Library hosts blues artists

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By Daniel Curtin
Hometown Weekly Reporter

Music lovers filled the Wellesley Library last Tuesday night to listen to guitarist Paul Speidel and Danielle Miraglia play some old-time blues. The performance, sponsored by Friends of the Wellesley Free Libraries, brought around 70 members of the community to the Wakelin Room to hear classic blues hits and original songs alike.

Blues and jazz guitarist Paul Speidel, who is originally from Chicago, has been a fixture of the Boston music scene since moving to the area in 1990. Special guest Danielle Miraglia provided vocals and fingerpicking on guitar.

The pair played several songs from the great Mississippi John Hurt and talked about the many blues legends that influenced their music throughout the years. Danielle Miraglia, who was nominated for the 2015 Boston Music Award for Singer-Songwriter of the Year, felt a natural draw to the blues.

“I’ve always liked music that has soul to it. All the music I have ever been into either gets you in the hips or in the heart. Blues can do both, really,” Miraglia said. “For me, it was an easy candidate for genres that I would enjoy.”

“The basics of blues are very accessible, and that’s why I think it’s such a great language to speak and listen to,” Speidel said. “You got rudimentary skills on an instrument, I can teach you how to play [basic] blues in about half an hour.”

said Rayna Suckney and husband Leslie Suckney attended the performance to hear the live music.

“We love music and we had never been here to any of these [concerts]. We had a free evening and we said, ‘let's try it,’” explained Leslie Suckney. “We were not disappointed. We had a wonderful experience.”

“We love jazz, we love blues - and there is not a lot of it around anymore,” Rayna, Leslie’s wife, added.

After the performance, Speidel and Miraglia took questions from the audience about their respective music careers.

“Two guitar players can play the same exact thing and it will have a different feel to it,” Miraglia answered one specific question about what it is like performing covers of the blues, “because it’s coming from two different souls.”