If it’s an artist that from the more left field of MV’s thinking , you can bet Damian will be there to watch. Here, he renews acquaintances with Suzanne Vegas after twenty years
I think it was 1997 at the Fleadh in London that I last saw Suzanne Vega so I thought it was well overdue to reacquaint myself with this alternative folk artist. The wonderful Town Hall is the setting for this evening’s stop on the `Lover, Beyond` tour which is structured around the release of a new album of the same name. The album is co-written by Vega and Duncan Sheik and based on a play written by Vega about Carson McCullers. The artist has a life long interest in the novelist and short story writer.
A woman who, revolted by the politics and racism of her upbringing in the American South, arrived in New York in her early 20’s and became one of the literary lights of the 20th century.
McCullers used the South as a lens through which to view the painful, nearly always unrequited, search for love in a world that often punishes individual self-expression and rewards repression and emotional compromise. She battled those limits in her life as well as her work – a personal heroism that makes her, in Vega’s view, a figure of great contemporary significance. She was an instinctive rebel whose message of personal freedom resonates profoundly in our own insurgent age, nearly fifty years after her death at the age of fifty in 1967.
The lights go down and guitarist Gerry Leonard plugs in and starts playing just before Ms Vega arrives on stage to rapturous applause and kicks off the show with “Fat Man & Dancing Girl “ She dons a top hat and it’s into the wonderful “Marlene on the Wall “ before saying hello to the audience and sharing as to how the night would be structured.” Caramel” from the movie The Truth About Cats & Dogs follows then “ Crack in the Wall” written about the spiritual world and this world co-existing and a crack appearing to let a little of the spiritual side in.
Ms Vega compares the similarities about struggling with problems to what Jacob struggled with in the next song “Jacob and The Angel” before we get the delightfully poetic “Small Blue Thing”.
The next song “Gypsy” was written when Suzanne was eighteen years old and working in a summer camp, she met a young guy from Liverpool and wrote the song about him. A massive cheer goes out for the ballad “The Queen and the Soldier” which is quite an interesting tale with a very sad ending.
The next interlude contains four cuts from the latest release in “New York is My Destination”, “We of Me” taken from McCullers novel The Member of the Wedding, and is sung from the perspective of the young protagonist, who wants to join her brother and his bride to be a perfect trio, “Annemarie” and “Harper Lee” It is evident that this work is significant to the artist and she delivers the pieces with a heady passion.
The superbly quirky “Left of Center” is shared swiftly followed by “I Never Wear White” and “Some Journey”. The show ends with what are essentially Suzanne’s most recognisable songs with the magnificent but disturbing “Luka” and simple but extremely effective “Tom’s Diner”
A short break is following by the encore starting with “In Liverpool” written with no irony, in Liverpool, some twelve years after her brief romance with a native of the town and wondering how his life had panned out. The finals songs of the night are again from the new release in title track “Lover Beloved” and “Carson’s Last Supper” a song we are told is somewhere between a drinking song and song that could be played in church.
The show ends with a promise that the play due to be staged early next year, somewhere outside of New York, may be brought to these shores, depending on how it is received. A mention must go out to the two superb musicians that lent their support to the show tonight. Gerry Leonard, who was a long time stalwart of the sadly departed, David Bowie and pianist Jason Hart.
I wasn’t sure what I made of the show at the time but having reflected back on the evening I have to say it was thought provoking and extremely enjoyable. A lot of performers just head around the country and go through the motions but Vega is passionate about this latest project and you can see what it means to her. It was heartening to reacquaint myself with somebody, whom I hadn’t seen for some time and find that they are still every bit as good as I remember.
