but if the voices don’t gel, the song doesn’t work. Peck had never met Rateliff or Cuaron prior to recording, but he and the other artists had crossed paths previously in some way or another, be it through festivals or social media DMs, but you can tell that there’s a reverence and love shared between him and his people—that they are showing up for Orville Peck the person and not Orville Peck the persona. “That’s what’s so lovely about it,” he says. “I didn’t have to get my label to wrangle up managers. I think, then, making art together is easy—because there’s no power dynamic. It’s people coming together to do something as friends and artists.”

The standout track on Stampede is, to me, Peck and Elton’s rendition of “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting).” It makes sense that Elton is on the record, as he continues to be one of those classic rock heroes who has his finger on the pulse of contemporary up-and-comers—an ever-evolving taste that he practices on his Rocket Hour radio show on Apple Music. But Elton was, and is, a superhero to so many of us—Orville Peck included. He was an elder to me before I even knew how badly I needed a queer elder. “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)” is one of Peck’s favorite Elton John songs, which is why it has a place on Stampede—though “Crocodile Rock” and “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” got some consideration, too. “I used to dance around my living room, as a little kid, to it all the time,” he says. “It was fulfilling a full-circle moment for me.”

“Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)” is a special track, too, because it showcases Peck’s range as a singer. Known primarily for his deep, sonorous vocal on songs like “Dead of Night” and “Daytona Sand,” he conjures his extensive theatrical background into every note alongside Elton, matching Captain Fantastic’s serpentine bravado step-by-step. Like “C’mon Baby, Cry” was two years ago, “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)” is where Peck’s voice goes from Elvis Presley progeny to Roy Orbison second-coming. It’s sublime, and an earned reward—as every track on Stampede posed its own hurdle for Peck, be it stylistically, vocally and lyrically. It was case-by-case, depending on the song. But, while recording the album, his sights remained locked onto the end-goal he’s been chasing since Pony: “My challenge is always the same, which is to challenge myself to be more vulnerable in my songwriting and in sharing my stories,” he says. “Stampede was its own beast.”

The track that pushed Peck the furthest out of his comfort zone, though, was “Midnight Ride,” which he made with Kylie Minogue and Diplo. “I’ve been such a fan of Kylie since I was a kid,” he says. “I’ve always loved dance-pop and House music. So going into this disco, dance-pop world, as much as I really liked it, it was also very daunting for me—because I didn’t really know where my confidence lay in that territory.” While Stampede is definitely a country album, it’s one of the most multi-dimensional country albums of recent times—if only for its vibrant, shape-shifting identity and pop-infused color palette. A song like “Midnight Ride” might not get airplay on local country stations, but it will likely stretch people’s perceptions of what a country track can or should be. It doesn’t hurt that Minogue’s contributions, which are so definitively Kylie Minogue, sound absolutely bang-on, too. Pair that with Peck and Midland’s country-pop bliss gem “The Hurtin’ Kind,” the mariachi tome “Miénteme” performed with Cuaron and a cover of the Magnetic Fields’ “Papa Was a Rodeo” that bucks with glorious delight through Tuttle’s stewarding, and Stampede is as unpredictable as it is droll and full of talent.

But it’s never Peck’s aim to subvert any expectations on his albums. His mission is to, first and foremost, make art that he likes. Of course, he knows that being gay and wearing a mask rebels against some people’s standards for country music, but his honesty and genre traditionalism is relentlessly splendid. “I don’t think of anything I do in my career as being anything other than really classic country music,” Peck admits. “I’ve personally never really aligned with the idea that I’m a subversive artist, just because I dress theatrically or I sing about men. It wasn’t my intention to reinvent the wheel or anything. I wanted to make a cool album that spurred creativity in me and, hopefully, other people.”

While much of the country music that has dominated our radio mixes, sales and charts for the last two decades has been feverishly labeled “country music,” it’s not very traditional—at least not in Peck’s eyes. “I would argue that even my least country song on Stampede has way more traditional country elements than some of the songs that have been on Top 40 country radio for the last 20 years—which are, essentially, purely just pop songs,” he argues. “It begs the question: What makes a country song a country song? Who decides? What’s the criteria? For me, it’s about storytelling and instrumentation and style. I think, if the intention behind it is to make country music, and you have a love for the history of country music, I think you’ll end up making it country in some way.”

Though some of Stampede might not pass the smell test for some of country music’s staunchest loyalists, the genre has become so warped in the 21st century that the argument of what is country and what isn’t country is usually not an argument made for the music’s sake. Take Beyoncé’s recent album, the blockbuster hit Cowboy Carter, for example: Lead singles “16 CARRIAGES” and “TEXAS HOLD ‘EM” were both country tracks tinged with Beyoncé’s Texas-bred soul, yet racist gatekeeping in country music quickly led to political and cultural outrage after she became the first Black woman to ever reach #1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart. “I don’t think anyone can stand with a ruler and decide what’s country or not these days,” Peck contends, “because the Top 40 scene has been garbage for a long time, and it hasn’t sound country whatsoever.”

Stampede is not the first time Peck has experimented with duets. For years, he and his live band would sing Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris’s “Ooh, Las Vegas” and George Jones and Tammy Wynette’s “Something to Brag About.” On Show Pony in 2020, he and Shania Twain sang “Legends Never Die” together. A year later, he and drag queen Trixie Mattel sang Johnny and June Carter Cash’s “Jackson” together on her Full Coverage, Vol. 1 EP. Those two collaborations inspired Peck to explore that kind of dynamic on a 40-minute album of his own. Having spent his formative years in DIY scenes and playing in punk bands helped him out, too. “So much of that world is about playing in 10 bands with every single friend you have,” he says. “Everything is collaborative. It’s just a world that I grew up in, including one another and creating things together. It’s always been in my wheelhouse, because it’s how I was raised, really, in this industry.”

Peck insisted on making every track on Stampede a 50-50 collaboration. While he is credited as the lone songwriter on “Death Valley High,” “Midnight Ride,” “Even You’re Gone” and “You’re an Asshole, I Can’t Stand You (And I Want a Divorce),” each song’s guest star leaves a visceral, definitive imprint on the work. “It was very much the intention from the beginning that I wanted it to be a collaborative album,” Peck says. “I think, sometimes, people do duets where it just feels like one of the artists’ songs and the other person is just featured on it. I wanted Stampede to feel like each one was as if me and the other person had a musical baby together.” Stampede doesn’t come across as an Orville Peck record with more than a dozen other voices on it. It feels rich and nuanced and indicative of Peck’s connection with every artist featured alongside him, a testament to having an industry full of people rooting for you. In a musical landscape currently motivated by individuality and exclusivity, that’s a rare triumph worth seizing, too.

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Matt Mitchell is Paste’s music editor, reporting from their home in Northeast Ohio.