Herndon has found a happy middle ground on her new disc.
Herndon is something of trailblazer, unfettered by labels or boundaries, skipping with ease between genres and showing hints of her inner bohemian. The fact that she often sings in French as well (to the dismay of a few and delight of many more) only adds to her already eclectic and independent image.
While the comparisons are highly complimentary, focusing too much on her similarities to such iconic female songwriters is to overlook the most elemental factor of Herndon's appeal: quite simply, she has one of the sweetest and most comforting female voices in Tulsa music. Of course it doesn't hurt that she's also a gifted songwriter, but would we really care if it wasn't so pleasant to listen to her?
With her latest CD, 1,000 Pies, Susan continues to refine her craft as she presents perhaps her most concise and cohesive album to date. Even as she glides between styles, touching on roots rock ("At the End of the Day"), jazz ("On My Way"), country ("There Is No End to My Love For You") and smoldering blues-rock ("King's River"), the disc never sounds disjointed as Herndon sings from the heart and paints a picture of the people, relationships and landscape around her.
Clocking in at just over 39 minutes with 11 tracks, 1,000 Pies isn't the sweeping overture that Susan's 2005 double disc release, Peccadillos, was, but that's by design.
"I love a great, 10-song CD," Herndon told me recently. "A couple of my friends and I were talking about that: how you don't want to take it off, you just want it to play over and over and over if it's really good."
With that conversation in mind, the goal of the new CD was to create an album that wouldn't overstay its welcome but instead leave the listener wanting just a little more. And to great extent, that is what Herndon has accomplished with this current disc.
Primarily accompanied by her current backing band, The Painkillers (guitarist Jeff Graham, bassist Dave White and drummer Michael Steed), as well a few choice guests such as Tom Skinner, Don Morris and Jack Abraham, Herndon is obviously among friends on this album--and it shows in the strength of her performance.
There's a certain swagger present, evident not only in the Pretender's-like groove of "World Class Wallower," but also in the bluesy smolder of "King's River" and even the disc's stirring closing ballad "Highway 33 (Home)."
Boondogs drummer Dylan Turner recently told Herndon, "It's a great foil for a folk artist to have a rock'n'roll band behind you." But is that what Susan considers herself--a folk artist? Or simply a singer/songwriter?
"Definitely more a songwriter," she said, adamantly. "I don't think about the other stuff because the songs dictate (the style)."
Perhaps that's what leaves some listeners a tad bewildered when they first encounter Herndon. Styles and genres blend seamlessly and without much thought in her songs. She definitely has a jazzy bent and has even played within Tulsa's jazz circles, but she frequently sits in with Skinner and others in the revered Red Dirt community where the honesty and lyricism of her songs fit so well.
When asked how she fell in with the Red Dirt crowd, Susan answered, "It's a fateful thing, I think. It's just something I'm drawn to." She even joked that when people ask what genre of music she plays, she answers "Red Dirt-Jazz" and that's sure to ruffle feather with the more uptight in each musical community.
Nevertheless, Herndon has found a happy middle ground where she can exercise her more jazzy tendencies while touching on country, blues, rock and anything else that finds its way into her music.
Where else would you find a French reading of Bob Dylan's "Girl of the North Country" next to the heartbreak and pedal steel of "There is No End to My Love for You"? Only Herndon can blend such disparate elements so well and leave a listener wanting more instead of running for cover.
The key, truly, is in the honesty of Susan's songwriting. The stirring ballad "Highway 33 (Home)" ends up as the surprising showpiece of the new disc, featuring Susan's vocals and piano with a mournful cello as the song's character stirs up memories of the past, both good and bad, when recalling the loss of a grandparent's farm to eminent domain.
Whether personally true or not, she delivers the lyrics in manner that hits close to the heart and draws an emotional response.
This Saturday night, July 21, Susan takes the stage of the Charles Norman Theater as part of the Performing Arts Center's SummerStage festival. The show will also serve as the official CD release party for Herndon's new disc, 1,000 Pies.
Billed on the PAC website as "Oklahoma Waters" (the original, working title of the CD - Susan changed it when Skinner heard the album and told her "you ought to call it 1,000 Pies," referencing the a line in the closing track), Herndon will be performing her own original material as well as a handful of selections by other prominent Oklahoma artists such as Woody Guthrie, Jimmy Webb and Kevin Welch.
Come expecting a show that will not only showcase the best of Herndon's songwriting abilities, but also special guest appearances by Skinner, Abraham and Hank Charles. Tickets are $10 for general admission or $20 for reserved table seating and copy of the new CD.
Yes, the new album shows that Herndon possesses the pop sensibilities of Sheryl Crow, the lyrical prowess of Joni Mitchell and Rickie Lee Jones, the swagger of Chrissy Hynde and the elegance of Emmylou Harris.
More importantly, though, it reaffirms Herndon's rightful place in Tulsa's music scene as an extraordinary songwriter and one of the sweetest female voices in the region.
Whether looking to the stars for answers or singing of love and broken hearts, 1,000 Pies is pure comfort food for local pop music fans.
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