The world changes quickly. It's all about how you adapt.
In June 2019, Suzanne Santo was on stage in front of a mass of humanity tens of thousands deep, playing guitar alongside Hozier during a mainstage set at the Glastonbury Festival.
In 2020, she was holed up at home taking online fiddle lessons with a bunch of tweens.
Life keeps you on your toes.
That theme permeates Santo's 2021 album Yard Sale.
The album came in the wake of a whirlwind period in Santo's life. In the course of a few years, she put a halt to her Americana band Honeyhoney, suffered some relationship heartbreak, toured the world in Hozier's band, moved from L.A. to Austin, and fell in love anew. And when she got sick of the cycle of packing and repacking all her emotional baggage, she turned it to song and purged it by scattering it across her proverbial yard for everyone to see.
"The songs were really accumulated over a lot of life," Santo says. "And [Yard Sale] really is an unpacking of that time. There's also that metaphor of when a woman accidentally spills her purse over, and her shit's all over the ground, and people are like, 'Yard sale!' I kind of gave you a look into my purse. [laughs] Not that there's anything weird in there."
Santo's genre-blurring songwriting on Yard Sale keeps things sonically engaging. One moment she'll tap into some haunting Americana soul ("Over and Over Again"), and then she'll throw out a dirty rock tune with a slow-brooding stomp beat ("Bad Beast"). A tune with a slinking blues riff will open up into a bluegrass chorus ("Mercy"), or a folk tune will have a menacing distorted guitar tone growling in the background ("Goldrush"). She also brings in some of her noted Austinite musical pals. Gary Clark Jr. spices up "Fall for That" with some hot licks, and Shakey Graves adds smokey flavor to "Afraid of Heights." It's an eclectic mix. Then again, Santo's stylistic smoothie of folk, rock, blues, pop, Americana and roots music has long been hard to pigeonhole.
"I used to make cheeky jokes," Santo says. "People would be like, 'What kind of music you play?' The kind your mama don't like! But then I had to come up with better things that didn't make me look like an asshole."
In the pursuit of growing her sound, the aforementioned digital fiddle lessons came about after some nudging by her Nashville fiddle pal Phoebe Hunt. What started as an exercise in skill enhancement turned into quite the atypical pandemic diversion.
"During COVID, I took online fiddle lessons, and it was one of the best moves I've made in a while," Santo says. "Because when you take a little time and find a teacher to get better, it's endless. It'll never be over. You can always learn something new."
"I was taking fiddle lessons with like 12-year-old savants," she notes. "I can be lazy about that stuff, [because] I can always pick up the violin and make it sound good. But these kids were virtuoso virtuosos. I think the oldest kid on the lesson was, like, 16. So I got to be this old, crusty road dog talking about my life on the road. And then they're like, 'Yeah, I got an algebra test I gotta study for,' or whatever. [laughs]"
It's actually the same approach she takes when taking gigs as a support musician for the likes of Hozier. It's a chance to hone one's abilities just to the side of the spotlight.
"It's really a great opportunity to learn something and kind of embody an apprentice role," she says. "The rewarding feeling of supporting someone else is really a luxury. I mean, I love being a frontwoman and writing my own music and having that responsibility, but when you're a hired gun, it's very different. I get to funnel my energy differently. And I'm always learning something new, especially when you're literally learning someone else's music, it's always gonna expand your musicianship in positive ways."
"When I was in Hozier, I had to play a lot of his guitar parts that were really complicated. He has a unique picking style, and it took me a long time to really get it," Santo adds. "So [now] I'm really using my hands in ways that can expand the way that I play. When I left the tour and I started writing again, I was just playing different guitar parts — I had a new upgrade."
Now back to her own solo work, she's ready to show off those upgrades and finally take Yard Sale on the road.
"I really am playing every show like I'm going to die tomorrow," Santo says. "Not because of COVID, but because I got to experience what it's like to have it all taken away from us."
Santo's proved she can adapt, but now she's focused on living in the moment. ♦
Suzanne Santo, Izzi Ray • Fri, Feb. 4 at 8 pm • $18 • Lucky You Lounge • 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. • luckyyoulounge.com • 509-474-0511
