EG’s Pete Walsh, 21, Teams With Hoodie Allen On Hip Hop Hit

Pete Walsh’s move from typical East Greenwich teenager to chart-busting music producer came fast … real fast. He has two songs — “Eighteen Cool” and “Small Town” — on hip hop artist Hoodie Allen’s “All American” record that charted Number 1 on iTunes within 24 hours of its release in April.

Walsh, EGHS class of 2009, turned 21 in March.

How did the guy who played guitar and knew his way around recording equipment in high school become a music producer and songwriter with an agent, several clients, and a couple hits less than three years later?

Walsh went to Berklee College of Music after high school — no small thing in itself. He stayed only a year.

“I met incredibly talented people at Berklee, but I realized pretty quickly that I wanted to be out in the real world,” Walsh says. “By my second semester I had a management offer on the table, and I seized the opportunity.”

He admitted his isn’t the typical path. “I’m in a unique position. What I wanted to do, I didn’t need a degree.”

While he says he always wanted to be write songs, early on what he learned about the music production side seemed very technical, more like engineering. “I’m not technical,” he says.

Still, he wanted to create that final product, not just write a song and hand it off. Walsh learned that working with performers, he could have the combination he sought: he could write songs, collaborate with a recording artist, then come up with that final product.

“I always find it hard to describe what a producer does,” says Walsh. But he tries: “Okay, we have a song. How are we going to take this music and lyrics and make it into a finished record?”

Walsh says a lot of the producing work is arranging — deciding which instruments will play what parts.

The opportunity to work with Hoodie Allen was a great experience. “The story of All American is pretty remarkable,” recounts Walsh, who goes by Peter Thomas professionally. “This is the first album that Hoodie has released commercially.... To see this album land at #1 on iTunes within hours of its release, and be charting in countries around the world, was amazing.”

At all of 21, Walsh says he does have some artists he’d love to work with some day. “I would love love love to work with Prince,” he says. “And a band Phoenix.”

He allows himself to get nostalgic. “The 10-year-old me would love to work with the Backstreet Boys or  ‘N Sync.”

Not surprisingly, roaming the halls of East Greenwich High School feels like it was a long time ago for Walsh.

“Honestly, high school feels like it was 10 years ago, simply because so much has happened so fast for me.”

He insists he's the same Pete Walsh he always was, but he knows his life has gotten a little unusual.

"The craziest moments are when I see the impact that certain songs have on people around the world. I was driving the other day and I pulled up to an intersection where a guy in a pickup truck was blasting Hoodie Allen. That was surreal. I'll be at a store and I'll hear Moves Like Jagger or Stereo Hearts and think to myself, 'I can't believe my friends created this.' It's amazing to see these songs go from little ideas to pieces of pop culture."