All posts by JMPAdmin

Jenni and the Mountain Dulcimer

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The mountain dulcimer has such a special, delicate sound that I only play it in certain types of shows and only solo. All of my children’s shows feature the instrument, because it is so easy to demonstrate and see. But I also like to play it at farmer’s markets because it takes people by surprise. It fits in, somehow.

I’m now getting ready for the 2024 SLV Summer Season, and enjoying brushing up my mountain dulcimer repertoire. I hope to see you out there this summer!

2024 Season Appearances

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Summertime is fast approaching, and I hope to fill up my calendar with appearances in the most beautiful place I can be, right here in Southern Colorado.

Mercados, Farmer’s Markets and Maker’s Markets are so much fun to play at. They bring in a diversity of people, all ages. They are generally outdoors in the beautiful Rocky Mountain air (around here, anyway.) Plus, I feel a kinship with the folks in their booths, no matter whether they are selling tomatoes and peppers or hand-made soaps. We are all independent producers serving the local community.

Please watch for my dates as I post them here and on my Facebook page, Jenni Mansfield Peal Original.
If you represent a regional event series that uses family-friendly independent music, please contact me: [email protected]

Let’s make it happen! These songs aren’t going to sing themselves!

Vera Jayne and Norma Jean

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Jayne Mansfield and I share a name, and it’s because of my dad, Paul Mansfield. Vera Jayne Palmer and Paul James Mansfield were married in 1950 at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. Not too long after that, my half-sister Jayne Marie was born. Then, a few years later, the couple moved to Hollywood and Jayne started her acting career. She became a big star, a bombshell. It all really exploded in 1957. Dad never felt comfortable with that lifestyle and they divorced – he found my mom, Sue, back in Dallas about a year later. Jayne had only ten more years before her fatal car crash on the road to New Orleans one dark night in 1967.

In this song, I sing of both Jayne and her contemporary bombshell and Hollywood rival, Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jean) by trying to get at what it possibly could have been like to be an international sex symbol during those heady years. “Oh, for a Man,” heard as a refrain throughout the song, refers to one of Jayne’s more obscure movies and describes the panting nymphomania of the sex goddess archetype.

The Hippie of White Rock Lake Live at Poor David’s Pub

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The Hippie of White Rock Lake Live at Poor David’s Pub (c) Jennifer M Peal

On October 30, 2021, I got to do the Halloween show at Poor David’s Pub in Dallas, TX. That’s where The Hippie got her debut, right there in her own home town.

Poor David’s is a legendary Americana and eclectic music venue in its fourth decade. Thank you so much to David Card for the concert and to Carlos Sanchez for recording it and making me sound so good onstage. And thank you so much to my audience who came out to the show, so many of them dear friends.

The lesson of this song is it takes one to know one. In Dallas.

O, Lion

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In the year 1900, Pablo Picasso moved to Paris. He was around twenty and already the wonderboy of Barcelona.

Picasso quickly gathered a group of friends, an international circle of artists and writers whose daring and talent changed Western Art forever. Guillaume Apollinaire, poet and sometime pornographer, coined the term “Cubism” and died, regretful for dying young, of the Spanish Flu on Armistice Day, 1918. Max Jacob, who liked to fly high on Ether, pioneered absurdist poetry. Artists like Soutine, Matisse, Braque, and Modigliani were all part of the scene. Expatriot American writer Gertrude Stein facilitated the success of modern art with her salons.

“O, Lion” is a line from one of Guillaume Apollinaire’s poems: Oh, lion, unhappy image of sadly fallen kings … These artists saw the fall of the old empires and were part of the new, modern spirit of rebellion. They were serious about art and reckless with it, producing for their time and place and for eternity. They believed in the importance of their moment and in each other. In order to sing my tribute to them, I had to make myself into an old barber, finding an old razor blade with Picasso’s blood on it. That old barber was young in 1902. He kept that old blade for the rest of his life.

