Best known as a jazz singer and guitarist, Suede is celebrating more than four decades in music.
“There’s a tune I do by my dear friend Shirley Eikhard who recently passed away. She wrote Bonnie Raitt’s hit ‘Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About.’ She wrote a song for me about a couple I met on a chartered cruise, and one of the women had early Alzheimer’s. They invited me into the extraordinary love they had for each other, and one woman said, ‘She doesn’t always know who I am, but I know who I am to her.’ Her phrase! Shirley wrote an incredible song called ‘Emily Remembers,’ and it’s kind of a folk style song.”
Suede doesn’t cross out. She crosses over. “Built for Comfort” is a regular in her repertoire. “It’s a whole different message when a woman sings it,” she says. “I love doing stuff like that. Sinatra released a song called ‘I Like to Lead When I Dance,’ and he released it right at the beginning of the feminist movement.
“Of course, his agent went, ‘Oh, not a good time for you to do that,’ but when a woman sings ‘I like to lead when I dance,’” she stops and chuckles. Suede is gay. “Humor plays a big part in what I do, a big part. I love to play off whatever happens in the crowd in the room at any given moment, improv stuff for sure. So, yup, I do that one.”
“Hope” is another one of her originals. “You go back to what’s going on politically in this country right now. I know a lot of people are feeling very, very scared. These are fearful times. They’re depressed and confused. We just put it out in response to Covid when we were all feeling confused, and the gist of it is I gotta find hope. I gotta find some ways to hope because that’s going to get me out of this. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I have to.”
Over four decades Suede’s repertoire has expanded exponentially to include blues, pop, and originals that are unique enough to defy any single category. She regularly plays some of the world’s most prestigious venues including Lincoln Center, Birdland, and Joey’s Jazz Club.
This Saturday night (April 5th) she plays the 8th Step Coffeehouse in Schenectady, New York. She will be accompanied by pianist Chris Grasso. “I’ve known him for many, many years. He has a really interesting background. He’s an attorney, and then he’s a journalist, and what he’s always wanted to do is play the piano (which he does) full bore, and he’s a dream to sing with. He does all different styles, which is exactly what I need. He plays pretty regularly with my bass player Marshal Wood, who was Tony Bennett’s bassist for the last 15 years that he played.”
To call Suede a jazz singer and guitarist is less than half the story. “I started out doing Peter, Paul and Mary, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor. They don’t know where to put you. I’m not strictly a jazz singer. ‘We don’t put you in a little box.’ The fans don’t care. So, I have people that have followed me from the coffee house. They still show up. It blows my mind, but it’s more stylized now. It has more of a positive jazz bent to it, but if I come across a song that fits more into, categorically speaking, folk, and it calls me to sing it, I’m gonna do it.”
I asked her if she plays differently to an audience at Lincoln Center than she does a coffeehouse like 8th Step. “Yes, somewhat. What I do depends on the vibe I get from the audience that night no matter where I am.
“I was hired to be the entertainment at a fundraiser in Washington D.C. two days after 9/11 happened. I called the organizer and said, ‘What are we doing?’ And they said, ‘The phones are ringing off the hook, and people were saying we need to gather. We need to get together.’ So, he said, ‘We’re going.’ What the hell am I going to do? Where do we start with this?
“I thought about it and thought about it, and I had recorded the song ‘From A Distance’ before Bette Middler did and won how many Grammys for it? And I thought, I’m gonna go out there and we’re going to start with the song ‘From A Distance,’ and people sang along. We just kind of acknowledged what had happened and through music found a way to connect through and went from there. It was really a powerful moment, and it was absolutely based on what’s the energy in the room tonight. You play to the audience that’s there. The point is to connect with them.”
Suede has opened for the late Joan Rivers. “It was great! I heard a lot of people had complaints, but she was the best. She was a true master. She was incredibly gracious. She said, ‘I want to find a female musician to be my opener, and you are it. You got all the energy I’m looking for. You got the power I’m looking for.’ After the first show we did, she came to search me out. She came to me face to face and looked me in the eye and said, ‘You are the REAL DEAL!’ To have somebody like Joan Rivers say that to you… I was dumbfounded. It doesn’t happen very often, but I said, ‘Oh, my God. You’ve honored me like I’ve never been honored before.’”
Showtime is 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 5th at 8th Step in the GE Theatre at Proctor’s on State St. in downtown Schenectady, New York.