I was an astronaut/It can get so lonely in the void
I was on my way back home/Made a little stop at this asteroid  (“Star Lady”)

It is a raw early February night in Salem, Oregon, and The Worrynauts are playing at an old mortuary that has been turned into an all-ages music venue. The walls are still covered with peeling murals of flying cherubs and rose garlands, but the rest of the building has been scrubbed clean of its former purpose. Peter DeGroot, lead singer of The Worrynauts, (self-categorized on MySpace as “Experimental/Melodramatic Popular Song” music) is hunkered down behind a merchandise table, drinking a Mountain Dew and tapping his feet. Peter is a big man, round around the middle, with waves of hair grown out to his earlobes and a beard going gangbusters.  The overall effect is that of a Viking who’s been on a long vacation. He has been outside to smoke a Pall Mall cigarette and walk circles around the building already. Performing is torture for Peter.  He named the band The Worrynauts because he worries all the time.

Peter DeGroot is something of a folk hero in Salem, Oregon, a town admittedly not known for its folk heroes.  He is known for his incredible musical productivity (according to his friend and unofficial archivist Julian Snow, who also plays in The Worrynauts, he has recorded more than 1,000 songs, and at least 40 albums in the past decade) as well as his eccentricity. On the verge of turning 31, Peter lives with his parents. He doesn’t have a job and hasn’t had one for years. He would prefer never to leave the Salem metropolitan area and does so infrequently. What Peter does do is make music.

Starting in the fifth grade, Peter has been in a dizzying series of bands, usually as the founding member: The Hot Peppers, Stardust, Gnash, The Drooling Mosquitos, Probosis, The Assassin’s Glove, Imps of Spring, Anbot Rodroid, The Bloody Muse, The Startle Easilies, PD and His Musical Notes (the name of this band came to his grandmother in a dream) and most recently, The Worrynauts. The Worrynauts will be his last band, Peter says. First, because music made with other people is never as experimental as Peter would like, and second, because the world is going to end on December 21, 2012 – the day the ancient Mayan calendar ends. He smiles when he says that.

Turn off the music/Turn off the lights

Peter’s family lives in Keizer, a suburb of Salem where farmland meets subdivisions. The DeGroot home is filled with the cozy accumulation of decades of family life: sports equipment in the garage, shelves of paperback books, crocheted throw blankets, a Thomas Kinkade print over the couch, duck-and-geese décor.  “Bless our home,” reads a hand-lettered sign in the kitchen. Peter’s father Dennis is a retired State of Oregon computer programmer. His mom Naomi works as a secretary. Peter has a younger sister named Jennifer, who is married and lives in Portland. 

Peter was a shy and creative kid who showed an early talent for music and by high school played clarinet, piano and guitar. From elementary school on, bands were a big part of Peter’s social life, and much of his teenage years were spent practicing with The Assassin’s Glove and Imps of Spring.  But since he was a teenager, Peter has suffered from depression and anxiety.  He has spent what he describes as seasons and even years doing nothing but watching TV in the basement. For a time, Peter had the idea that the fight between the darkness and light in his brain was like a battle between elves and robots. The elves, he says, were like a metaphor for the bad chemicals in his brain, and the robots were the good guys – anything he could do to try to fight the elves. His songs from that era are populated by robots and elves: living in his brain, inhabiting his ribcage, blooming like flowers. They were everywhere. The robots were sort of the anti-depressants, Peter says. But they failed to defeat the elves.

Naomi DeGroot has the same twinkling eyes and gentle smile as her son. She is proud of the kind, compassionate and considerate man he has grown to be. He never keeps up his parents when he’s making music in his bedroom, she says. She retains hope that he will find a way to make a living from his talents.  He has all this talent and ability, she says, but it’s like his hands are tied by the anxiety. Peter says that his parents say two things every time he tries to get them to listen to his music: “That’s interesting,” or “Pretty repetitive, isn’t it?”  Although they both admit that they may not exactly understand what they’re hearing, they recognize his music as a gift, and a sweet one.

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