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Don't Let Her Be Misunderstood

Chris Azzopardi

Singer-songwriter Susan Werner calls her latest covers album "user friendly." Photo: Asia Kepka

Susan Werner wants me to friend her on Facebook. Little does she know that I've already done so – and she accepted.
"Oh, did I?" the do-it-all musician asks from her condo in downtown Chicago.
Werner's got a little secret: She's getting FB help … from an 18-year-old gay guy.
He's a longtime fan, and through the years Werner, known for challenging herself (and now, during our interview, LGBT labels) by breaking free from the folk tag that pigeonholed her, has swooned many others in the community with her snap-shot lyricism and newfangled covers.
On "Classics," her latest album, she puts her own spin on recognizable songs from the '60s and '70s – including "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" and Marvin Gaye's "Mercy Mercy Me" – by slathering a string quartet on them.
Werner, who's performing on Oct. 30 at The Ark in Ann Arbor, spoke to Between The Lines about the challenges of finding material for the collection, her new recording of a fan-fave about Obama's election and why she'll never give up her typewriter.

You've said that you hoped that the "Classics" album would make classical music less scary for people. Would you call the album "Classical Music for Dummies"?
Wow. (Laughs) I think it's "user friendly"; I'll call it that. There's this feeling that to go to a classical music performance you have to read the program, you have to do preparation for it – that's unfortunate. I'd like to think that this is the kind of project that would encourage people who played violin as a kid to pick that thing up. Play a little fiddle music. You played cello? Go sit in with a quartet somewhere.

You selected these songs with a certain criteria in mind, including its current relevance. How is the material on the album timely?
When someone chooses to do a project of other people's songs, one thing that will give the project some traction is if people know the songs. So we had to go back through songs in the 1980s, and we found that not everyone knew these songs. There was a certain generational cut-off point with songs from the 1980s – even the late '70s was too late for certain people and too early for others.
If you're going to reinvent songs, you better pick songs that are familiar in the first place, or else no one will appreciate what you did with the song.

That's why so many "American Idol" contestants fail.
Yeah, pick a song that people know. If you're going to reinvent something, you better choose something to work with that people already recognize, otherwise you'll just have something strange that was strange in the first place. We had a focus group of guys in their early 20s and we kept asking them, "Do you know this song?" (They'd say), "Oh yeah, my dad used to play this." It had to be something that spoke to people in their 20s, people in their 40s and even people in their 60s.

What were the challenges in reimagining these songs?
This was challenging in a really fantastic way. This took guts. It was like jumping out of a plane. The producer and I looked at each other (and said), "Are we crazy enough to do a chamber music project? This is certifiably nuts. This is really crazy. From a commercial standpoint, this is insane." Then we looked at each other and thought, "Yeah, we're crazy enough to do this." When you choose to do something that nobody else dare do, all of a sudden this energy and momentum gathers around this project because it's yours, you're doing something different. I'm very proud of that, and I love bringing it to a new audience.
I'll have my cello player – Julia Biber – with me at The Ark, and we play a lot of my own songs, of course, but also when we do these songs from "Classics," it's a very different kind of presentation. It invites people to listen in a different way, and the response from the audience is overwhelmingly warm and positive, like you gave them a wonderful dinner or a good glass of wine. It's a different kind of experience. We're not shouting at them; we're bringing them something they already know – with a new and tasty sauce.

So this is a totally different experience.
Yeah, it's not like just getting up there and strumming your little guitar and singing your nice songs for people. I get flop sweat doing these shows, and I think people can feel it; there's something at risk. We're not walking out there coasting. It's a tight-rope walk every night.

Speaking of audience response, I was curious of the reaction to the free download from your Web site about Obama's win, "The Night We Won the War." How did the crowd react the first time you performed it?
They went crazy; they must've stood on their feet for a minute – this was at The Ark in late November last year. So, I had the good fortune to be in Grant Park on election night 2008 and there was a sense that the world shifted a half an inch at least one way – it shifted toward the good, toward the better. The night was about more than a political victory for one party – and everyone sensed it. This was a historical election in which America lived up to its promise of equality and opportunity for all.

When did you write the song?
I went home that night, and I started writing it. I tried not to talk about it very much because I wanted to retain the images and the feelings. When I played it at The Ark – I mean, there was still a line or two I was still working on – I had it typed out on my typewriter. I have an electric typewriter in my office, like a 1972 Olympia (laughs).

No way. You still use a typewriter?
Oh yeah. I love it because it goes clack-clack-clack. It's loud as crap; it sounds like a propeller airplane. It's just satisfying to type on a thing that you can feel.

So you actually feel like you're accomplishing something?
Yeah, I love the sound of it. I learned a long time ago that as a writer you want everything about your writing experience to be fun. Like, always buy the pens you love. I love Pilot pens – even though they blow up. Yeah, the exploding pen that you take on a plane and it blows up and marks your bag, or marks your fingers, or your pants. But I love those pens because of the feel of it. So a typewriter – I love the feeling of an old typewriter. A laptop – that's not satisfying; it's like click, click, click. There's no tactile fun in it.

From what I gather, you really relish being a creative free spirit and being able to go in different directions. Is that why you decided to break from the folk label and play around with jazz and cabaret in the middle of your career?
I'd written songs like this all along. I'd write the occasional song that sounded like a Cole Porter song or songs from "The Great American Songbook," as people call it. I love those songs. I admire the songwriting. That kind of singing is the biggest reason why I wrote those songs; I like that kind of sophisticated torch song, the wordplay in it and the intimacy, so I'd end up writing the occasional song in that style. At some point I realized I had almost an entire project in this style, and the question was whether I had the guts to do it or not. And there were people telling me, "No one's going to care about this except senior citizens," and I said, "No, I think you're wrong." That began this whole journey outside of the standard folk category. I'm happy that I took the risk to do something different, and it's emboldened me to do something different with every new project ever since.

So what's next – rap?
(Laughs) I don't foresee rap; that would take some guts. I do want to do something with electronica at some point. That would scare the hell out of me.

You told the Chicago Free Press once that you put the bacon in GBLT –
(Laughs) Hey baby, somebody's got to put the bacon in the GBLT sandwich.

But what does that even mean? Are you queer?
Yeah, I'm queer, but to say more than that restricts me in ways that I find too limiting. I am many things and I have many feelings, and I fight for that room to move in all aspects of my life. That's especially helpful to those in the arts; we need room to be imaginative and bold and to inhabit and speak for all kinds of people. I like that room in my imagination, having a variety of experiences and being all the things I am. I understand other people have a different point of view, but I'm here to represent myself and I wave the rainbow flag for the B and the Q.

Susan Werner
8 p.m. Oct. 30
The Ark
316 S. Main St., Ann Arbor
http://www.theark.org

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