About Peter McCory
Peter McCory has been entertaining kids professionally since 1996. A life-long musician,
he stumbled upon children's music by accident. While working as a hospital public relations
director, he was asked to provide some music at a hospital-sponsored health
and safety day for kids. Peter had enjoyed playing songs for his own children, but had
never considered doing it on a larger scale.
When the day finally came, kids flocked around to listen and watch him play in the
hospital lobby. Peter was hooked. Never in all his performing years had he found
such an eager audience. He had a strange feeling his music would never be the same.
Peter remembered sadly the death several years earlier of one of his favorite local
performers, Bob Devlin. Bob had been known as the "one-man band of Washington, DC."
Peter began experimenting with his own one-man band sound, and found that he was
more coordinated that he thought he was! Playing different instruments simultaneously
was fun! He decided to try to keep Bob's memory alive with his own on-man band act.
"I'll never forget the first time I heard Bob play," Peter says. "His music was
so fun and uplifting. He was so joyful. I greatly admired him."
Peter polished his one-man band style, and performed around the Northern Virginia
area part-time for a couple of years. All along, the thrill of entertaining kids was
growing. In 2000 Peter quit his "real job" to go full-time in children's music. Since
then he's appeared all over the mid-Atlantic region.
When not performing, Peter loves to write songs. He's written hundreds of songs in
numerous different styles over the years. One of his greatest composing accomplishments
was writing the script, lyrics and music for a musical play based on Rudyard
Kipling's "Captains Courageous." The play was produced in 1995. Since then he's
written two other works for the stage, and several children's stories.
Two of Peter's CDs of his children's songs have won Parents
Choice Recommended Awards and favorable reviews in School Library Journal and
Booklist (the journal of the American Library Association).
Most of Peter's songs are based on experiences he has with children.
He likes to write funny songs about childhood issues. Many of them end up in
his live shows, mixed with other familiar songs for children. His third CD was released in December 2009.
In October 2010 Peter won CBS Television's "Hawaii Five-O" Theme Song Contest. His video of himself
performing the show's familiar song on his walking one-man band rig was voted by TV viewers the best
rendition of the song. Peter won a surfboard autographed by the members of the show's cast, and of course
bragging rights! You can find Peter's video on YouTube. Just search for his name.
"Making a living performing for children has its challenges," admits Peter. "I'll
never get rich doing this. But I'm a person who needs to feel like what I do makes
a difference in the world. I feel so full of joy when I perform for children
and families. It's been the most rewarding thing I've ever found to do with my life.
I think God made me for this."
Peter McCory Wins "Hawaii Five-O" Theme Song Contest
Here's some recent news about Peter. In the fall of 2010 he won CBS Television's "Hawaii Five-O"
Theme Song
Contest. As part of the network's remake of the 1960s-70s show, contestants were asked to
perform the classic show's theme song in a unique way, and upload a video to the CBS website.
Then viewers of the show voted online, and Peter's take on the song (with his walking one-man
band rig) won the contest! As a prize, he won a surfboard autographed by the cast, and of course,
bragging rights! Click on the link below and you can see Peter's winning rendition of the song.
