Tag Archives: Nashville

INTERVIEW: Suzy Bogguss: ‘I’m still out there playing’

Posted on March 25, 2015 | Leave a comment

Suzy Bogguss

Country singer brings her eclectic sound to Daryl’s House on Saturday

If you even half paid attention to country music in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the name Suzy Bogguss will surely ring a bell.

She was on fire, releasing one platinum and three gold albums, along with six top 10 country singles. She was named top new female vocalist of 1988 by the Academy of Country Music, and won the Country Music Association‘s Horizon Award in 1992.

After taking a few years off after the birth of her son, Ben, in 1995, Bogguss returned with a decidedly folkier, indie approach to her craft. It’s kept her flying a little farther under the radar of mainstream country music, but hasn’t prevented her from having a decent career of touring and recording.

After Ben’s birth, “I was only doing about 40 to 45 shows a year when he was in his younger years,” Bogguss tells Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? “Now I’m really having to rebuild a lot and just let people know I’m still out there playing… I never really went away.”

On Saturday (March 28), her tour brings her to the Hudson Valley, where she’ll play at Daryl’s House, rocker Daryl Hall’s club in Pawling, New York.

It’s a good thing she didn’t disappear. Her latest album, “Lucky,” is a collection of 11 well-chosen and beautifully performed versions of songs by honky-tonk legend Merle Haggard, one of the originators of the swinging Bakersfield Sound.

Casual listeners may know Haggard best for the 1969 hit “Okie From Muskogee.” Bogguss’ collection omits that tune, and yet it’s still crammed with familiar numbers, including “Today I Started Loving You Again,” “If We Make It Through December,” and “The Bottle Let Me Down.”

‘I like where I’m at in my life’

At age 58, Bogguss sounds like an artist who’s enjoying her career more than ever, even side of being an independent artist who has to lug her equipment around without a road crew

“In my head, I still look like I’m 21 doin’ that,” she says. “But then I think about how ridiculous it must look to see a 58-year-old woman schlepping her gear around like a teenager. I think that’s probably pretty funny to some people, but for me, it just feels like, ‘Hey, that’s what I do.’

“I’m a working musician. We schlep our stuff through the airport. Sometimes I actually find myself with a giddy, stupid smile on my face walking through the airport with my guitar on my back going, ‘Yeah, I got a good job,'” she adds with a laugh.

“I like my freedom. I like where I’m at in my life. I like playing these smaller places,” she explains.

“I know what I’m doing, I choose my own gigs, I make my own choices, and I really like that a lot.”

‘Glad I’m not doin’ that anymore’

She says she’s reminded that she doesn’t miss her days of mainstream country stardom when she watches the ABC prime time soap opera “Nashville.”

“It doesn’t compare to the life that I have now, but it does compare to the life that I had in the ’90s. A lot of that stuff is true, especially when you get to the drama of record labels, and publishers, and just the everyday ‘I need to think of something that will make me be in the public’s eye.’ Like, ‘Here’s a new recipe for dip,’ you know. ‘What can I do to get people to look at me right now,”’ she says.

“That gets old, that really gets old — especially people coming to your house and showing you racks of clothes and sticking makeup brushes in your face every second. I feel for them when I see that stuff on the show. I go, ‘Oh, I’m glad I’m not doin’ that anymore.'”

Always eclectic

While she’s always been what she calls an “eclectic” country artist, making an all-Merle album was a bit of a risk, but one that was probably inevitable. It certainly got fan financial support, with 964 backers kicking in at total of $75,211 on the album’s Kickstarter campaign, which had a goal of $50,000.

But she admits that some fans have been a little leery of the idea of her doing Haggard songs.

“Some of my fans are going, ‘Honky-tonk music, that’s not what we’re used to from you.’ But then when they hear it, they’re like, Oh, that’s a Suzy Bogguss record, not a Merle Haggard record. Sometimes you have to get over those little perception hurdles. But, all in all, once they hear it, they’re delighted,” she explains.

deeper connection to Haggard

Her own connection to Haggard deepened as a result of making the album.

“My first song that actually got on the charts was a Merle Haggard song. It’s called “Somewhere Between,” and that was my first album title on Capitol. So I already had an affinity for him from my youth,” she says, adding that the process of making the album gave her a deeper appreciation for Haggard’s music.

“Listen to what an amazing craftsman this guy is,” she says. “I think I came out just thinking, wow, before, I always thought Merle Haggard has a gift, he can just sit down and write these songs that sound like this happened to him last night and it’s real easy for him.

“But as I got into arranging the songs, and these melodies and stuff, I was like, this is not easy stuff. He has worked his ass off to hone these things down to where there’s not one extra word in there.

“Half the time he didn’t even sing the chorus twice. He would just go, ‘OK, here’s a 2-minute song that’s gonna break your heart. Listen to this.'”

Album of originals up next

The experience also challenged her to do more songwriting herself, with husband Doug Crider.

“We took all of January off and we’ve been writing like crazy,” she says. “I really got inspired by doing these Merle arrangements to go back and really hone my songwriting chops again. I will probably go back in at the end of the year and cut an album of all originals.”

IF YOU GO

What: Suzy Bogguss, with Craig Smith on guitar and Charlie Chadwick on bass
When: 9 p.m., Saturday, March 28 (doors at 7:30)
Where: Daryl’s House, 130 Route 22, Pawling, NY 12564
Tickets and info: $25 standing, $45 seated, available online by tapping or clicking here or calling 845-289-0185

Langhorne Slim buys little pink house for a song

Posted on December 3, 2014 | Leave a comment

Langhorne Slim and Kenny Siegal at City Winery. (© 2014, Steven P. Marsh/willyoumissme.com)

Langhorne Slim is a homeowner.

