It started simply enough a few years ago. Some musician friends got together one night every week or so to write some songs or at least sketch out some song ideas. Pooling resources and using each others’ feedback as sounding boards, the song snippets began to gel and some of these ideas eventually became complete songs.
More importantly perhaps was that these musicians began to develop an efficient songwriting workflow together, and in the process drew closer and tighter as friends.
Once enough songs came together the guys decided to put out a CD. The core of the group was Bobby Hird, Jimmy “The Wood” Jones, and R. Lee Townsend.
Searching for a name was interesting, to say the least. Bobby and R. Lee had precisely the same experience with the same person on two completely different days and at two completely different locations. A mutual trans friend, whom we knew from many years prior, approached them on two different occasions with precisely the same introduction, “Hi, I’m Donna. I used to be Pete.” When Bobby and R. Lee shared the same story, Bobby mentioned “That would be a great name for a band.” They secured permission from Donna to use the name, and she agreed, but they’d have to give her lifetime passes to any of their shows.
One thing led to another and the guys associated the imagery of the name with Petey, the dog from the Our Gang films of the 1930s. A band was born, and the guys brought forth a six-song EP release on Adobo Records. The tracks:
In 2022, as a tribute to the late drummer John Tracey, Used To Be Pete released a remake of a classic Climbadonkey song Free Breeze.
Other selections from the first CD.