Biography from Archived Pages |
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Jenni (Jennifer) Mansfield Peal
"So many musicians and music lovers have helped me keep singing," Jenni says of her twenty years playing and singing professionally. Developing her early interest in traditional music ("I loved Childe Ballads when I was twelve- especially when damsels lost their maidenhead and family members killed each other…"), Jenni joined the Scarborough Faire Performers Guild in 1982. She was an award-winning member of that renaissance faire performing company for three years, singing and playing mountain dulcimer with guitarist and vocalist Ed Macke, currently of Dallas' Irish Rogues. "Love for traditional music led to my involvement in the Celtic music
scene in Dallas, led by bands like Tinkers Dam and The Irish Rogues. I helped form the Southwest Celtic Music Association to bring
in the finest international Celtic performers, and then we produced
the first North Texas Irish Festival in the mid-eighties.
I was already performing children's traditional music shows, so I developed
the Urchin Street Faire family area for the festival. It's still going
strong today." Jenni began performing in Celtic bands in the late eighties
as a vocalist and accordionist, first with Whiskey Before Breakfast,
then Pegasus Project and finally Moveable Feast. Then, "I came to the
end of what I had to say in the Celtic genre. I needed to sing my own
songs." That was 1993. Jenni had already made some progress with her own writing by that time. She taped eight original and traditional songs for WFAA Dallas' syndicated show Peppermint Place. Winning the B.W. Stevenson Songwriter's Competition in Dallas in 1990, sponsored by Poor David's Pub, led to a feature performance at the Kerrville Folk Festival and her first album, Big Wind.
For the next five years, Jenni says, she lurched along, trying to balance
her special education teaching career with an unsteady desire to perform.
What happens to artists when they lose confidence? They go into a kind
of sleep mode, on input rather than output. "I did mostly back-up work
during that period, as an accordionist with Colin
Boyd and the Backseat Drivers." Then Jenni moved to Austin.
Where does the inspiration for her songs come from? "I write for the
same reasons people have always written what become folk songs. I write
about people and situations that amuse me, confuse me, or piss me off.
Sometimes I make up people so that I can sing about humanity and the
times we live in. My songs are provoked by those moments of awareness
when I want to say to everybody I know 'Hey! Did you see that?' And
I'm a listener first, so I'm continuously inspired by the music happening
around me. I try to honor it by developing my own gifts and encouraging
others'". ASCAP writer and publisher, and
now back in Dallas, Jenni no longer doubts her music. Now she relishes
each day with joy, thankful for every opportunity to write and play.
Her favorite venues are those which provide homes for the strong Dallas
jam players scene: The Sons of Herrmann Hall, Adairs, and Lakewood Bar and Grill. Jennifer Mansfield Peal is presently living in Dallas with her husband, photographer Tom Peal. Together as Scatterbranch Music Publishing, Jenni and Tom are busy producing more and more of their art. The year 2004 sees the release of Jenni's first album of original songs in fourteen years: Flood. The Scatterbranch catalogue also offers: Albums: Big Wind, 1990; Pegasus Project Ascension, 1992. Both of these items are currently out of print. Literature: Floodsongs, 2004 Other productions: Miss Jenni's Pioneer Play Party; Irish Song Lineage
in the American South. Also: "The Civil War Letters of the Brothers
Love" East Texas Historical Journal, Vol.38, No.1 (spring 2000).
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Jennifer
Mansfield Peal is an award-winning songwriter whose elegant and quirky
style has entertained audiences around the United States and on two
international tours, and radio listeners around the world. Performing
her own songs, American and Celtic traditional music, original and traditional
children's music, recording, and supporting other artists as a back-up
vocalist and accordionist, Jenni's had a rich musical journey.
It also brought her to the attention of 
Thanks
to an introduction to Hill Country songwriting favorite Al Barlow by
friend and songwriter Lisa Miles, she became involved in 
"I have so many music friends up in Dallas-Fort Worth, and I
was very frightened to leave them…"- notably, the Charli's Jam family,
with far-flung members including