{"id":471047,"date":"2026-09-21T18:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T18:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/471047\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T18:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T18:12:09","slug":"orville-peck-on-rehab-simple-dog-energy-and-his-album-mule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/471047\/","title":{"rendered":"Orville Peck on rehab, ‘simple dog energy’ and his album ‘Mule’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Orville Peck<\/a> brought his moving and carefully crafted new album, \u201cMule,\u201d to the Hollywood Bowl on Friday night. One of the year\u2019s best country LPs so far, \u201cMule\u201d charts the masked singer-songwriter\u2019s sobriety journey after he hit a low point in 2023; the concert mixed songs from the album with Peck\u2019s oldies, an appearance by his friend Noah Cyrus<\/a> and a handful of covers, including a tender rendition of the late Dolly Parton\u2019s \u201cI Will Always Love You.\u201d Before the show, we sat down with Peck in his dressing room for a chat.<\/p>\n

Mikael Wood: Your new album is out today, and tonight you\u2019re playing the Hollywood Bowl. Which of your childhood nemeses do you wish could see you now?
I\u2019ve got two parts of my personality. There\u2019s one part where I\u2019m like, none of them \u2014 I don\u2019t want to give it any air. Then there\u2019s another part of me that has a 3,000-person Rolodex in my head because I\u2019m petty sometimes.<\/p>\n

Rebecca Castillo: Let\u2019s name names.
Let\u2019s do it \u2014 get my phone.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

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Wood: The video for your song \u201cAlready Gone<\/a>\u201d has you dancing in a rehab. Was that how you envisioned the rehab experience?
I take a little artistic license. I wouldn\u2019t say I was dancing down the hallways, but I was climbing up the walls for sure. I never anticipated I would be someone that would go to rehab. Even when I was there, I was sort of under this false egotistical pretense that I didn\u2019t really belong there \u2014 that everyone else was really sick and I just had a bit of a problem. So it took a lot of breaking down these defenses and addict ways of thinking that told me I was unique or special. I didn\u2019t know they were gonna knock at your door every 20 minutes. I didn\u2019t know know that you weren\u2019t allowed to make phone calls. I was pretty shocked by a lot of it \u2014 I went there in a haze.<\/p>\n

Castillo: Were there any artists whose music helped you get through the experience?
I don\u2019t remember wanting to have anything to do with music, to be honest with you. They allowed me to have my guitar \u2014 I remember a friend of mine dropped off a guitar for me, and it sat in the corner for most of the time. I think I was so worn down and tired \u2014 I think I felt pretty resentful about music back then. Noah Cyrus, actually, is one of three people that was allowed to come visit me in the slammer, and she played me some songs that she was working on. I just remember staring out the window a lot.<\/p>\n

Wood: You\u2019ve brought a new level of style and, dare I say, sexiness to country music. Who\u2019s a country music sex object for you?
I always thought Tim McGraw was very sexy \u2014 especially in his later years, where he started to chisel up like crazy. I think young Alan Jackson was very sexy.<\/p>\n

Wood: Great mustache.
You know, Noah\u2019s father was quite sexy back in the day \u2014 Billy Ray. Who do I think is sexy in country music these days? I think mostly the women are sexy now. I don\u2019t know \u2014 I find talent sexy now. Some of the guys are on paper hot, but if they\u2019re not good artists, I\u2019m like, who cares?<\/p>\n

Castillo: In an interview with Ziwe<\/a>, you talk about \u201csimple dog energy.\u201d
Yes.<\/p>\n

Wood: With straight men.
And? I mean, come on.<\/p>\n

Castillo: Can you gauge Mikael? Is this simple dog energy?
Yeah, I could probably even tell you the breed. I think you\u2019re giving sort of an Irish setter, maybe. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s supposed to be offensive or not. You give one of those sort of regal dogs from Great Britain \u2014 those people in kilts and they blow a tiny whistle that no one can hear and the dog runs for 300 miles.<\/p>\n

Castillo: That\u2019s gonna go to his head.
That\u2019s what I\u2019m getting from you. But yes, straight men are simple dogs for sure.<\/p>\n

Wood: In your song \u201cRing the Bell<\/a>,\u201d you talk about how you don\u2019t want to talk about the rising cost of bread. Is that because you\u2019re so famous now that you don\u2019t actually know what bread costs?
I still buy bread at Ralph\u2019s like everyone else. I think it was more to do with, in \u201cRing the Bell,\u201d that period of the album \u2014 you know the album\u2019s chronological \u2014 and I think in that period, I was at parties and people were obviously trying to have more-than-just-slightly-surface conversations with me about whatever. And I was like, \u201cI don\u2019t want to talk about that \u2014 let\u2019s drink.\u201d I was just checked out, you know? I\u2019m trying to think of the exact cost of bread.<\/p>\n

Wood: You don\u2019t know, bro.
Do you know off the top of your head?<\/p>\n

Wood: $3.49.
Look it up right now.<\/p>\n

Wood: I actually have no idea.
Bitch. I can\u2019t even remember what I did this morning. Like I\u2019m gonna remember what f\u2014ing bread costs?<\/p>\n

Wood: In the title track<\/a> of your new album, you talk about \u201cBeachwood debutantes playing F\u2014, Marry, Kill.\u201d We\u2019re finishing this with a round of F\u2014, Marry, Kill. Your three people are Dolly Parton, Ed Sheeran and Stella Lefty.
Oh my God, y\u2019all like drama. Well, obviously marry Dolly Parton. [Thinks for a moment.] I\u2019ll take the bullet, honestly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orville Peck brought his moving and carefully crafted new album, \u201cMule,\u201d to the Hollywood Bowl on Friday night.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[23983,23555,44992,36294,8122,48,52,51,185241,47,50,49,1741,185240,185237,592,185238,91333,185239,10390,43519],"class_list":["post-471047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-album","tag-bread","tag-country-music","tag-head","tag-hollywood-bowl","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-late-dolly-parton","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-lot","tag-mule","tag-orville-peck","tag-people","tag-rebecca-castillo","tag-rehab","tag-simple-dog-energy","tag-song","tag-wood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}