Album Notes

Lorraine Duisit and Tom Espinola announce the release of Little Folks' Songs for Little Country People, a collection of 24 original songs for children.

Lorraine, who has been described as "a respected mandolinist and a writer of songs that sneak up out of old traditions and surprise you with new twists" (The Washington Post) drew from her real-life experience of raising children in the country and from her eight years of touring with the internationally acclaimed folk group Trapezoid, where " her highly individual style became the musical centerpiece, and her compositions reached beyond folk to embrace greater melodic and harmonic subtlety" (VA Gazette) to create a recording that resonates with listeners young and old.

Mandolins, mandola, harp, autoharp, and pizzicato cello cavort in How Many Eggs, a song written to calm a crying child while making a clay bird, nest, and eggs.

Rock and roll guitar licks propel Let's All Make a "V", a song about flying geese who keep forming the wrong letter.

Former bandmate Freyda Epsteins' rich, inventive harmonies grace many songs, including a lullaby entitled Awake.

Howard Levy contributes stellar harmonica embellishments to favorite boyhood themes (tractors, firetrucks, schoolbuses, etc.) and the Espinola children sing choruses about summer hikes, learning to pump on a swing, and "country" reasons to Beep Your Horn (all of them friendly!).

Also friendly are Halloween songs about pumpkin carving , trick-or-treating, and bats sending out sonar communications (accompanied by musical saw and described as "Burl Ives meets Charles Ives").

The recording received honors from Parents' Guide to Childrens' Media, and Parents'Choice Foundation, which recommends products that help kids grow imaginatively, physically.

morally, mentally, and that are fun safe, and socially sound, awarded Little Folks' Songs a prestigious silver medal and describes it as "an unusually inviting collection of tuneful, lighthearted folk sing-along and play-along songs...

Waiting for the Wind is a lovely ode to the way plants propogate by sending seeds sailing on the breeze...and the vocally inventive Frogpond is just about worth the price of the album all by itself".