By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Though Suzanne Santo has toured the world, lived in Los Angeles, and now Austin, her native Ohio, though, still exerts a pull on the singer-songwriter’s heart.
When she takes the stage at the Black Swamp Arts Festival Saturday (Sept. 11) at 4:10 p.m., she’ll be bringing her second solo album, “Yard Sale,” home.
She grew up in Parma, attending Dag Hammarskjold Elementary where music was part of the school program. “I had an incredible choral teacher Marlene Dray,” she said, who “lovingly let me know I had a little bit of a gift.”
Santo was in choir from first grade and started playing violin at 11. “My love for it was always there.” She had other talents as well and focused for a time on modeling and acting. That brought her to Los Angeles in her late teens.
As a musical performer she was “kind of a late bloomer,” Santo said in a recent telephone interview. It was in Los Angeles, lonely and with few friends, that she turned to singing and writing songs. “It was a respite from the rest of the world,” Santo said. “I really didn’t stop.”
Her songs “come from my gut, from my life. They are my depiction of my world, my lessons, my concerns with myself, my life, my celebrations. It is art imitating life.”
After a few years in L.A. she formed the band HoneyHoney with Ben Jaffe in 2006. When that project went into hiatus she released her first album “Ruby Red” in 2017.
Other artists, Butch Walker and then Hozier, drew on her musical talents for their bands.
She toured the world with Hozier, barely 50 days off in the year, though she continued writing, her own career was on hold. “For a while I stepped away from my own world,” she said. “I wondered how I was going to come back to it.”
She moved to Austin, Texas, and despite the pandemic, released “Yard Sale.”
Santo acknowledged the delayed release came about because of the “phenomenal people” she worked with. “I had a lot of help. I can’t complain. It was really great.”
Of “Yard Sale,” she said: “It’s really an unpacking of the last few years and making the major transitions I’ve experienced.”
Her songs cut to the bone, and she delivers them in a sure clear voice with just a hint of roughness. They draw Americana and rock ‘n’ roll with touches of soul.
The festival show will draw on the songs from the new album mixed with fan favorites such as “Blood on Your Knees” and “Ghost in My Bed.”
Now “Mercy” has joined that group of requested songs. “It is a reflection of my upbringing, the special moments that exposed me to an energy that I would know for the rest of my life and how it shapes you.”
It’s the energy she felt from her family and environs growing up.
“I love where I’m from,” she said. Ohio remains in her thoughts. “I love every chance I get to pass through there whether for fun or to play music. There’s just so much energy there and aesthetically as a Great Lakes state it’s beautiful and there’s a lot of history,” she said. “And the people of the Rust Belt, I really resonate with them and relate to the value systems that surround that area. I tend to gravitate toward people from the Midwest with those similar values.”
