Susan Werner

folk · americana · roots

Susan Werner is an American folk and Americana singer-songwriter, born in 1965 and raised on a family farm near Manchester, Iowa, about an hour west of Dubuque. She trained as a classical vocalist, taking a bachelor's degree in voice at the University of Iowa and, after moving to Philadelphia in 1987, a master's in voice at Temple University; an opera career was the plan until a Nanci Griffith concert redirected her toward songwriting. Through the early 1990s she built a following in the Philadelphia, Boston and New York folk clubs, releasing the self-released debut Midwestern Saturday Night (1993) and following it with Last of the Good Straight Girls (1995), Time Between Trains (1998) and New Non-Fiction (2001) before relocating to Chicago. Her later records each set themselves a different formal problem: the Tin Pan Alley-inflected I Can't Be New (2004), the questioning gospel songs of The Gospel Truth (2007), the classical-crossover Classics (2009), Kicking the Beehive, produced by Rodney Crowell with Vince Gill, Keb' Mo' and steel guitarist Paul Franklin, the rural-America concept record Hayseed (2013), Eight Unnecessary Songs (2017), the New Orleans-steeped NOLA (2019), Flyover Country (2020), The Birds of Florida (2022) and Halfway to Houston (2024), a Texas song cycle recorded with a mix of Philadelphia and Austin musicians. Halfway to Houston won Album of the Year at the 2025 International Folk Music Awards, presented by Folk Alliance International in Montreal; Werner did not attend, and Dar Williams read out her acceptance remarks. Tom Jones recorded The Gospel Truth's Did Trouble Me for his 2010 album Praise & Blame. Werner has also written choral music, including settings of Be the Change for SATB and TTBB voices, and issued live albums recorded at Club Passim, Stone Mountain Arts Center and the Tin Angel. Her 2026 releases include a further volume of songs, Eight MORE Unnecessary Songs, alongside catalog and greatest-hits collections.

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