Interview with Bosco and Peck: ‘In a lot of the songs, the protagonist, the guy, is in a troubling relationship with a woman but it’s not really based on my experience’

New Jersey, NY- based duo Bosco and Peck, brought out their latest single, ‘Naked’, earlier this month, a soulful, hooky track with a slight bachata feel to it that’ll get you tapping and swaying to the acoustic guitar beat.

Bosco and Peck are Paul Bosco (bass, songwriter) and Jason Peck (singer, guitar and songwriter) with Matt Coslop on drums. They formed back in Philadelphia in 2004 when, on a whim, they entered their demo in a contest for bands with a local Top 40 radio station (The Mix 97.3) and were asked to be one of three bands to compete in the finals two weeks later. Since then, they have released three full-length studio albums. Bosco and Coslop have actually known each other for 35 years as they’re first cousins. ‘Him and I were always getting into mischief as children, it was natural we’d start a project together,’ Bosco laughed.

They can be hard guys to track down. When we’re trying to set up this interview, Peck’s not sure where Bosco is: ‘He might be in New Jersey, or in Italy (he has an Italian wife).’ It turns out that he’s actually in Florida, helping a friend out with a boat. On the day of our Zoom, he joins us from his car, where he’s making the 18 hour trip from Florida back to New Jersey. Peck, for his part, splits his time between the beach in New Jersey and the mountains in Pennsylvania.

‘We haven’t actually been in the same room for two years’

It turns out that ‘Naked’, which is about the fear of being naked in public and finding where you fit in, is actually one of their older songs. ‘Paul came in with an idea,’ Peck said. ‘I’m pretty sure it was based on one of his dreams. It goes back to 2006 or 2007 but we never recorded it until 2012 and we never released it. We haven’t actually been in the same room for two years.’ (Peck is currently shielding due to his severe asthma.) Bosco jumps in: ‘We were practicing social distancing before COVID!’

The chorus to ‘Naked’ sounds like everyone’s worst nightmare, although Peck laughs that they weren’t actually naked in the rain: ‘I’m naked again in the pouring rain, they’re laughing at me and I feel so ashamed. I’m naked again in the pouring rain, they’re laughing at me and I feel so ashamed.’

Last year’s album, The Burden of a Healthy Mind, gave us 12 neo-soul tracks with hooky choruses and good time vibes, even though the subject matter is often darker than the melodies would suggest, such as in ‘Every Night’, which is essentially about cheating on someone: ‘In a lot of the songs, the protagonist, the guy, is in a troubling relationship with a woman but it’s not really based on my experience, although I did start seeing my wife behind my girlfriend’s back but I made the right decision!,’ Peck said. ‘At the time, when I was writing it, the chorus started much earlier.’

‘The key is to take something out at the end of a track. If you don’t, it’s too much’

They have two more songs recorded and ready to go. ‘Boots’ and ‘It Could Be Worse’. Peck describes ‘Boots’ as ‘kinda a waltz’: ‘We had violins in it but they were too loud. The idea behind ‘It Could Be Worse’ predates it but COVID changed the lyrics.’ Their strategy in the current circumstances is to get good rhythm tracks down and then to do the overdubbing themselves: ‘The key is to take something out at the end of a track. If you don’t, it’s too much,’ Peck said.

Their songs are very story driven, as is apparent in their song trilogy that Bosco describes as their ‘murder mystery songs’: ‘She Makes The Sky’ (where a guy kills his girlfriend’s lover), ‘Blood’, which takes place after the crime, and ‘I’m Not Right’, which is about being locked up in an asylum for the murder. ‘I feel like we talked about the idea, right?,’ Peck said. As the story unfolds in ‘She Makes The Sky’: ‘I drove my car out to a spot where no one’s going to look very hard and he deserved just what he got ’cause he’d been trying to keep us apart.’ By the time ‘I’m Not Right’ rolls around, the protagonist is clearly in a mess: ‘Ward 7 section number 4 behind a barbed wire fence and two brick walls, I sit here thinking, about something they said the night before they left the room and they locked the door. They said, “You’re grieving, we can surely see ’cause you’ve been crying inside, and you just won’t let this be.”’

Fascinatingly, their songs are really popular in European supermarkets: ‘We had some songs licensed, I think it was through an Italian company who saw my surname and thought I was Italian,’ Bosco laughed. (He does have Italian roots.) Peck jumps in: ”Every Night’ is our most played song in Italian supermarkets, it gets around 160,000 plays in six months!’ Bosco is laughing: ‘ I once got a text from a back-up singer on that song, she texted me from a supermarket in Spain and said “They’re playing our song!” Peck nods: ‘We also get 200 Shazams every month in Russia and in Israel as well.’

‘In A Month’ is Peck’s favourite of their songs to play live: ‘You get to make out with the song in a way,’ he laughed. ‘I love singing it, it fits right in my vocal range.’ Bosco’s favourite to play live is ‘Every Night’, which he describes as ‘classic R&B stuff’. ‘You know,’ Peck tells me mischievously, ‘the real question is what song we hate! I hate ‘Ain’t It Strange’ (from last year’s album). Bosco is nodding: ‘We never spent a lot of time on it. I guess the least favourite for me is ‘In a Month’. It’s one of our oldest, I’m tired of it a little bit.’ Peck weighs in: ‘We started writing ‘In a Month’ long before we were Bosco and Peck, for our old band Mississippi Black Snake. I wrote it to try and persuade our backing singer to stay. She ended up moving but she died in a car crash a few weeks later. It was terrible.’

‘Some bands change between albums but you don’t grow with them but not with Cake’

I ask them which other American bands they like and Peck looks very animated. ‘Are you ready, Paul? For me, Cake (an American alt rock band from Sacramento, California), which doesn’t make sense with the music we play. I love their energy. I was happy with every album of theirs. Some bands change between albums but you don’t grow with them but not with Cake. Every time another album comes out, I’m right onto it.’

Bosco is inspired by different singers: ‘I’m stuck in the 60’s and 70’s,’ he said. ‘I like Aretha Franklin and Al Green. Between his musicianship and vocal arrangements, I try to steal as much as I can from him,’ he joked. Peck is thinking: ‘For lyrics, I wish I was a better writer, so I have to say Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. It’s amazing to me that he was such an incredible lyricist.’ Bosco interjects: ‘You need to do more drugs!’ It turns out that Peck listens to podcasts more than he does to music: ‘I listen to podcasts around 90% of the time and I read a lot,’ he said.

If they could tour with anyone, Peck is quick to say Amy Winehouse and we chat for a while about how amazing she was. ‘When Back To Black came out (2006), I listened to it every day,’ he said. ‘And you wonder if you could have seen her on stage (we both really regret never having a chance to see her live), what would it have been like to sing it with her?’

Bosco says The Dap-Kings and I am trying to remember who they are. ‘I believe they played with her,’ he said, grinning (they did). ‘I was trying to be clever but you missed it!’ We all start laughing. Bosco is thinking who he would actually like to tour with and thinks maybe Kris Kristofferson: ‘I met him once at one of his gigs. He was playing and everyone was clapping on the wrong beat. I looked at him and we had a moment. We were chatting later and I told him to keep it up and one day he might be a pretty good guitar player!’

(Photo from left to right: Paul Bosco, Dave Natale (soundman for the Rolling Stones, not in the band, just hanging out in his studio) Matt Coslop, silent partner (front) and Jason Peck)