Greetings all you Ghost watchers,
I thought I should catch us all up to whats been going on this crazy year.
In addition to putting together the Bowie tribute at The Brit Awards and spending two months touring in Spain with Manolo Garcia, playing a bunch of solo Spooky Ghost gigs and touring Europe with Suzanne Vega this summer, I managed to mix two records in January, one for a Czech Rock band called “All Saints”, incidentally whose single “Made in Germany” got into rock radio in CZ Republic at Number 1 ! … Phew I feel tired thinking about it all.. .
and one was the new album from Suzanne Vega called “Lover, Beloved”.
This is a record of the songs she wrote with Duncan Sheik as part of her one woman play about the life and work of author Carson McCullers.
I got to produce the record and am happy to say it has turned out fantastic and garnering great reviews in both the UK and Europe and Stateside.
We just completed 3 weeks of touring to promote it in Europe and are about to start a 3 week run starting in New York at Joe’s Pub and ending up in Seattle at the Triple Door.
You can click here for a full listing of dates.
Here is the new video for the single “We of Me”
and I’ll finish up for now with a nice review from Edinburgh Scotland from our last run.
see you all soon I hope !
Ghost
Music review: Suzanne Vega, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh
Suzanne Vega, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, by Rob Adams, ****
Suzanne Vega faces a dilemma on her latest tour. Does she put the songs from her latest album, Lover, Beloved, after which the tour is named, at the beginning of the set or should she work towards them with more familiar material?
With the quietly persuasive personality she exudes, it probably doesn’t matter, although the softening up approach she used here, with just sometime David Bowie guitarist Gerry Leonard for company to begin with, worked splendidly. Leonard can give off the energy of a whole band or the eerie ambience of a haunted cave, and Vega tuned into both with stagecraft that’s cool and self-possessed and a voice that conveys characterization and narrative with beautiful assurance.
She has an actor’s presence, almost literally growing into Marlene on the Wall’s Dietrich role by the simple expedient of bashing a top hat to its full height and popping it on her head, and she gives just enough away in her introductions to make songs such as the one she wrote to celebrate a summer love at eighteen something you want to hear.
Lover, Beloved is inspired by writer Carson McCullers and with Jason Hart, on keyboards, joining Vega and Leonard, the songs from it were entrancing. The album has the kind of of-the-times atmosphere and smart lyricism that makes for compelling listening and Vega captures McCullers’ wit, poetic sensibility and bitchiness brilliantly.
With an unlit cigarette as a prop, she made McCullers flesh, especially in the marvelously disdaining, opposition-obliterating Harper Lee, and as a parting shot, Carson’s Last Supper was a glorious carousal in the Kurt Weill-Jacques Brel tradition, but with added charm.
G e r r y L e o n a r d 