Corrections or additions?
This article by Nicole Plett
was prepared for the March 13, 2002 edition of
U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Out of Nowhere: Music
On Susan Werner’s latest CD, you’ll hear her sing
"I
want a big, big car" — and she doesn’t mean a stuck up SUV.
"Give me a big old ugly L.T.D., a Lincoln Town Car or a Grand
Marquis," says the songwriter, adding, "it’s not about speed,
it’s about attitude." Werner’s song, which has already scored
featured airplay on NPR’s adored "Car Talk," makes sense
coming
from someone who grew up "in the middle of nowhere."
Werner’s fifth and latest album, released in February, is titled
"New
Non-Fiction." She’ll perform at Concerts at the Crossing in
Titusville,
on Saturday, March 16.
The youngest of six children who grew up on a family farm near
Manchester,
Iowa, Werner considers "the middle of nowhere" the perfect
place for a musician to start from. "Everybody in my family can
sing and play an instrument," says Werner. "In the middle
of nowhere, you have to make your own entertainment." But Werner
corrects my impression of charming children and string quartets.
"Don’t
think `Amadeus,’" she quickly cautions, " — think `Music
Man!’"
Werner began studying guitar at age five, but during some pretty
important
high school years she was also playing saxophone. "Music in the
schools saved my life," she says. "If you find a teacher who
encourages your talent in a certain direction, it changes the
trajectory
of your whole life."
In this case the teacher was Werner’s high school band director, Allan
Jacobsen, who she describes as "a jazz head" and a talented
jazz drummer.
"I was very lucky that such a talented musician would come to
a small high school to teach. He had a family to raise and needed
a steady gig." Her teacher also had a great record collection
and introduced her to the music of Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald,
and Count Basie. "I was hooked early and hooked hard."
Werner eventually went to the city "and got all groovy." She
earned a master’s degree in classical music at Temple University in
Philadelphia and stayed in the city for 12 years. It proved ideally
situated as a base for East Coast touring. On the road for 10 years,
she lives in Chicago now. "When you travel all the time it doesn’t
matter where you live," she says, though being close to family
was a factor in her choice.
Werner’s previous albums include "Time Between Trains,"
"Last
of the Good Straight Girls," and "Midwestern Saturday
Night,"
as well as "Live at the Tin Angel." Among the 11 new songs
on "New Non-Fiction" is "Misery and Happiness" is
an inspired story song about a single woman, out at a club, making
a foolish choice. Has this happened to you, we ask the 36-year-old
Werner. "You’d have to say personal experience factors into a
song like that. It’s homespun story telling, a tall tale, it’s a
conversation
with your best friend. But misery gets all the best lines — that’s
the hard part."
Also included on "New Non-Fiction" is Werner’s quirkily
original
rendition of the ’60s pop classic, "Everybody’s Talkin’."
The inspired performance reflects her enduring interest in the jazz
tradition of reinterpreting familiar songs with an original flair.
"It’s about finding the adventure in a song you might not have
thought had any left in it."
"To re-think the music of song is part of the tradition of jazz
singers, to find a new way to say the old thing, change tempo,
re-harmonization,
or dramatically change the tempo," she says. However, nothing
annoys her more than to hear a cover done that’s just like the
original
— "Why bother?"
Werner also writes her own jazz ballads. "There’s something for
me to do as a jazz singer yet," she says. "People love
hearing
something new in the old style."
— Nicole Plett
Church at Washington Crossing, Titusville, 609-406-1803. $15.
Saturday,
March 16, at 8 p.m.
Corrections or additions?
This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com
— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
Facebook Comments