With a voice that could carry across mountain tops and a rare emotional power steeped in the blues, singer, songwriter and bandleader David Peterson has carved out his own special niche in Country and Americana music. In a time when country music has been hollowed out by mass-market radio and invaded by 80s rock stars, Peterson's profound respect for the bona fide tradition has created a refuge where the sounds and spirit of the Ryman-era Grand Ole Opry sing with the lungs of a young man. Something precious and endangered gets a fresh lease on life when Peterson performs. David is best known for founding and fronting 1946, a locotomtive of a bluegrass band that's about as close to experiencing Bill Monroe's original Blue Grass Boys as you can hear in this lifetime. But on his new solo album, Comin' On Strong, Peterson pursues the closely-related country music from the same era, the yearning, steel-drenched honky tonk and raw-boned hillbilly sounds you would have heard on the AM radio between the 1940s and the 1960s, right next to Bill Monroe or the Stanley Brothers.