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"I CAN'T BE NEW" TOP TEN ALBUM OF 2004
- PORTLAND OREGONIAN
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press release
The Bloggers Have Spoken:
Susan Werner Taps �Net Nerve with �My Strange Nation�
Huffington Post Tops Online Buzz Behind Widely Acclaimed
Singer-Songwriter's Free Download Embracing "America The Peculiar"
“Not rumor ... no ... fact. A wonderful song about a great country that deserves better than the leaders it has.” - Rick Allison, Sirius 'Disorder' Morning Host
“This heartfelt, funny, serious, and, yes, hopeful tour-de-force of a song should really be coming into its own around, say, July 4, 2006. I hope that's the case. I don�t think it would hurt this strange nation to hear it." - Steve Forbert, singer-songwriter
“One of the most eloquent 'subversive' tributes to America by a folksinger
since 'This Land is Your Land.'” - About.com
CHICAGO – Neil Young is bashing Bush with "Let's Impeach the President." The Dixie Chicks are back where they left off, still "Not Ready to Make Nice" with Dubya. But amid these big budget commercial releases comes SUSAN WERNER's Alternative National Anthem, "My Strange Nation," which has the U.S. concert circuit singing along and the underground blog-osphere abuzz.
"This is a song that takes the National Anthem and turns it on his head," says Werner. "It's Francis Scott Key meets Arlo Guthrie."
The widely acclaimed Chicago singer-songwriter has summoned cyberspace to make "My Strange Nation" - which one blogger heralded as Werner's "ode to America the Peculiar" - unselfishly accessible to the collective conscience as a FREE download heard the moment one clicks on www.susanwerner.com. And the internet "under-groundswell" has been building from bloggers everywhere, topped by the rise of "My Strange Nation" at The Huffington Post.
Dichroic's Journal blog "had what NPR calls a 'Driveway Moment'" upon hearing "My Strange Nation" on the Sirius "Disorder" satellite radio channel: "I had to stay in the car until the song finished. � This is an anthem for those of us in the U.S.A. who love our country despite and nonetheless, who are proud of the ideals on which we were founded and are outraged by the way we are acting." Linazelle's Journal blog had a similar experience in stumbling upon what Pax Romano's Ramblings blog called Werner's "ode to America the Peculiar": "I heard this song on NPR as I was getting out of the car today and I was mesmerized."
Mesmerizing audiences is nothing new to Werner, whether they�re listening to her recordings or watching her perform before thousands at the nation's leading music festivals. From playing Carnegie Hall with Michael Feinstein to playing piano with Marian McPartland on her celebrated NPR show Piano Jazz, there's always been something in the way she moves people. The New Yorker, New York Times, Village Voice, Boston Globe, Washington Post, LA Weekly, New York Daily News, and Chicago Tribune are among those who've praised Werner for her most recent album, I CAN'T BE NEW (Koch), her daring first foray into the songwriting in the tradition of the Great American Songbook. Just last month, Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune called Werner's turn at the Chicago Cabaret Convention "by far the most striking set of the evening," in a performance that "announced the arrival of a potentially major artist."
Engagingly outspoken, highly literate and outright hilarious, the quick-witted Iowa native wrote "My Strange Nation" last year out of a sense of bewilderment at the results of the 2004 election. Called "brilliant" and "Randy Newman-esque" by the Chicago Free Press, "My Strange Nation" is Werner juxtaposing love and bewilderment, choosing to forgo criticism in favor of the more difficult challenge of expressing love for the "big dysfunctional family" she says is her United States.
In her 15 years as a touring musician, Werner never has seen her audiences respond to a song like they've been reacting to her shrewd, poignant love song to America. She remembers being nervous debuting "My Strange Nation" in January 2005 before 3,000 people at the Ann Arbor Folk Fest because "it felt like a very risky thing to do - loving a country that had just slapped you in the face" during the November '04 presidential election and then seeing the crowd "go teary-eyed crazy" with a standing ovation in support of her effort. By the time Werner played it that summer at Falcon Ridge, one of the nation's largest folk festivals, requests for "My Strange Nation" had reached a new high, and people there "went ape" over it.
Now she finds concert audiences from coast to coast singing along, having learned the keen lyrics from the FREE download at her own website. An excerpt:
My Strange Nation �Tilts sharply to the right � With our leaders straight and white � As our teeth.
Our population�s mixed � But our election's fixed � In My Strange Nation � America.
In December, Werner took "My Strange Nation" into a Boston studio with Brad Hatfield (Boston Pops) orchestrating. In March, Werner submitted the recording online to the Contagious Festival at The Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com), where original work by talented designers, activists, filmmakers and comics competes to rise in rankings and earn a "People's Choice" Award-based on most traffic or a "Jury Prize" from a panel of esteemed judges based on originality, creativity and best social commentary. Now accompanied at the Huffington Post by an animated video, "My Strange Nation" has risen to No. 5 and remains in the Top 20 with over 2000 hits. Meanwhile, the free download available exclusively at her website has attracted radio stations, including leading Triple A outlets WFUV (New York) and WXPN (Philadelphia) as well as the nationally syndicated "Midnight Special," to pick up the song for airplay. Every "My Strange Nation" download automatically includes a lyric sheet so anyone can follow along. Werner's website notched 850 downloads of "My Strange Nation" the day it debuted her site.
So while Neil Young and the Dixie Chicks may go after the President, Werner's concerns are with the nation itself. "To me, the U.S. is like the piano in a jazz club. You can change who's playing it, you can change the President, but the piano's still the same instrument, just like the American population stays very much the same from generation to generation," she says. "Certain notes are just a little out of tune, and they always will be. But after awhile, you kind of start to love its peculiar personality."
Just as people across the country have come to love Werner's peculiar love song, "My Strange Nation"
Booking:
Tim Drake
The Roots Agency
201.263.9200
[email protected]
Management:
Lawrence M. Goldfarb
Golden Guru Entertainment
(610) 891-9766
[email protected] |
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press clippings
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press quotes
"(Werner) has written all the songs that appear on 'I Can't Be New,' including several delightfully crafty and concise tunes that place classic pop mood-making in a contemporary light. In fact, if Bennett and k.d. lang ever collaborate in the studio again, they might want to consider some of the tunes here." - Washington Post
"Her new songs feel like they were pulled straight from the American songbag, shimmering with melodic elegance, urbane romanticism and sly, sexy wit." - Boston Globe
"Susan Werner may have bombed at opera, but that loss has enriched the cabaret scene, which the folk-pop singer songwriter's new CD of original tunes, 'I Can't Be New' proves." - LA Weekly
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bio
SUSAN WERNER
I CAN'T BE NEW
George Gershwin. Cole Porter. Richard Rodgers. Billy Strayhorn. The Golden Age of Popular Song. A bygone era. No one can write tunes like that anymore.
Or has Susan Werner added a new chapter to the Great American Songbook?
I Can't Be New (Koch Records), is Werner's fourth nationally released recording, and while chartering somewhat new territory in style, it offers the same high quality writing that her fans have come to expect. Werner performs 12 original compositions in the songbook style. And in this nod to the composers of standards, she's breathed new and brilliant life into the popular song tradition, one that many thought was a closed book.
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website
www.susanwerner.com |
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