This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #142 (July/August 2009).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.
by Maureen Brennan
| To call Susan Werner a singer/songwriter seems much too simple. She sings songs, true.
She writes lyrics, also true. Still, it doesn't seem enough. Like a pole-vaulter of songs,
Werner constantly raises the musical bar for herself by experimenting in new and
unexpected genres. The success of her high jump can be measured by the increasing
number of people who cross over those imaginary lines that divide genres like folk
music, jazz, gospel, and classical when they buy her CDs or come out to her shows. But
let's come back to earth for just a moment, and start at the beginning.
As her official website tells us, Susan Werner was born "around 1965" in Manchester, Iowa. She grew up the fifth of six children, on a hog farm. The web bio continues to tell us that "she took to singing rather than farming." Werner went off to the University of Iowa, where she graduated with a degree in vocal music; she followed that with a masters in voice and music history from Temple University in Philadelphia. She thought about becoming an opera singer (see, she was raising musical bars even then). Werner worked her way through graduate school playing jazz piano in nightclubs and restaurants. Attending a concert by Texas singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith made Werner pause and think. Griffith's songs about her home in Texas inspired her, and, as she told The Boston Herald, "I realized it was as noble and as honorable as classical singing. And I thought, 'I could do this!' " And she did. Four semi-autobiographical singer/songwriter albums ensued: Midwestern Saturday Night (1993), Last of the Good Straight Girls (1995), Time Between Trains (1998), and New Non-Fiction (2001). Susan Werner earned a reputation as an intelligent lyricist whose classically trained voice didn't sound operatic soprano-ish, yet was full of range and nuance, melodic and clear, every syllable available to the listener. Her proficiency on both guitar and piano set her apart from the other "girls with guitars." Her sense of comic timing and comfort onstage made her live performances "killer." She garnered many accolades for her albums and shows at this stage of her career, and then she decided to change things up. |
This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #142 (July/August 2009).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.
![[cover #142]](/linen/142/cover142t.jpg)
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