From: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org (believers-digest) To: believers-digest@smoe.org Subject: believers-digest V11 #11 Reply-To: believers@smoe.org Sender: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk believers-digest Tuesday, February 13 2007 Volume 11 : Number 011 In Today's believer's digest: ----------------- Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 [Bobdog25nj@aol.com] Re: Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 [meredith ] Re: Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 ["Jeff Bernstein" ] Re: Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 ["Tracy J. Wells" ] Re: Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 [meredith ] Re: Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 [Sherlyn Koo ] off topic: film on post-9/11 hate crimes ["Tracy J. Wells" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 06:56:07 EST From: Bobdog25nj@aol.com Subject: Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 Hey All: Wow. Damn. Susan was great. I actually took notes at the show - but I will restrain myself to a set list and a few details for the moment. Other "Susan" people were there ( Meredith and Woj, for starters ) and I don't want to steal everyone else's thunder. First. Nice library. Nice theater. If I win the lottery I might move to Greenwich. Susan had a three member back-up band with her. This was an unexpected treat. At first, just the bass player ( Greg Holt from Boston ) came out with Susan. 1. Unread Book 2. Don't Work With Your Friends It was fun to hear a lot of people in the audience who had never heard this song before reacting to the lines. The audience was partially composed of "library people" - many of whom were a bit on in years. But I thought it was kinda fun cause Susan could deliver punch lines and get the kind of spontaneous "first time I heard that" kind of laughter that most of us can't do anymore. 3. Let's Regret This In Advance 4. Give Me Chicago Anyday This had a very funny introduction - the "I'll Take Manhattan" story - but funnier than I had heard it before. 5. I Can't Be New 6. Long Time Between Trains At this point a woman named Trina Hamlin came out and played harmonica with Susan. This sounded great. 7. Standing In My Own Way 8. Barbed-wire Boys Turns out - this song has been waiting for the harmonica it's whole life. 9. Good Fortune A woman named Colleen Sexton came out from backstage to complete the band - and sang back-up. Trina the harmonica player sang back-up too. I think the bass player was singing too at some point. The chorus of this song was made to have harmony back-up singers. ( Or people in the audience singing along - but it's still to new for that ). 10. My Lord Did Trouble Me ( my guess at the name) Wow. Brand new I think. Holy Crap! Wasn't expecting a more-or-less traditional gospel song on an "agnostic" gospel record. It's beautiful. At the end of the song, Susan even said something about how it didn't quite exactly come out the way she was expecting it too - and that she thought maybe a "gospelly bluegrass sorta band" could have done this song ( maybe they will someday ). Susan explained - almost apologizing - that for her the song is about "conscience" - and that the word "Lord" in the song means whatever it means to you. But that's not gonna cut it. People who hear the song aren't gonna care who wrote it. If this gets covered by a bluegrass band or a gospel band, they could play it on any Christian fundamentalist radio station in the nation - and people will all just listen and say " hey, great song". Surprise. Surprise. Surprise. 11. Thy Kingdom Come (?) or The New Lord's Prayer (?) Do we know the actual-factual name of this song yet? The line " please deliver us from those that think they're you" gotta a big laugh. 12. Why Is Your Heaven So Small? ( my guess at the title ) Apparently one grand slam home run is not enough. Also brand new. Also gorgeous. The title is a question the narrator of the song is asking to a Christian fundamentalist ( I guess). I think I managed to write down the chorus: " I know you say that I am damned but that's really not your call If God is great If God is good why is your Heaven so small? " ( That may not be exact - but it's close. I rock! ) 13. Movie Of My Life 14. My Strange Nation Seemed to go over well with the crowd. I personally can't see where this would be Susan's most controversial song. And who else found themselves wondering whether Nora Jones is a Susan Werner fan? On the new Norah Jones album, there is a song called "My Dear Country". I guess it's just a coincidence. Norah song is good too - and takes a surprisingly direct shot at W. Encore..... 15. Never my Love Susan's beautiful cover version of this old song by "The Association". It's from 1967 - I Iooked it up. Susan really plays the hell outta the piano on this one. The song has a lot going on harmonically to begin with. Many of you are too young to remember hearing this on the radio when it was new. Sadly, I am not. OK OK. The part about my restraining myself didn't work out. see ya... Bob Paterson HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 11:52:07 -0500 From: meredith Subject: Re: Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 Hi, Bobdog25nj@aol.com wrote: > Wow. Damn. Susan was great. Yup, that about covers it. :) It was good to see you there, Bob! > First. Nice library. Nice theater. If I win the lottery I might move to > Greenwich. No, don't do that. (Ever seen "Stepford Wives"? :}) Maybe I have one too many friends who grew up there ... but just being in that town gives me the heebies. Anyway. > Susan had a three member back-up band with her. This was an unexpected > treat. I'd been pretty much physically restraining myself from spilling the beans ... but people, this band is AWESOME. Run, don't walk, to the web sites of Joe's Pub, World Cafe Live, and Jammin' Java and get your tickets NOW (those are the shows I know for sure at which the full quartet will be present). Yesterday was the first gig they had all done together, on not much rehearsal