She uses her alto voice, acoustic guitar and original songs written in the American folk tradition to comment on the long road she and her generation have traveled--from early love, through work, marriage and family to middle-aged dating.

15 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Modern Folk, FOLK: Gentle



Details:
Notes: Peg's folk-style songs cover it all--men done her wrong, men done her right, a view from the front lines of social work, parents, kids, grandkids, and looking into the void. It's a rollercoaster ride but one that increasing numbers of folk in the Boston area seem to want to take! Chuckles and tears, sometimes both at once.

Who IS this woman?

Peg Espinola was born in Manhattan and grew up on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. and Chicago during and after World War II. Landing back in Washington in the early nineteen fifties, she started playing guitar after becoming acquainted with Peggy and Mike Seeger, younger siblings of Pete Seeger and children of folk musicologists Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger. She met Elizabeth Cotton who was working for the Seegers at the time and heard her play "Freight Train" before anybody else knew how to play it. She also had the privilege of hearing tapes from the Library of Congress folk music collection,courtesy of Charles Seeger. While studying English and Economics at Goucher College she continued to play folk music with Mike Seeger and others in Baltimore and Philadelphia.

After graduation from Goucher Peg moved to Massachusetts to take a master's degree in International Relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She worked for a couple of years at M.I.T., then switched gears and went into social work, obtaining her M.S.W. from Smith College. In 1965 she married Ron Espinola, a physicist. She took a break from social work to stay home after her kids were born. During this period she was active in the civil rights movement, especially the promotion of fair housing for racial minorities.Her sabbatical from social work was extended during the family's three-year stay in Micronesia, where she taught guitar and reimmersed herself in folk music and the newer folk-based popular music of the seventies.

Upon return to Massachusetts (Sudbury) she reentered social work, first at an agency, and then in a group private practice. She still practices clinical social work in Sudbury and Lexington, MA. Peg was widowed at age forty-nine. She has two children: Stephen, a singer-songwriter who also does computer animation and sound recording, and Robin, who produces documentary films. Both work in New York City. In addition, Peg has two grandsons, Max and Sam.

After numerous (mis)adventures in the middle-aged dating arena, Peg found an expressive outlet in songwriting, which she began studying in 2004 at SAMW, the legendary music camp sponsored by Boston's folk music station, WUMB. She has featured on the SAMW stage at the Boston Folk Festival and is playing open mikes and featuring at various venues in the Metrowest area of Boston. She generally plays solo--voice and acoustic guitar.

Though Peg looks upon herself as a wise elder to the boomers who are nipping at her heels, she finds that many of her songs resonate with them--with lines like "Do I have enough to retire?" (from Rumination) or "I saw his ad on the personals page..." (from The Last Bad Date). Other songs reflect her political and philosophical convictions, her experiences as a social worker, and her take on family--as daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother. Some are funny, some serious; most are both. And then there is the Google Song--which has broad generational appeal, and defies categories!

As she achieves the big seven-0 and moves into her eighth decade, Peg says, "Itâs never too late to become an emerging talent!" This CD of fifteen original songs, written over the past two and a half years, may convince you of that.