Name: Peter Scott
Location: Springfield, IL
Band: Captain Geech and the Shrimp Shack Shooters

Capt. Geech has certainly provided me with a full-ride scholarship to the U. Of Hard Knox when it comes to learning and pushing the limits of my voice!

How do you prepare/warmup to sing for a whole show?

Show days are a different beast altogether and have a completely different rhythm than my other days. Having a great nights rest before is important but I don’t like to sleep in, either. Meals tend to be small and more frequent on show days. I might eat four or more times but in small amounts and I’ll cut it off four-ish hours before we go on. I may do a little singing to warm up but nothing too strenuous. Plenty of talking/animated storytelling before shows gets my voice ready to roll, as well! We do a 3+ hr show with no breaks so, it’s also important for me to know when to take it easy beforehand so I don’t use up too much steam!

What is your drink of choice on a show night?

Water rules my life during the week but on show days, Gatorade is my go-to!

What’s your remedy when your voice is gone and the show is about to start?

Eeeesh, that’s a tough one…Majeeda (our other singer) and I are pretty good at reading each other onstage to know if we need to cover one another’s parts but if I’m on the edge of losing my voice, LOTS of fluids, and extra warm-ups are usually the trick.

What singers inspire you?

Oh man, where to start… Freddy Mercury is a bit of a gold standard in my book… Robert Plant, I think, is a great example of what happens when you over-use a voice. Listen to him on “How the West was Won.” It’s live from 1972 and he’s in great shape, even for a long show. Jump to “The Song Remains the Same” (also live but only 3 years later in ’75) and there’s been a heavy toll exacted on him. Now, jump to “Celebration Day” in 2012 and he practically sounds younger. Early David Lee Roth was very influential and also the perfect example of the other side, over-abuse of a voice. It wasn’t frequency, so much as it was just a rough road that made Diamond Dave’s voice what remains of it today. Still though, just listen to those first couple Van Halen records! Wow! Steven Tyler, The Beach Boys, Axl Rose (a natural pairing, obv.) and currently, I’m really digging Brandon Flowers’ (from The Killers) voice!

What song has challenged you the most?

This answer changes every once in a while but the usual answers to this are “Man in the Box” (Alice in Chains) and/or “Sweet Child O’ Mine” (Guns ‘n Roses.) When we first started doing these, I could technically hit the notes but not necessarily well or three nights in a row! I really had to learn how to properly sing these in my voice so I could hit the notes faithfully and not do damage to my voice. As with so many things, practice makes perfect!