Elaine Eagle and Ramiro Espinoza perform original and cover music as End of the Line at the Old Barn Drinkery in June 2022. They'll return on May 28.
Provided photo/Elaine Eagle
WENATCHEE — Local musician Elaine Eagle graduated from Berklee College of Music with a bachelor of arts in songwriting in December 2022.
She will release a new album with five songs under the project “End of the Line,” a band and its album title, with Ramiro Espinoza on May 26 on music streaming sites.
Right after the release Sunday, End of the Line plays a concert at Old Barn Drinkery, 2265 Easy St., Wenatchee, to reflect on the six-and-a-half-year musical partnership before Espinoza leaves the country to live in an undetermined destination.
“He has always moved around a lot, born and raised in the Tri-Cities and has lived all over the world,” Eagle said. “I’m hoping for somewhere tropical I can visit.”
Together, the duo has written 10-15 original songs for “End of the Line” with Eagle on piano and vocals and Espinoza on nylon guitar.
Their new album has five songs, all inspired by “The Odyssey’’ by Homer. Of the first song “Victory,” Eagle said, “You might expect its triumphant ‘We are the Champions and it is very much the opposite, the bitter sweetness of victory.” It also models the invocation of the muse, she said.
The other songs on the “End of the Line” album are titled “Journey Home,” “Lotus,” “Olive Branches” and “Your Fool,” with a different character’s perspective in each one.
“All the stuff that I learned at Berklee helped with my craft because you know you can’t wait around for inspiration because it’s hit or miss, sometimes it’s there and sometimes not,” Eagle said.
She said she wrote “close to 100, 150, a lot of songs” in the program “to get the bad ones out of the way.”
The concert at the Old Barn Drinkery will include storytelling behind original songs and behind-the-scenes anecdotes.
“In terms of how we write together, he comes up with the seed of the song, a riff on the guitar, a melody, a chord structure he shares with me. We both listen and play around with it to get direction for lyrics,” Eagle said about End of the Line.
Eagle began playing the piano at age 10 and performing locally at age 16.
“I love the piano,” she said. “It’s very much like home to me… it’s a nice feeling of being in control… I have command of the instrument. It’s really become second nature to sing and play at the same time,” which she also does as a solo artist and in Artemidorus, a Pink Floyd tribute band.
As a solo artist, audiences comment Eagle plays a diverse set, covering pop artists, such as Adele, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga, as well as throwbacks like Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, and country and rock ‘n’ roll hits, too.
“By the end of 2023, I would love to have enough solo material that I am happy and confident in so I can record a full album of original songs,” Eagle said.
She performs regularly at wineries and venues in North Central Washington. She tours this summer to Pasco, Yakima and Wapato and is trying to widen the reach into Walla Walla, Woodinville and Snohomish.
As an independent artist, “you have to be everything for yourself,” Eagle said. For this project, she is doing distribution, working with designers and photographers, submissions, playlists, blogs and reaching out to press, booking gigs, and operating as her own agent and manager.
“It takes up a lot of time,” she said, while dedicating every evening to music, “but I love it. It’s the best. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do.”
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