** Susan Werner at Schuba's, (773) 525-2508, March 20
I Can't Be New (Koch) is the ironically titled new CD by acclaimed singer/songwriter Susan Werner. It's ironic because, on this album, Werner, who has earned her reputation as a performer in the folk-oriented pop realm, has reinvented herself in the shape of a composer and performer of 21st century standards. As the Werner of I Can't Be New is in fact made 'new,' the decidedly long-established American songbook realm in which she is working is also refreshed by her attention. The new coat of paint that she applies to the genre is bright and durable. The set lists of cabaret and jazz performers around the world are better for the existence of these witty and sparkling songs. Hearing Werner's accessible renditions of originals such as 'Much At All,' 'Tall Drink Of Water,' 'Let's Regret This in Advance,' and 'Stay On Your Side of Town,' it's easy to imagine others slipping into them like a well-made pair of comfortable shoes.
Gregg Shapiro: When I interviewed Michael Feinstein about his recent album Only One Life, on which he sings the songs of Jimmy Webb, we talked about how he had the chance to use aspects of his voice that were different from what he would use when singing a song by, say Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin or the Gershwins. Do you feel as if you were using different vocal muscles when singing these songs?
Susan Werner: One thing I will say is that I sing more gently with this music. My producer and I worked really hard to avoid belting, to avoid the 'Radio City' performance and to try to make a very intimate thing out of these little songs. That was very different for me. Instead of having to keep up with a band and a strap through a Vox amp cranked, especially a drum with a snare. Instead of trying to keep up with the volume, trying to retreat almost and invite the listener in, which is an entirely different way of making a record and giving a show.
GS: How does that translate to live performance?
SW: It's saying (speaking gently), 'This is how loud I speak. I'm not going to get much louder than this.'
GS: It's saying, 'Pay attention.'
SW: And they lean forward. They lean forward! You can't even believe it! You think they won't do it. And then they're so glad. 'Oh, catch that!' Because they're used to somebody shouting at them and having to lean back to get away from it or something. Because the whole world is loud. Driving your car is loud, Wacker Drive is loud.
GS: Does working in this genre give you permission to write with a different kind of rhyming dictionary?
SW: Or with a rhyming dictionary at all. I don't even apologize for having a rhyming dictionary.
GS: There's no need to.
SW: Though it's a last resort. But I don't mind using it if I'm really stuck. It's fun as a writer to have obstacles, to have orange safety cones. You have to operate within this enclosed space. [That] somehow makes it easier to succeed. It isn't the blank page or the white canvas. If you create difficulties, limitations for yourself, you operate within it and perfect rhymes is a way to operate, a way to put a cap on it.
GS: If you ask almost any poet, they will tell you that they crave form; a sestina or a sonnet, something with structure.
SW: You can almost be more free because there is this framework in place. When the listener hears it, they know there's a constant and a variable. It seems like we're in an era when people crave something familiar. All these singers, Bette Midler, Cyndi Lauper and Rod Stewart, going back to the old tunes. What's going on? If it gets too familiar, we tire quickly of the thing.
GS: It seems to be a cycle. A little more than 20 years ago, Linda Ronstadt and Carly Simon released albums of standards.
SW: I wonder if it precedes all hell breaking loose. We don't know what's coming in the winter (laughs). But this seems to be the moment. There's a desire for something familiar.
GS: You are no stranger to having your work performed by cabaret artists. Lee Lessack, Patty Morabito and Betty Buckley, to name a few, have recorded your songs. Did that inspire you to enter that realm?
SW: No, but I was always very happy that people were singing my material. It always made me feel great. It made me feel like the songs were well-built, like a good house. I made this record because about two years ago I noticed that I had enough songs in this style together and I thought, 'Hey, what if I write a couple more good ones and I think I got it. Let's do a whole thing like this.' It was really that I had enough of them. I hadn't paid much attention to them. They were just kind of there. People would see me do them in shows. They knew it was coming. It wasn't the big definition of what I did. It was just another aspect of what I did. For me to put all these tunes together and make a focus of it is new and very exciting.
GS: And logical.
SW: Logical, yes, from the story of my career. But it is exciting, the thought of so many people responding so great to it. I have to tell you if feels like it's going to be a really good year.
