By james art MotorCo Durham, North Carolina
Contact: [email protected]
Web: susanwerner.com
Players: Susan Werner, piano, guitar, vocals; Shana Tucker, cello, vocals
material: It was a sonic cyclone from Kansas, a 15-song set featuring all the crowd favorites presented in a withering display of poise, presence and vocal prowess in the folk music tradition. Her audience rolled over the hill for Susan Werner’s down-home Midwestern authenticity, folk-washed and tumble-dried through the folk triangle of Philly, Boston, and New York.
Susan delightfully rushed through 15 of her best: “Don’t work with your friends.” Durham Blvd The operetta Every Woman Deserves to Wear White, the haunting look-back song Halfway to Houston and Dog.
Making music: This stage was the perfect setting for Werner’s show – it accentuated her engaging presence and allowed her to dial up delightful stage banter with this packed house, especially useful as she fumbled through her lyric sheets. The audio web she spun to connect the entire evening was pure performance magic; without a single mixer, audio clip, or iPhone nonsense, she soared.
It was a masterclass in sonic tailoring, a deft demonstration of how to weave together an evening of songs, performances and lyrical styles, then add a little fairy dust to weave a sparkling fabric that took this 40-year-old crowd on leaps and bounds -a-jump they’ll be talking about long after the lights go out.
Productivity: What’s missing these days is authenticity: you can’t buy it, you can’t borrow it, and you can’t fake it, but an artist who can mix his own truth with a few glasses of honesty, a dash of “just being yourself” and a freight train of integrity like Susan Werner did tonight, well, kids, that’s the recipe for one hell of a night!
That’s Susan at the piano, a piano that felt and sounded like it came out of a Wilbur Theater musical. It looked like a vintage Fender Rhodes, it had so many channels and bing-bang-boom in it. Her style is a mix of Stephen Foster, a sprinkling of Brubeck triplets, Quincy Jones transition tones, and through it all shines Werner’s delicate touch supporting the lovely vocals.
Summary: Susan Werner rolls through town with a van of groove and enough sonic symmetry to spin the gyroscope of the earlobe, serving up a catalog of songs with authenticity and boldness.