Susan Werner - Kicking the Beehive
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 1:12PM
Hailed by The Chicago Tribune as "the most innovative songwriter working today" (and certainly one of our favorites), Susan Werner has proven she can pretty much do it all. From her early coffeehouse folk days in the early 90's to her groundbreaking 2004 album I Can't Be New -- where she wrote in the style of classic tunesmiths like Cole Porter -- to her 2007 album of "agnostic gospel" (The Gospel Truth), Werner has quietly risen to the elite of American songwriters. Werner's wide breadth of styles -- encompassing pop, country, standards, blues and folk -- only adds to her appeal. Even her covers album -- 2009's Classics, reworking songs by Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder and The Beatles with classical music styles and arrangements -- found Werner challenging expectations and offering up an album of remarkable creativity.
"The music industry loves to pigeonhole recording artists," Werner observes, "but I like to see myself as having more of a painter's career, giving myself the freedom to try entirely new things, to incorporate new colors, new language into my songs." For her just-released Nashville-recorded album Kicking the Beehive, Werner chose noted alt-country songwriter and musician Rodney Crowell to produce, stripping back her songs to their rustic core while adding elements of roadhouse Americana ("Kicking the Beehive"), hand-clapping soul ("I Know What I Want") and jazzy torch blues ("Botanical Greenery Blues"). Werner's stark, finger-picked folk is also on prominent display, adding sweetly twanged intimacy to "Doctor Doctor" and "On the Other Side."
Susan Werner - "Manhattan Kansas" (from Kicking the Beehive)
Susan Werner - "Sleeping On a Train" (from Kicking the Beehive)
Reader Comments