Susan Werner’s musical journey began not on the folk stage, but in the classical halls of opera.
“After grad school, I took some auditions for opera companies, and the competition just outclassed me,” she said. “Women with voices big as trucks, and personalities to match. I moped around town for about six months ‘til I landed on the Philadelphia FolkSong Society/Philadelphia Folk Festival… and here, in this world, everybody seemed to be glad to see me.”
That shift brought her creative freedom. “An opera singer friend came to see a show of mine in New York… and she said, ‘I wish I was doing what you’re doing. I have to sing the exact same thing night after night, but you get to create what it is you want to sing.’ That stayed with me.”
Werner’s musical versatility is legendary, spanning folk, jazz, gospel, and even Cuban rhythms. “Terrible restlessness, I suspect,” she said. “I was always the kid jiggling my knees under the table and chewing gum. I still am. There’s also a little bit of a dare in it; can I learn to play this style of music, and how long will it take me to figure it out?”
She added that styles like “Cuban guitar and New Orleans piano… took a while to get the hang of,” but the challenge keeps her work vibrant. “Makes for an interesting show for people, I hope—zero chance of boredom.”
That sense of openness, she said, has Midwestern roots. “Big Catholic family, a hundred cousins—you learn how to talk to just about anybody,” Werner said. “There’s a conversational, interactive component to my shows that seems to run counter to what many people expect from singer/songwriters… Yeah, uh, no. Let’s do this, and let’s do this right now, and let’s have fun while we’re at it.”
About the concert
Werner’s upcoming show at The Ark in Ann Arbor promises warmth and connection. She performs on Nov. 8 at 8pm.
“A good time with good music, that about sums it up,” she said. “You’ll leave feeling better than when you came in the door.”
Her approach to smaller, more intimate venues like The Ark is refreshingly personal. “At The Ark you can pretty much see everybody in the room right in their seats—close enough to touch ‘em – so nobody’s safe from me asking them a question, or eating their popcorn, or standing on the chair next to them and singing a song,” Werner said. “Larger stages require a more set approach to things, but at The Ark, you can wing it, and believe me, I will.”
Audiences can expect a broad mix from across her career.
“Most recent release is ‘Halfway to Houston,’ and oh yes, I’ll play songs from that and all the records,” she said. “It’ll be a smorgasbord—wait, what do the kids call it, a charcuterie board—yeah, that.”
Songwriting and craft
Werner’s process as a songwriter is part intuition, part discipline. “I’ll usually get a little snippet of DNA—with a lyric and a style of music attached,” she said. “Might just be two words or a sentence—but as a composer, you learn to explode one idea—just extend out from that one thing to all the corners of the song.”
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She continued, “Don’t try to write a second song in there—just let it be that one thing, and make it big as you can, as moving as you can, as funny as you can… usually takes about three days, in my experience.”
Tone and topic often announce themselves early on. “The little initial snippet will tell me which way we’re going,” she said. “And I do wave off ideas sometimes, I’m like ‘okay NO, not giving three days of my life to THAT.’ I still guess wrong plenty of times, and you can trust the audience to tell you whether that song is something or a complete nothingburger.”
Broader work and legacy
Werner’s creative reach extends to the stage, including her work on the musical “Bull Durham.”
“It’s kind of a relief to have a screenplay/script/book to work with—meaning, I don’t have to come up with the inner lives of these characters. That’s already there on the page,” she said. “The plot, the conflicts, the style of language—someone else has already made those decisions… A huge savings of energy and effort on my part, to have so much of it all figured out.”
And as for what’s next? Werner hints at new ideas already brewing.
“But I can’t tell you what,” she said. “I’ve learned over the years it’s best for me to keep my thoughts to myself on projects until the writing is about 95% done—that way nobody tries to talk me out of it. Everything’s a terrible idea, until you prove it works.”
Donna Marie Iadipaolo is a writer, journalist, and State of Michigan certified teacher, since 1990. She has written for national publications like The Village Voice, Ear Magazine of New Music, Insurance & Technology, and TheStreet.
She is now writing locally for many publications, including Current Magazine, Ann Arbor Family, and the Ann Arbor Independent. Her undergraduate degree is from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she graduated with an honors bachelor’s degree and three teacher certificate majors: mathematics, social sciences, English. She also earned three graduate degrees in Master of Science, Master of Arts, and Education Specialist Degree.
