Provincetown Magazine

Like a Song:

Suede

By Michael Persson

August 9, 2007

With one look you can tell that jazz vocal stylist, Suede is as warm and as playful as the music she makes. Her personality is like a happy Harold Arlen song, her voice, like a key, is able to unlock the meanings and emotions the way Shirley Horn did all throughout her reign. Suede is a singer that exists in the easy feel of the jazz world that at times can be as hard to understand as advanced trigonometry.

Starting Friday is the 3rd Annual Provincetown Jazz Festival, a three day affair where singers, songs and instruments all come together to an event that is well attended and regarded in much the same way. Suede is one of the headliners this year, as she had been the year before. For this touring chanteuse who be-bops about the country, coast-to-coast, up and down, all around, performing in her own neck of the woods is as enjoyable as it is infrequent. Wellfleet has been her home for a long time. “It is a nice place to come to,” says the singer, as she gets ready for the weekend’s show. Suede has been on the road, touring for the past 12 years. Gone are those early evenings of barking on Town’s Commercial Street. These days, Suede concentrates purely on the performance and puts the rest aside. Essentially, Suede interprets songs. She’s a musical psychoanalyst if you will, working with musicians from all over to find new ways to tell the classic stories, or create new ones in an organic collaboration. “I meet new musicians all of the time. They write songs for me, and I work as hard as I can for them to realize their potential.” In her 26 years of making her living purely from singing, Suede has learned a thing or two. This she passes on through such collaborations that, once again, signifies her essential character. “I really like connecting with people and crafting relationships,” says the singer. “It’s why, when it comes to my career, I do it all.” And so she does. Suede is her own manager, which is an instinct that was forged during her early days when she would have to set her own lights, drag her sound system around wherever she went and book her own shows. “I have friends of mine who have all of that taken care for them. All they have to do is walk on stage and sing. It seems a little removed.”

On stage with Suede will be a trio consisting of John Harrison on piano, Chris Rathbun on bass, and Bart Weisman on drums. The show will consists of a few standards, original tunes and a little something special that always happens during jazz performances. Suede likes to call it “a ride” much in the way her career has been a journey. What she means is that her shows are emotional, feel good, adventures. Her choice of songs is determined by the phrasing, song line and lyrics. But it is the lyrics where Suede pays particular attention. “I mean Cole Porter put the word ‘Plebian’ into one of his songs and made it rhyme. I mean it doesn’t get any better.” The songwriters she seeks out are the ones that have injected that humor into what they do. Writers like Harold Arlen, Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen and Betty Comden. Their work as the singer says, “lights me up.” It stands to reason that if the Diva is the storyteller, then the Diva better have a good story.

This year’s festival will no doubt have the same off-the-cuff jam that made “Jazz” the word of the 20th century, the Provincetown Jazz Festival a hit and Suede a talent that has earned her stripes with a song and a smile.