09/02/2008
Amanda Penecale holds CD release party at Puck Live
By: David W. Wannop - Correspondent

I first met Amanda Penecale at a Catherine Tuttle concert a couple of years ago. The interesting aspect about this is that Penecale learned her craft in a meticulous manner, transposing songs to a new instrument, the guitar, improving her lyrics, creating many demos so she could find the strengths and weaknesses in her music, and integrating her music into her other art endeavors. A recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, she has approached music with determination, but with out the brash rashness of some of her developing-in-public contemporaries, many of whom became good after they had already burned the clubs with empty seats and subpar performances. Penecale is offering quality straight out of the box, ready to go, batteries included. She muses, "Art has been a part of my life since my first winning contest entry in preschool. Through grade school I placed five years in a row in the Archdiocesan Art Contest. I began to play piano at the age of 5 and began to study it seriously by the age of 9. I continued with the piano up through high school, but I became interested in the ability to play out with friends. "I found that most places we were playing did not have a piano. I wanted to be more than just a vocalist and some of my friends played guitar. My Aunt Sally picked up an old classical guitar from a yard sale and I began to teach myself. I found that it was easier for me to tell my stories with a guitar, and it also allowed me to move in a different direction than my classical roots. I formed a folk group with my cousin and some friends in high school and took my guitar with me to college."

Penecale is also a visual artist and photographer. "Art all comes from the same core. Some thoughts translate better as a visual piece while others become a piece of music."
About the essence of creativity, she relates, "For me there is no one place that I can be creative. It's sort of like the rain; it begins suddenly and then it ends. Ideas often ruminate for a while and then come into existence at the least likely moment. Often I come to a conclusion or realize the direction of a piece while driving or going for a swim."
Penecale is happy to be having her release party near home, where she tried out a new Martin guitar last winter. Percussionist Erik Hischmann has been added on various hand drums. She has also been featured at the prestigious Tin Angel in Philadelphia. Trained in theater and dance, she appears confident in a way that escapes other songwriters in the area. Penecale spent some time after college landscaping and busking in Nantucket, teaching art to children in Maine, and recording the EP in Bucks County.
She said, "I found the studio through MySpace and contacted a few artists who had done recording there. After some research I decided upon Cambridge Sound Studios in Newtown. Pa., and working with Jim Salamone was awesome. It was a fairly straightforward operation. We came in, played some songs, lit some candles and some lava lamps. The studio and staff were great and super helpful in taking our project to the next level. I hope that this first EP will allow me to share my music with those around me and find its way to people who haven't heard me before. "The world of Internet and digital sharing is so huge right now, it will be a great way for me to get my music to a larger audience. The process of making the EP was also a learning process, which I believe will help me when I am able to put together my first full-length album."

Penecale's style has elements of folk and rock with a contemplative, but not self-absorbed lyrical quality. Indeed, her lyrics are not quite purely reflective, but they are not quite topical story verbiage either. Her voice has a richness that is lacking among many of the current waifs of whining who have recently afflicted local stages. Statuesque and polite, Penecale has the wherewithal to make a serious and thoughtful effort in show biz.

Amanda Penecale,
With the Underhills &
Godinez Brothers,
will perform
at Puck Live,
Printers Alley,
Doylestown, PA 18901,
Saturday, Sept. 6, 8:30 p.m.
Tickets: $8.
Info: 215-348-9000 or
www.pucklive.com or
www.myspace.com/amandapenecale.


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