And it’s not just any home, but a little pink house on a street with a history in Nashville, where he’s been living for awhile.

“It’s magical,” Slim (born Sean Scolnick in the suburban Philadelphia town that comprises the second half of his stage name) said Tuesday evening.

Talking is something Langhorne Slim does well. He rambled and free-associated through a lengthy introduction of the his friends in the band Twain, who opened Tuesday night’s show, the second of a two-night stand at City Winery. And all his talking ultimately led to the story of his new house

Slim, like the majority of working musicians, didn’t exactly have the funds at hand to buy a house — even in Nashville, where prices are much lower than in the NYC metro region — on a whim. But when somebody in his life sent him a photo of this house, it was pretty much love at first sight.

Like any would-be suitor, he stalked it at first.

Langhorne Slim at City Winery. (© 2014, Steven P. Marsh/willyoumissme.com)

“I sat in front of it,” he explained. Then, in what would have been a massively embarrassing moment for most people, but not, apparently, for Slim, a man came out and asked him if he had any questions about the house.

“Are you the owner?” was the first thing Slim said he asked.

With that question out of the way, Gary, the owner, invited Slim inside to show him around. During the tour, Gary asked Slim if he was a musician, because “we have a deal for musicians.”

Given that they were in Music City, Slim figured that was just a come-on, but quickly learned that it was for real. And that the neighborhood has a long list of resident musician. Slim even mentioned something about a Mariachi band that used to play on the house’s porch.

Basically, the way Slim tells it, Gary, who has put the house on the market for the first time in 30 years, decided that Slim and the house were made for each other.

Money, in this case, was an issue. But love has a way of conquering all, so Slim kept at it, trying to win the house. He even wrote a song about the house, and sent it to Gary.

When he didn’t get an immediate response — the owners were in Belize at the time, but had been very quick to reply to his flurry of emails during negotiations — he says he figured he had lost at love, and that the song sucked.

Lucky for Slim, there was just a delay, and it all worked out., in part because of the song.

So, his house is, literally, a little pink house. Well, maybe not so little, at least by New York Standards, as I believe it clocks in around 2,000 square feet.

It’s in one of Nashville’s hippest, quirkiest neighborhoods. And while Slim didn’t reveal the address, he did, by the end of the evening, provide enough clues in his delightful ramblings and in his love song to the house that it wouldn’t be hard to track down the address.

Out of respect for Slim, I won’t help him further erode his privacy by posting a photo, address, or even name the neighborhood. But believe me, it’s a pretty cool place. Almost makes me want to move to Nashville.

Speaking of privacy, Slim noted that somebody told him he should install privacy fencing around his newly acquired yard. But he refused, noting that “we all have penises and vaginas” and we might as well get used to seeing them occasionally.

It’s no surprise that Slim would buy a magical house. It seems like everything about Slim seems magical.

He’s uncomfortable having his photo taken — he politely shut down a camera-phone user sitting stageside at his show Tuesday night at City Winery. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and had the stage lights dimmed — making photo-taking difficult at best. And he even announced that while he would pose for photos with fans at the end of the show, he’d really rather skip that part and just give fans a hug and talk awhile.

Twain at City Winery. (© 2014, Steven P. Marsh/willyoumissme.com)

But now, about the show. After a remarkable set by two of three members of Twain, a fantastic band whose lead singer evoked Roy Orbison, among other ethereal vocalists, Slim took the stage.

He played some of his best-known tunes, reaching back to some of his earlier material, but giving plenty of attention to his most recent album, 2012’s The Way We Move.

He also brought that album’s producer, Kenny Siegal, whose Old Soul Studios in Catskill, N.Y., was where that album was recorded, onstage to accompany him with a 12-string on a few songs — some of them from the album Slim will start recording with Siegal in Nashville in short order.

Legendary Ronee Blakley to play her first New York City gig in 20 years

Posted on September 26, 2010 | Leave a comment

Ronee Blakley in Ropbert Altman's "Nashville."

TICKET UPDATE: $25, CLICK HERE

Showtime update: Starts at 7:30, Marie Gabrielle opens

We just got some amazing news in our inbox. It was in the form of a note from the great singer/actress Ronee Blakely. She’s returning to New York City to perform next month — for the first time in two decades.

She writes:

I’m coming in to NYC to play the Bitter End Oct 13 … I hope you’ll come to the show.

Thanks.

Ronee

How awesome is that?

For those you don’t remember, Ronee produced two amazing albums, Ronee Blakley and Welcome, for Elektra in the 1970s. They were rereleased by Collector’s Choice in 2006. She’s also revered for her acting — particularly her portrayal of Loretta Lynn-esque country singer Barbara Jean in Robert Altman’s 1975 film Nashville. She also recorded the duet “Hurricane” with Bob Dylan for his 1975 album Desire, and was part of Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, which also had its genesis in 1975.

Her October show will celebrate the release of two new albums, The River Nile, a pop record, and Grief Holes, an experimental collection in tribute to her mother, who died last year. Both are available from CD Baby.

This show is not to be missed. It’s a one-time-only event that’s slated to happen at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 13 at The Bitter End, 147 Bleecker Street (between Thompson and LaGuardia), New York City. No ticket price has been announced, but call the club at (212) 673-7030 or email info@bitterend.com for more information.

Tag Archives: Nashville

INTERVIEW: Suzy Bogguss: ‘I’m still out there playing’