Roy Peak

Roy Peak

Roy Peak is an American punk rock, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll singer-songwriter. He is primarily a bassist but also sings and plays acoustic guitar during live performances.  Preferring old beat-to-death P-basses with flatwound strings tuned down a whole step, Roy's bass playing has been described as "orchestral and driving" and "Entwistle's style with Klaus Voormann's tone."

Peak grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, the oldest of four siblings. His father was a Marine and Roy was born on base at a military hospital. Before his mother passed away from cancer she bought him a Kay electric bass and he took lessons from a country guitar player by the name of Sonny Forest. After moving to Jacksonville, Florida, where he still resides, Peak became a bassist for hire with several bands.

Peak was instrumental in the North Florida original music scene in the early 1980s and ’90s, playing bass in more bands than he cares to remember for more years than he can remember, including Soul Guardians, Radio Berlin, 86 Love, Nerve Meter, The Problems, and several others. He was part of the crew that produced the series of Bubbapalooza concerts in North Florida during the 1990s, and worked as a soundtech at many local concerts for touring bands such as L7, the Dead Milkmen, Corrosion of Conformity, Don McLean, Frankie Valli, John Lee Hooker, and countless others. Roy has helped design and build sound systems and equipment for numerous area churches, clubs and local sound companies as well as for Lucas Arts Films and Ringling Bros. Circus. If you've played on stage in any North Florida club or church in the past thirty years you've probably used something Roy built.

In 2001, after working as an engineer in several recording studios, he opened up his own studio (Radical Recording) in a spare room in his suburban home. He engineered and produced albums by Lauren Fincham, Troy Lukkarila, Terry Whitehead, The Have Nots, Shattermat, Willie Mae, Powerball, Status Faux, Tamara Colonna, Jerry Maniscalco, and Vann Hardin, as well as the come back album for seventies legend Robert Lester Folsom, titled Beautiful Nonsense.  

Around 2008 Peak began writing and playing his own material, mostly in an acoustic—but not necessarily laid back—format. In late 2014 he released his first solo album, All is Well, described as a “punkish folk-rock tromp through twelve songs about love, death, and birds,” which received praise from critics in America as well as Europe.  

He wrote the theme song for the Utica, New York radio show Get Off My Lawn which airs several times a week on WPNR, and is a frequent contributor to the show.

In 2016 he released a cover of the Gillian Welch classic song, “Look at Miss Ohio,” which was picked by the noted blog CoverMeSongs.com as one of the best cover songs released that year.

His second solo album, An Ever Darkening Sky, was released in a digital streaming format on his own label, Music for Monsters, in the winter of 2019.

A Wolf at the Door, a 7-song EP was released in fall of 2020.

Exile in Americana, a song by song reply to Liz Phair's 1994 album Exile in Guyville, was released in June 2024.

Peak currently plays bass with Robert Lester Folsom, Mark Williams and Moonstaker, Shattermat, and plays acoustic solo shows when he’s not working in the studio or playing bass.

Roy also writes music reviews and commentary for the U.K. based music blog The Rocking Magpie and for the King Tut Vintage Album and Cassette Museum of Jacksonville, a rather eclectic Facebook group. He also writes short stories and reviews for Sacred Chickens, a literary site. He formerly wrote book reviews for PopMatters.com, and has several short stories published online.