Pablo Picasso and Max Jacob, early twentieth century. Photo from Tumblr.

Receiver CDs are here!

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Please let me know if you would like to order my new CD, Receiver. I will be sending them out myself. For $15 each, I will send them directly to the postal address you supply. Pay me through paypal or by check. If paying by check, I’ll send a mailing address when I get your request.

Songs:

The Snow On The Pine, The Godless Rambler, My Father’s Cigarette In The Dark, Angry Sister, Evalina, Make Me A Pallet On Your Floor, Keep Tamales In Christmas, Receiver, The Hippie Of White Rock Lake Recorded Live at Poor David’s Pub, Dallas, TX.

Contact me here: [email protected]

Pay me here: My PayPal link.

I hope you love Receiver!

New Album: Receiver

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Its taken a few years, but here we go. My favorite new songs plus a couple of older ones that had not been recorded.

Receiver showcases nine songs. The Snow On The Pine, The Godless Rambler, Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor, and Keep Tamales In Christmas were recorded at Parrot Tracks Studio with George Coyne just south of Austin. George also did the mixing and mastering for the whole album. Make Me A Pallet… is an update of a traditional blues song, co-written with Ruben Dominguez of Southern Colorado.

My Father’s Cigarette In the Dark is the oldest song on the album, written long before my dad passed away. Receiver is also an older one, dating back to the period when Tom and I were searching the American West for our home. I’m not sure exactly when I completed Evalina. It took me about fifteen years to write. The topic is very close to my heart. Angry Sister is a ”me too” song, completed in 2018. Each of these four songs was recorded at Dallas Sound Lab with Paul Osborne, and they all feature Linda Relph of DFW on fiddle.

The Hippie Of White Rock Lake was recorded at a very fun Halloween JMP concert, 2021, at Poor David’s Pub in Dallas. Carlos Sanchez was the sound engineer. Thanks to everyone who came out to that show and to David Card for his faith in me.

I hope you enjoy listening to every song as much as I enjoyed recording them.

https://jennimansfieldpeal.hearnow.com/receiver

You can hear the entire album on Hear Now at the link above. For a few weeks I am making all of the songs available, full length, for free.

Thanks for listening! I would love some feedback, so plase leave a comment below.

The Snow On the Pine

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The Snow On the Pine, (c) Jennifer M. Peal

I’ll be releasing my new album, Receiver, this spring. This track is a stark folk ballad. The Snow on the Pine is a story told in intimacy after a few glasses of wine. Maybe she will come to regret her loose tongue …

I came to Chama with the snow on the pine
Along with my husband who worked in a mine
He told my parents when he asked for me
That a man could make fortunes in the silver country

My mother said,daughter, watch out what you do
You can’t trust a husband who’s younger than you
But we mde plans for leaving, my cattle I sold
And we headed for Chama up the high mountain road

Good-bye, Tucumcari, my dear family
I’m ready to marry, I’m past thirty-three
But love’s a rare treasure and love makes you blind
When it’s fresh and unspoiled, like the snow on the pine

He wasn’t a miner, there wasn’t a claim
He made all his living by the luck of the game
The surname he gave me wasn’t event his own
And he played with my money until it was gone

My new baby son asleep in his bed
My husband burst in with a gun to his head
Both men demanded I settle a debt
But the one with the gun said he’d have me instead

Marry an old man, your love he will crave
Marry a young man, he’ll make you his slave
Marry a gambler and one day you will find
Their heart hgas turned cold like the snow on the pine

I hid all I earned from the work that I found
washing the clothes of the miners in town
Winters are lasting but summers are brief
as the life of a gambler in the silver country

I paid off his liquor, I paid off his debt
I paid off his killer without a regret
Alone with my conscience, but I have been told
That Chama has widows like Denver has gold

And now my dear sisters I’m not what I was
You know me before I gambled on love
Men speak of treasure to be found in a mine
while love melts away with the snow on the pine