Suzy Bogguss

Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #136 (June/July 2008).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Suzy Bogguss

Both Sides Now

by Kerry Dexter

Suzy Bogguss has seen the music business from many sides. She has won top country music awards and played tiny listening rooms, had major label contracts as well as successful releases on her own small label, and has done tours from a tour bus equipped with satellite Internet connection as well as driven herself along the back roads of America in a truck with a camper on the back. "It really can be a roller-coaster," she said. Through all that, her love for music and for singing and her own sunny nature have kept her on track. "I have seen people get beat down by this business. It just seems to be my nature, and it always has been, that I think when something doesn't work out, or some big concert date that was supposed to happen doesn't, or something like that, it's just because there's something better that's on its way."

Bogguss began her musical journey growing up in Aledo, Illinois, "a real cornfield, Beaver Cleaver sort of town near the Mississippi, not far from Moline. It was a beautiful part of the country to grow up in," she said. There she began singing in her church choir, studied piano, and learned to play drums. "I grew up in a home with all kinds of musical influences. I heard Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra records from my parents, and then my brothers and sisters were playing Carole King, Peter, Paul and Mary, and the Beatles. In high school, I was active in musicals, and we had a great choir director at the high school, who was also the choir director at our church, so I did a lot of that."

She also found an instrument she really loved. "My sister left a guitar behind when she went off to college, and I picked it up when I was I guess about 13 or 14," Bogguss recalled. "By the time I was 16 or so, I was really into it, playing six or seven hours a day, and doing the Peter, Paul and Mary thing at church, sitting on the steps of the sanctuary and trying to get people to sing along -- which was maybe a bit hard for the members of an older Presbyterian congregation who were very staunch and reserved about their prayers!" Bogguss recalled, laughing.

At college, she helped pay her way by performing at local coffeehouses, while in her classes she studied art. "I did take one voice class, though, but after the first class the teacher sent me to therapy because my voice was shot from singing so much and also teaching swimming lessons," she said. "So I never got to sing for her in class, though I got to sit in and watch what they were doing, so I got some of the basics that way." After graduation, music held her interest. At first, she performed in nearby places including Peoria, Rock Island, and Davenport. "Chicago was the nearest big city, and there were plenty of of acoustic and folk clubs there, so I went there next," she said. And then she hit the road.

It turned into a five-year journey that would take her all across the country. "I thought it was a challenge, booking myself into places, but I didn't really have a plan. I just thought, 'Hey, I've never been to Greenwich Village; it'd be cool to go there.' And then I'd have to figure out how to get there, to make money for gas and for food to eat," she recalled. "I'd pull into Laramie, or Denver, or some other place, and find the store with the most acoustic instruments, the most folkie stuff, and there'd usually be somebody pickin', and there I'd get the scoop on what places hired singers to come in for a night or two. Then I'd put up my poster, and do some self-promotion, a little street busking in the town square, and make a few dollars there, and then hopefully all that would turn into a bar gig or something that would last a week or two."

It's not the way many people think of a top-charting country artist spending her early career, and Bogguss didn't either.

[cover #136]