Pete LaBonne lives out in the woods... way out in the woods... of upstate New York, in a dirt-floor cabin with his wife Shelley and a single extension cord to power the tape recorder that he seems to have been using almost constantly for the last ten or twenty years. We’re guessing the resulting mountain of music - a small segment of which comprises his debut CD, “Meditation Garden” - will be compared to iconoclastic folks like Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa, not because he sounds like them but because that’s who you get compared with when you’re funny as hell, and peculiar, and they can’t figure out who you sound like.

Looking a little deeper, you might also spot some Alex Chilton, with whom Pete once performed; he’s also appeared with Richard Hell and Earl King, And now the name - dropping starts to add up, because Pete is in fact a backwoods maniac with absurd verbal talents and a passion for soul music and The Almighty Hook. The wordplay is dazzling and hilarious, but there’s heart and real songs involved; a spirit of gleeful anarchy rules a roiling compost of rhythms, and sometimes it sounds like a bent, bizarro version of the famous basement tapes of Bob Dylan and the Band, all in glorious LaBonne-a-sonic lo-fi!

Rochester's City newspaper (April 4-10 issue)

Pete Labonne
Meditation Garden
Sonic Trout (ST-28622)


Pete Labonne is a genius. A master of the little word/big concept school of songwriting. Labonne's songs exude a dizzying brilliance. Spreading several lifetimes' worth of reckless creativity over a 16 song collection, Meditation Garden runs roughshod through a vast variety of styles and genres, leaving each infused with a depth and humor that can barely be contained. Standout cuts include "Sound of Doom," "F Word," "Somebody Must Be Praying For Me," and the too-good-to-be-true "Trophy Bowler," in which Labonne summons up the demented ghost of The Old Philosopher and brings him to depths that even that world class crackpot would've thought impossible. Meditation Garden is a magnificent gift from a very generous fellow.

- Chuck Cuminale

From the New York Press. "(D) A national treasure who may not actually exist. Pete Labonne is the Sasquatch of American music. I had heard rumors about him for years, and people would tell me that he had dozens or "hundreds" of bizarre or great songs, including the legendary "We Made a Mountain Out of a Molehill (of Love)"; I spent some time searching for the supposed 45 of the supposed song "I Mow the Lawn" supposedly made with a band called the Party Nuggets. He was, according to rumor, a sort of rootsy Frank Zappa or a postpostmodern Van Morrison. Every so often, I’d hear that he had gigged in Costa Rica, the Ivory Coast, British Columbia. He was 20; he was 70; he didn’t exist at all and was the nom de disc of some bipolar country star. Then a friend of mine finally sent me an actual CD, and told me that Labonne was perfectly real and that he lived in a cabin in the Adirondacks without electricity, phone, running water. I’m not sure I believe this any more than the previous tales, but there is undeniably this disc: Meditation Garden (Sonic Trout, www.sonictrout.com), that seems to have pictures of the elusive Labonne on the cover. " Click to get high res tif file

High Res print version of this picture
Good luck, folks! DON’T MISS: “Sound of Doom” (#2), “Pajama Pants Baby” (#5), “Somebody Must Be Praying For Me” (#8), and “Title Cut” (#9) -none of which would sound remotely normal on the radio, thank god... Boy, it’s gonna be fun watching people try to figure this one out!

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