This article appeared in the Feb. 12, 2004 Jewish Advocate.

Peter Siegel sings tunes of relevance and spirit at Circle Coffeehouse

By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

A swinging and topical time Sat. evening at the Workmen’s Circle in Brookline featured activist performer Peter Siegel and Friends. Part of a series of Saturday evening Circle Coffeehouse events, the show include dblues, funk, swing, finger style blues, hip-hop, country and traditional fiddle tunes, and folk.

The Coffeehouse, an intimate, smoke and alcohol-free venue featuring local and nationally-known artists, was established by the 100-year old cultural and social justice organization to provide a venue for Yiddish culture and art with a social conscience. The show was hosted by Shamash: The Jewish Network, a service of Hebrew College, which offers online courses and an online master’s degree in Jewish Studies.

Citing influences Phil Ochs, Run-DMC, Pete Seeger, Miles Davis, The Beatles, Looney Tunes, Led Zeppelin, old time music, and even TV theme songs, Siegel, who is represented by Real People's Music, plays traditional tunes and political folk music on guitar, banjo, mandolin, bodhran and clogged feet. His latest CD, Move The Mob, reflects his reputation for raising awareness of environmental and social issues through humor and irony. “Peter is a multi-instrumentalist quintessential story teller,” said Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary, who called Siegel’s song “My Grandmother,” which contains references to Henry Ford, Hitler, and Christopher Columbus, “one of the finest musical testimonies to personal integrity I know."

Siegel was born in the New York City suburbs. “It was a land of TV and strip malls, fast food and quick judgments,” he recalls. “I now live in Guilford Vermont, down a very long and slippery dirt road along the Green River.” His parents and grandparents, with the exception of an Italian grandfather on his mother's side, are secular, politically and musically active Jews. His maternal grandparents were labor and civil rights organizers. “Growing up I was surrounded by folk music on the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater,” he said.His parents currently sing with the Walkabout chorus, founded by Pete Seeger, and his grandfather was a professional classical violinist. “I feel a great tie to Judaism culturally, and am reconsidering how I observe my Jewish faith, since I now have a child due in April,” he says.

As a member the Hudson Valley-based Harmonious Hogchokers, Siegel sang original and traditional songs of the region of political and environmental significance. He was joined in this effort by his sister Laurie Siegel and environmentalist friend Chris Iversen, whom he met while serving on the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, a 108-foot replica of a pre-1850 Sloop. The three participated in many Hudson River Fests, along with Clearwater’s Hudson River Sloop Singers. Siegel also plays at contra dances and concerts with the Greenfield Dance Band, the Crazy Quilt and Beverwyck String Bands, and the Clefhangers. More locally, he can be seen at Monday night dances at the Southouse in Concord with Yankee Ingenuity, and at Thursday night contra dances in Cambridge.

He has opened for Peter Mulvey and Tony Trishka, and played along with Tom Chapin, Pete Seeger, and Noel Paul Stookey. A finalist in the songwriter contest at Solarfest and The River (WRSI) in Western Mass., he has toured the Northeast, appearing on WAMC’s Dancing on the Air, WFCR’s Valley Folk, and at middle schools, colleges and festivals including the Great Hudson River Revival, the Dance Flurry, Falcon Ridge, the New England Folk Festival, the Old Songs Festival, and the American Festival of Fiddle Tunes in Washington state.

At the Circle, Siegel was accompanied by Brookline resident Lissa Shneckenberger on fiddle and Ellen Clegg on percussion. “We play songs that observe the positive and abysmal state of things - elections, war, the media, love, drinking coffee and consumerism,” he said, while noting that traditional old time, Irish and New England tunes are also in the mix.

Other Workmen’s Circle programs include a secular Jewish Sunday school for children, Yiddish Language Classes for adults, and Teens Acting for Social Change (TASC). “Besides being a vibrant Jewish community in Boston, The Workmen's Circle is also a national organization with an inspiring history that has played a unique and important role in the American Jewish story,” says Membership and Programming Coordinator Felicia Kazer.

“As an activist, Peter strives to play music that will inspire like-minded progressive thinkers and elevate the thinking of those that believe that the status quo is just fine,” continued Kazer. “For activists or folk festival regulars, it was an energizing and entertaining show.”

For more information on Coffeehouse concerts, please contact the Workmen's Circle at 617-566-6281, or email circle@workmenscircleboston.org. The building is not wheelchair accessible; please inquire about special assistance. For more info on Peter Siegel, please visit www.realpeoplesmusic.com. For information on Shamash: The Jewish Network, please email jewish-music@shamash.org or visit http://shamash.org or http://hebrewcollege.edu/online/.