GS: In addition to having the body of work ready, do you think that the popularity of Norah Jones has opened the doors to performers such as yourself to consider this style of music?
SW: I thought that when I did this record it would be the entirely wrong time. This wasn't made in response to external circumstances. I just had enough songs together. I could never have foreseen what would happen in terms of renewed interest in what you might call 'easy listening.'
GS: Let's not call it that. Let's call it 'vocals.'
SW: Pop vocals! I think the Norah Jones phenomenon can only be seen as a good thing. You listen to her music. It doesn't motivate you to drive fast, it doesn't make you climb the career ladder. It's not that. It's something else. You sit back.
GS: And you experience it.
SW: It happens to you.
GS: We mentioned the other performers who have already covered your songs and in listening to the disc, I could also imagine Ann Hampton Callaway or Karen Mason singing 'Much At All' or 'Let's Regret It In Advance' and Patty Barber singing 'Late For The Dance' or 'Philanthropy.'
SW: Make it so, Gregg! That would be the most wonderful thing that could happen; that my songs would be useful to other people. That would be great. I love that in Brazil, songs go out and are performed by almost all of the prominent musical figures of the day. One song, and there are 20 covers within a year of the song coming out. Twenty covers! Everybody wants to hear that song and they almost sing along. I would love that any of my songs became so strong that somebody else wanted to pick it up and do it. I love it when that happens.
GS: Is there one cabaret or jazz vocalist that you would like to hear singing any of these songs?
SW: Yes, Shirley Horn, without a doubt. She had a record called You Won't Forget Me (1990), and that album was like a map of the world to me. Loved that record. She sang ballads so slowly, with so much care. And again, she wasn't coming to get you. She sat at the piano and waited for you to inch in with your chair. So great.
GS: You embrace your new home town of Chicago in the song 'Your Side of Town.' I love hearing songs with local references.
SW: I have another one because the response has been so great. People like our pal (musician and educator) Dan Stetzel, saying 'Thank God! Kill me if there's another song about New York. I've had it! That's enough!' So, I just wrote another song called, 'Give Me Chicago Anyday.' There it is. It's been waiting around since I moved here. I love this town. I miss Philly, I miss my friends, but this town is like three times the size of Philly. It stays up late, there's something of every type going on at all hours. You can get into trouble. You can do something to embarrass yourself, something you'll regret (laughs). Sin is waiting.
GS: What brought you to Chicago?
SW: A number of things. All of them personal and all of them turning out great. Everything's working out wonderfully.
GS: How do you like living in Chicago?
SW: I love it.
GS: The winter hasn't scared you away?
SW: You just have to get out (of town). You just have to get out for one weekend in late January or February. Get to the sun and you're all right. Just like they do in Alaska. They get out, they go away, and then they're all right. [Chicago] is way better than Alaska. I've been to Alaska. I'm digging this.
GS: There is a wonderful 'secret love' quality to 'No One Needs To Know.' What was the inspiration for that song?
SW: The model for that song—although I didn't know that I was modeling it at that time —is Cole Porter's 'Easy To Love,' which is one of my very favorite songs. It starts with (sings) 'You'd be so easy to love,' goes three quarters of the way through, then there's this little turn of the knife, this little (gasps), and then it ends with (sings) ''Cause you'd be so easy to love.' So it's this bookend form with the irony parked three quarters of the way through. That's what's going on with that song. It always gets really quiet when I sing that song.
GS: How will the tour for I Can't Be New differ from your previous tours?
SW: I won't be singing songs off previous records. That's one thing. It's going to be all the new material.
GS: That was going to be my next question, whether you planned to include other songs of yours in the set, performed in the style of the songs on I Can't Be New?
SW: That's a good question and I haven't completely thought it through yet. I am taking something of a risk because there are people that come hoping to hear songs that I've written earlier. They're going to be hearing these [new] songs. This is a departure; stylistically and in terms of an identity. To be a writer of this type of song makes you more like Johnny Mercer than your contemporaries.
GS: When people hear your name, they do think that you are going to pick up a guitar.
SW: She's going to do some strumming.
GS: Or sit at a piano. You can still sit at a piano and be a singer/songwriter.
SW: But this is very stylized. I suspect that this first round is going to be very focused on the new material. I don't know yet what's going to happen in the fall.
