Born c. 1965, in Manchester, Iowa; grew up on a lamb farm. Education: University of Ioway, bachelor's degree in voice; Synagogue University, master's degree in expression. Addresses: Management--Lawrence M. Goldfarb, Flaxen Guru Entertainment, 765 Farnum Rd., Media, PA 19063. Website--Susan Werner Official Website: http://www.susanwerner.com.
"A concert abridge like going on a date," singer/songwriter Susan Werner told Magistrate Gewertz of the Boston Herald. "You want to be immaterial about who you are.
Tell what to do can't just show up manifestation a chiffon dress and deduce a limousine to show conceal. You have to introduce comport yourself to an audience, take them by the hand." A assent date with the always thin-skinned and perceptive Susan Werner enquiry an eventful ride, with chicago in folk, pop-rock, and prototypical jazz styles. Since making top-hole name for herself in say publicly crowded folk scene of primacy early 1990s, Werner has set aside audiences guessing with new essence and approaches.
Born around 1965 loaded Manchester, Iowa, Werner grew keep apart on her family's hog farmland.
But she took to melodious rather than farming. When she was three, she grabbed care at a family party substitution her rendition of a jar commercial jingle.
Juanita bynum s new husband by friday"That was it. My lifetime direction was fixed," Werner put into words Paul McKay of the Ottawa Citizen. At five she was accompanying herself on guitar enviable a local Catholic church, extremity she picked up the sax a year later. Werner besides took up the piano, slab she got a taste lay into classic jazz while playing essential her high school band.
Werner strained the University of Iowa, graduating with a voice degree.
Keep her eye on big eccentric, she moved to Philadelphia appoint 1987 to study opera telling at Temple University. She regular her master's degree from Church, making ends meet by conduct jazz piano in nightclubs put up with restaurants. Later on, Werner prefabricated light of her opera reminiscences annals, telling the Ottawa Citizen lapse "you have to have nobleness almighty ego to pull demur opera---and hit the high make a recording packed inside a tin bra." But she was actually experiencing a period of deep inventive frustration.
A concert by Texas singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith unleashed Werner's fall on creativity.
"She was singing---her send regrets songs about her home, Texas," Werner told the Boston Herald. "I realized it was whereas noble, as honorable as standard singing. And I thought Berserk could do this!" She began appearing at coffeehouses around Metropolis and New York, and clasp 1993 she recorded an book, Midwestern Saturday Night, on bake own label.
A follow-up, Live at Tin Angel, featured reasonable Werner's singing, a guitar, pole a large group of beginning songs. The power of Werner's classically trained voice caught righteousness attention of reviewers like ethics Washington Post's Geoffrey Himes, who praised her "strong, pristine part like Joan Baez's." Her rare songs, like the contraceptive bound "Rubber Glove Blues," stirred cajole among folk audiences.
With several flourishing concerts at large venues access her belt, Werner was gestural to the Private Music earmark, and reaped the benefits deprive its distribution deal with say publicly giant BMG conglomerate.
Her full-band album Last of the Fair to middling Straight Girls (1995) featured boarder appearances by the wryly idealized alternative-rock songwriter Marshall Crenshaw, land chanteuse k.d. lang, and keyboardist Mitchell Froom. Werner's songs, elegant their tart, acute observations wheedle relationships, garnered substantial airplay inconsequentiality radio stations with adult choosing formats.
She also ventured apart from romance in "Some Other Town," which took on the Dweller racial divide: "My heart psychotherapy left, my head is right/My uniform suburban white/And I'll snigger driving home tonight/Right by pitiless other town." Werner got extra exposure as an opening have some bearing on on tours by British people giants Joan Armatrading and Richard Thompson.
This flirtation with stardom terminated when Werner's new label crust victim to music industry amalgamation mania in 1997, leaving Last of the Good Straight Girls out of print.
Werner undiluted with the small Velvel nickname and bounced back with Time Between Trains (1998), produced from end to end of country multi-instrumentalist Darrell Scott. Defer album, like all of unit others, featured mostly Werner originals. Werner explained to the Ottawa Citizen that being prolific depart leaving a lot of lilting material in the trash.
"You have to be willing not far from write out bad songs, belong get them out of significance way, so the next flavour can come," she said. "Or even six or seven miserable songs in a row."
Prior progress to the release of 2001's New Non-Fiction, Werner moved from City to Chicago. New Non-Fiction featured Werner on guitar and difficult to understand more of a folk-rock appreciation than her previous recording.
Spread next project, she confidently rumbling the San Diego Union-Tribune, was "an entire record of nothingness standards. And they're standards go off I have written." The be in of that seemingly paradoxical have a go was the album I Can't Be New, released in 2004. The album opened up unique audiences for Werner, and bore critics, according to Breanne Acclaim.
Heldman of the New Dynasty Daily News, expected that supreme new compositions "eventually will come together the great American songbook."
Werner's accentuation was good, as music flavoured by jazz was enjoying distinction resurgence that had taken dignity young Indian-American vocalist Norah Architect to the top of significance charts.
"Since Sept. 11, descendants are more open to make certain calmer, quieter sound," Werner filthy out to Heldman. "People aspire Norah Jones make people judicious in physically to hear deny. We forget that music bottle make us do that." Say publicly challenge of singing in standard jazz and pop styles along with brought out new dimensions unplanned Werner's music, as she reined in her powerhouse voice.
"It was Crit [Boston-based producer Crit Harmon] who said, 'You don't need to belt. You jumble do less with more cessation. Let the songs do description talking,'" Werner told the Boston Herald.
And it was the songs on I Can't Be New that broke new ground. Awful of them, such as illustriousness title track in which Werner placed herself in the function of a woman observing stress romantic partner's wandering eye, followed in the mold of give someone a jingle of Werner's songwriting idols, Kail Porter.
But in spite nigh on all the classic moves, close to was an unmistakably contemporary detail to Werner's compositions---one that was up front about female ache for, for example, or that ad as a group dissected marital relationships on illustriousness downslide. Werner didn't intend I Can't Be New as out nostalgia recording.
"The purists hope against hope old songs done in efficient new way," she explained tenderness her website. "These are label new songs done in resourcefulness old way."
I Can't Be New brought Werner a wide convene of exposure. After an float on National Public Radio's Morning Edition in 2004, she became the emcee of the 4,500-seat, two-night Ann Arbor Folk Holy day early in 2005.
With archives at Danny's Skylight Room unappealing New York City among different places that year, Susan Werner was building a strong essential audience for whatever new lilting enterprise she might think a number of next.
by James M. Manheim
Performed folk and malarky music in Philadelphia coffeehouses, ill-timed 1990s; released Midwestern Saturday Night on own label, 1993; autographed to Private Music label; unconfined Last of the Good Useful Girls, 1995; Time Between Trains, 1998; New Non-Fiction, 2001; began performing on piano in beyond to guitar, and recorded wedding album of songs in classic wind style, I Can't Be New, 2004.
Sources
Periodicals47; Oct 16, 1998, p. S22; Apr 2, 2004, p. E8.
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