Suzanne Vega recently released her third thematic volume, “States of Being.” It follows two albums culled from her extensive catalog, the first focusing on songs about love, the second on people and places. Thirty years after the singer-songwriter became a Greenwich Village folk scene fixture, she remains a master storyteller with the cool, infectious presentation that crafted “Tom’s Diner” into a classic. She initially labeled “States of Being” as “Mental Health” songs for the vast range of moods and emotions they address. “I like to write about situations in real life and am drawn to many that are difficult to put into words, like the suicide of a close friend,” she said. “The one new song in the collection is ‘The Instant of the Hour After,’ which was inspired by a Carson McCullers story.
“Carson had such a grasp of humanity,” Vega said. “She is droll and funny and made all her characters come to life, especially the children. This story has two characters, a man and his wife, who have been drinking all night. They share their anger, love and pity. I asked Duncan Sheik, the composer of ‘Spring Awakening,’ to set it to music because his melodies are so beautiful and we share the fact that we’re both practicing Buddhists.”
| Onstage |
| Suzanne Vega |
| Where: Sixth & I Historic Synagogue |
| When: 8 p.m. Saturday |
| Info: $30; 202-785-9727; wpas.org |
McCullers is but one of Vega’s favorite writers. She gobbles down poets T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson and admires novelist Edith Horton for her way with poignancy. This week, she is reading a biography of Leo Tolstoy.
As for lyricists, she was drawn to folk music by storytellers Bob Dylan, Cisco Houston and his pal Woody Guthrie. A volume of her own poems, lyrics and essays, “The Passionate Eye: The Collected Writings of Suzanne Vega,” was published in 1999.
Devoted to a number of charities, among them Amnesty International and the Save Darfur Coalition, Vega performed in Prague as a guest of Vaclav Havel for the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.
Her 2007 release, “Beauty & Crime,” won a Grammy for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. An expression of her deepest thoughts, it examined New York City and her feelings at the tragedy of 9/11 and loss of her brother.
“I’m always careful what I reveal,” she said. “I have a batch of private songs that aren’t for public distribution. But wherever I perform, I try to be entertaining. Anyone interested in poetry, metaphors and storytelling, no matter the age, will be entertained by Jerry Leonard and me on guitar singing my songs.”
