If Susan Werner wanted to break away from her image as a "girl
with guitar," she says she would remix the title track on her album Time Between Trains as a hip-hop dance track in the style of Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner." She sings a sample for me to demonstrate her knowledge of the style.
You wouldn't know it from the album itself, but this woman has a rockin' sense of humor and great peace of mind. Many of the songs on her CD are soulful, passionate, and quiet, and are accompanied by guitar, piano, mandolin, and, of all things, a bagpipe. But talking to her on the phone had me laughing out loud.
Werner, who claims that Tufts grads are "brainiacs," says she would have been a Maine lobstermen if she didn't become a songwriter. "Y'all need to go out to Dallas and have a relationship there, honey. Live life, go to Alaska, and be a lobstermen."
This Saturday, Werner will showcase her style to "brainiacs" at the Somerville Theater in a show to release her new CD, New Non-fiction.
She has toured with British folk-rock god Richard Townsend, who Werner calls "a tremendous live performer." He taught her to hurl herself at the audience, explaining "What are you gonna do? Play racquetball afterwards?" The intensity he brought to the show impressed her to do likewise.
Werner got her start in Boston with a "Hipperati" show at Symphony Hall. The concert was for the hippie folks who got rich (read: our parents) at a revival night, where the point was to introduce the talents of the next folk generation (read: Susan). They liked her so much she got to play all over Boston, including the Orpheum Theatre and Harbor Lights, an outdoor festival near the Charles River.
Werner was born and raised in Iowa and grew up on a farm with the dairy cows and hogs keeping her company. The rest of her family members are natural performers, too, and her brother is on national tour as a stand-up comedian. Her parents never stood in the way, she says, but just looked at their "funny kids" and let them do their own thing, marveling at their talents. "Too often, parents try to force kids," Werner said.
The tracks on Werner's CD are quiet and unobtrusive but catch your attention once in a while with unexpected notes of irony, humor, and bittersweet undertones (and that bagpipe!). "Sorry About Jesus" brings to mind an image of Werner sitting down in her living room after a late dinner and a few drinks, strumming a guitar in a quiet obituary for faith in God. Werner says she gets a few pamphlets from that one, from people who think she is "spiritually wandering aimlessly."
"It's not completely autobiographical," she says in response.
Other tracks on this album have a bit of a Southern twang, as if the artists grew up on cornbread and the thump of drums in her formative years. In reality, she grew up to her father whistling a tune in the farm, where the heat of the cows in the barns "steamed up your glasses."
The title track is reminiscent of Carole King - a little folksy, a little bit of whistling in the dark as she sings to the listener that it's been a long time between trains, but she's got "nice legs" and "she's not one to complain."
Bittersweet is a good word to describe Time Between Trains - Werner has a quiet voice that nevertheless moves the listener. It's good music to do your work by or to relax to, with some tracks that are lazy and laid-back like "Montgomery Street," or with nice jazz riffs and bluesy jamming in "Bring 'Round the Boats."
It's also good to listen to when you've hit a hard patch in your life. Werner transforms the bitterness of rejection by ex-lovers, ex-husbands, and abandonment by your own creativity, into a gentle rejection of the forces that bring us down. The last track, "Vincent," offers a new reading of an old song. With its jazzy accompaniment, it's kind of like listening to someone walking through the city alone with a cup of coffee in hand for warmth in the crisp twilight.
The tracks give a feeling of intense, vast loneliness that lurks behind the irony, jazz, and humor. It seems that Werner is out there looking for meaning, which she attempts to find through her guitar and her singing - she's out there looking at the moon that is "unbearably bright" and thinking of old lovers and old friends. Above all, the tracks are about memory and a little bit of regret - a little bit of wishing to have done something else than she's done, and a little remorse for those moments when things don't go well in life.
However, Werner says that this album is not representative of her newest one, which she will showcase this Saturday at the Somerville Theater. New Non-fiction is a jazz record written in the style of Cole Porter, cast in modern language.
"It's very different from 'girl with guitar,' however. It has a great deal more energy and is more colorful."
Susan Werner plays on Saturday, Nov. 3rd, 8pm, Somerville Theater, Davis Square, with Ellis Paul. Ticket info: 617-628-3390. Tickets: $22, 20; Add $1 on the day of show.
