Suzanne Vega w/ Gerry Leonard, Teddy Thompson at Electric Fetus, Minneapolis (08 Nov 2016)

In between their two-night stand playing the Dakota Jazz Club, Suzanne Vega w/Gerry Leonard and Teddy Thompson took time out to each do a brief back-to-back acoustic in-store performance, to promote their respective new albums. 

Singer-songwriter Vega is out in support of October’s Lover, Beloved: Songs From An Evening With Carson McCullers (on her own Amanuensis Productions), based on a play Vega wrote about McCullers, her favorite childhood author, and co-written by Duncan Sheik.

Joining her was the rainbow-haired guitarist Gerry Leonard, who’s had history with Vega (and Sheik)as well as toured as David Bowie’s Musical Director for nearly a decade and also works under the moniker Spooky Ghost. 

Vega’s opening act on this tour, Teddy Thompson (son of Richard & Linda Thompson) started with a three-song mini-set of his own first, culled from his solo releases, including the most recent, 2016’s Little Windows, an Everly Brothers-esque duet retro style album with Kelly Jones. 

“This is the record store of my dreams” Thompson mused, looking around at the wide selection, before beginning with 2008’s ‘In My Arms’, a song performed on record with Rufus Wainwright.  ‘Don’t Remind Me’ was culled from the new record (sung solo though) and 2011’s ‘The One I Can’t Have’ finished his short set.

Suzanne Vega and Leonard were next, with Vega proudly holding up her new record, an homage to her favorite author and began with the new ‘New York is My Destination’, describing author McCullers’ move from the deep south to a cosmopolitan metropolis. 

As much as a history lesson on the author as a performance, ‘We of Me’ followed, inspired by and in the voice of one of the characters from McCullers’ 1946 novel, The Member of the Wedding.  ‘Harper Lee’ was written about the elder author holding some animosity toward the younger Lee, but told with a dose of plucky sarcasm in its lyrics. 

Vega and Leonard finished with the relatively obscure ‘Caramel’ from 1996’s Nine Objects of Desire (though she misspoke saying it was from 1992’s 99.9F°, which is maybe the writing sessions the song was born from), telling us we’d have to see them at the Dakota “to hear the rest” of their set, though it would be with full band and Thompson playing along with them.