Peter Breinholt — Just plain folk

Jeff, the oldest, played football at Yale for two seasons before deciding to concentrate on his studies there. He is now a federal prosecutor with the Justice Department in international terrorism in Washington, D.C.

Mary Jane, a Fulbright Scholar, took an MBA from Harvard and teaches part time at Cal-Berkley. John, a graduate of the University of Utah film department, took a master's degree from Northwestern and is now a film editor in Los Angeles. Annie earned a degree in speech pathology at Utah and will soon complete her master's degree and become a marriage counselor in San Francisco.

For his part, Peter completed a degree in Spanish at Utah. He tried to return to school once to complete the last three classes he needed for a political science degree, but his music career took off suddenly and unexpectedly.

Breinholt is a natural musician, but it took years for him to find his voice, both figuratively and literally. He didn't talk until he was 3 1/2 years old — "We were concerned about him," says Jane — and yet he could pick out melodies on the piano by 18 months.

"Rob would play three or four notes on the piano and Peter would find the next octave up and play them," recalls Jane. "We thought it was amazing. By the time he was 5, he was playing songs from 'Bambi.' I remember when he was a little boy he heard a piece of music and said, 'That's my good dream music.' We thought that was unusual — I mean, I don't dream in music."

Peter and Jeff took the usual boyhood piano lessons — "Even from the other room I could tell which one of them was playing because one played with passion and the other was just playing the notes," says Jane. The piano lessons continued until one day Rob and Jane realized Peter was not reading the music he was playing. He would ask the teacher to play the song so he wouldn't have to read the music — he could play it by ear once he'd heard it played.

"We figured we were wasting our money," says Jane.

He continued to teach himself songs from the radio on his own, and at 12 he began teaching himself guitar. While attending Highland High School, he joined a band called the Dobermans. They played at high school functions and eventually performed on the University of Utah campus.

It fell to Breinholt to learn the songs off the radio and teach the other band members their parts. Without knowing it, he was giving himself on-the-job training for a music career.

"I spent hours in front of the stereo, figuring out guitar parts and bass and piano and then teaching it to them," recalls Breinholt. "I learned over a hundred songs by ear. It was a lot of work. But that's how I learned to write songs and produce."