time -- by the time late March rolls around, they're going to be much tighter and have a lot more songs in their repertoire. > At this point a woman named Trina Hamlin came out and played harmonica with > Susan. This sounded great. I'm sorry Bob, but I LOLed at this description. :) Trina Hamlin is a kickass singer/songwriter in her own right who has been around for a long time, albeit criminally under-appreciated. Funnily enough, I first saw her opening for Susan, back in the fall of 2000 at Makor in NYC. She just did a house concert in our living room last month. www.trinahamlin.com, or myspace.com/trinahamlin for info. Susan was laughing at how Trina was playing egg shaker and harmonica at the same time -- but usually Trina is playing outstanding guitar, blues harp, *and* singing on the same songs in her own shows, so I wasn't surprised to see her multitasking like that at all. :) > A woman named Colleen Sexton came out from backstage to complete the band - > and sang back-up. Colleen Sexton is another kickass singer/songwriter (who just happens to be Martin Sexton's kid sister, though I like her stuff *way* better than his). She's been around a while, too. Her clear soprano blends really well with Trina's dark bluesy voice accompanying Susan. www.colleensexton.com Oh, and the new songs? Stunning. This album is going to knock people's socks off, and if Susan's publicist is worth anything we'll be hearing a *lot* about it this year. Has anyone heard Rickie Lee Jones' new album? There was an article in the NY Times last week about it -- "an attempt to explore the words and ideas of Jesus in a contemporary context". Jones isn't a devout Christian, but she's interested in how the words that scholars have decided are directly attributable to Jesus are being interpreted in today's world. (The article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/arts/music/06rick.html) I find it interesting that there seems to be something in the air ... - -- =============================================== Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth =============================================== hear at the HOMe House Concert Series http://hom.smoe.org =============================================== HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 12:51:33 -0500 From: "Jeff Bernstein" Subject: Re: Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 Awesome concert. Great venue. Best ticket price possible. Trina Hamlin added a lot, as did Colleen Sexton, and they will be even better with more time together. I agree with Meredith - get your tickets now! The new material is terrific. I was a bit concerned after some of the talk about it here, but Susan's discussion of agnostic gospel was a great lead in to it and the songs are wonderful. Highlight for me, since I'm a sucker for great covers, was the encore of "Never My Love". Just killer. Jeff HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 16:08:33 -0600 From: "Tracy J. Wells" Subject: Re: Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 Damn, as if the concert in Des Moines wasn't enough to get me all excited about the new album... y'all have just made my anticipation even worse!!! And GOD, how I wish I still lived on the East Coast so I could make it to some of these shows with the quartet!!!! Curses to living in Nebraska, curses, I tell you!! This quartet sounds AMAZING. I've seen Susan with Greg Holt before and he's fantastic... and I'm sure these other musicians are awesome too. What I wouldn't give to see them all performing together!! My sister and I were talking after the Des Moines show about how some of these new songs were just MADE for vocal harmony... and now to hear that she's got back up vocalists on some of these... !!!!!! Did anyone happen to get a recording of this show yesterday??? And Bob, I agree with you about Did Trouble Me -- it could totally be played on a Christian radio station, no problem. The interesting thing is going to be the album as a whole... I wonder if it'll come across as a kind of multiple personality thing -- some more traditional songs, some poking fun at the tradition, some more questioning/unsettled... but I think that's going to be the strength of it... there'll be something on there that can speak to lots of people in lots of different places in terms of their own relationship to faith/religion in general. But obviously some of the more conservative types, although they might like songs like Did Trouble Me and Good Fortune, would probably be like 'what the heck?' if they bought the album expecting all songs like that. LOL. It'll be interesting to see if the album even makes it on the radar screen of those kinds of folks, though. I'll certainly share it with some of my evangelical friends.... wonder what their responses will be! The interesting thing about the more "traditional" songs, though, at least the ones I've heard, is that I was just thinking the other day about how they're generic enough that people from many different faiths could relate to the sentiments in them (or perhaps no faith at all, if you interpret "Lord" as "conscience" as Bob was saying Susan said at the show yesterday). I mean, they don't say anything about Jesus as savior or anything about any particular religion, so even though they're obviously rooted in the musical traditional of Christian gospel, the songs themselves are actually quite a bit more ecumenical/interfaith-y than they are Christian-y. I mean, "I know good fortune waits for me somewhere" and "domewhere there's a blessing that will bear my name".... and "when I closed my eyes so I would not see, my Lord did trouble me"... could be sung just as easily by a Christian as by a Jew or a Hindu or a Sikh or a Muslim. As someone who's done a lot of interfaith work in my day, I find this fascinating. I think this makes this new album have all the more potential to reach wider and wider audiences -- I think she's really tapped into some universal human sentiments about what it means to relate to something other than ourselves, whether we call that "God" or the "Lord" or "the universe" or our consciences or whatever. But it's precisely this universality that, to me, is a testament to what I would go so far as to say is the "sacredness" of some of these new tunes.... Amen, Rev. Werner!! ;o) ~Tracy in Omaha, NE HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 17:32:37 -0500 From: meredith Subject: Re: Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 Hi, Tracy J. Wells wrote: > This quartet sounds AMAZING. > I've seen Susan with Greg Holt before and he's fantastic... and I'm > sure these other musicians are awesome too. What I wouldn't give to see > them all performing together!! Maybe if the album takes off, Susan will be able to take the whole group out on the road. Fingers crossed!! Trina Hamlin tours around the Midwest a lot ... she's well worth seeing by herself, especially if you like bluesy stuff with attitude. Next time I see a date on her calendar in your area, I'll post a pointer. Trina deserves much more exposure than she's gotten so far, and hopefully these gigs with Susan will help provide some. - -- =============================================== Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth =============================================== hear at the HOMe House Concert Series http://hom.smoe.org =============================================== HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:42:07 +1100 From: Sherlyn Koo Subject: Re: Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 17:32:37 -0500, meredith wrote: > Maybe if the album takes off, Susan will be able to take the whole > group out on the road. Fingers > crossed!! How about on the road... to the airport... and over the ocean? Sigh. :) sherlyn - -- Sherlyn Koo | sherlyn@pixelopolis.com | Sydney, Australia HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 18:18:24 -0600 From: "Tracy J. Wells" Subject: off topic: film on post-9/11 hate crimes Hi everyone, I know I've told some of you on this list, through private email conversations, about the documentary film on post-9/11 hate violence in the U.S. that I'm currently working on-- but I figured the rest of you might be interested in knowing about this, and so I'm going to do my job as communications director for this film and give a little shameless plug here. :o) The film is called Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath, and our official film website is: http://www.dwf-film.com (You can watch the first 20 minutes of the film online -- click on "view a clip." You'll need Quicktime to view these clips.) Here's a recent article written after our Jan. 31 screening at UC Berkeley; it gives you a pretty decent overview of the film: http://www.dwf-film.com/media/indiawestberkeley2907.html (For more press, visit our site and click on "In the News.") To make some kind of connection to this list (however much of a stretch! lol) -- I was sort of thinking about this in relation to my comments earlier today about Susan's new songs being relevant to a wider, ecumenical/interfaith audience -- in working with people on this film who are Sikh, Hindu, Catholic, Mormon, and other religious affiliations, I can't help but think that from the conversations I've had with the crew about faith, that they would resonate with some of these new songs of Susan's as well (and I plan to share her new CD with them!). Also, Susan's new song "My Lord Did Trouble Me" really describes the EXACT experience I have had in my own faith life and relationship to God with regards to the work that I do in interfaith circles, including my work with this film, as well as the various ways in which I've been involved in homeless ministry over the past several years. In both of those aspects of my life, it really was God "troubling me" that motivated me to step out and take action in things that I knew needed to be done -- "when I let the thing stand that should not be, my Lord did trouble me... when I held myself away and apart, and the tears of my brother did move my heart... my Lord did trouble me" -- this EXACTLY describes my experience in first encountering these unnervingly humanizing stories and being deeply moved by them... So. This is relevant in some way to the Suze list, I suppose. :o) But mainly I just wanted to let you all know about the film so that you could have a chance to see the film if it screens near you anytime soon. Meredith -- the film was just in New Haven on Friday -- I should have emailed this out to the list sooner!! And if any of you are interested in arranging a screening in the town where you live, please let me know and we can talk details. We're already booked through the spring but are currently scheduling our screenings for the summer and the 2007-08 academic year. Best, Tracy P.S. If you want to read more about my personal experiences in getting involved with the film, check out this article I wrote for the alumni magazine of my college in South Carolina (Furman University) about the time I spent traveling with the film crew in the summer of 2005: http://www.dwf-film.com/media/furmanmag_winter2006.pdf (P.S. if you look closely in the picture of Valarie and I on the top middle of the second page of this article, you'll see my tribute to folk music -- I'm wearing my Eddie from Ohio t-shirt in that photo... LOL, I sent them tons of way more professional photos of me for this article but THAT's the one they chose to use!) - --- Tracy J. Wells Communications Director Divided We Fall, a documentary film www.dwf-film.com tracy@dwf-film.com 803-528-1003 (c) HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 17:19:28 -0800 From: "john vavrek" Subject: Re: Susan In Greenwich 02-11-07 Ah, poor Sherlyn: the only one of who has it worse than the Pacific North west! HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ End of believers-digest V11 #11 ******************************* ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------- -------------------------- This has been a posting from the Susan Werner believers-digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe believers-digest" in the body of the message