Globe-trotting Susan Werner returning to CSPS in Cedar Rapids

Havana, New Orleans, Florida, Texas. Wherever Susan Werner travels to explore the music, the singer/songwriter always is happy to return to the Midwest — and especially to CSPS in Cedar Rapids.

A favorite repeat performer there, the Manchester native and University of Iowa alum dazzled audiences during the August 2011 gala reopening of the historic hall, after extensive post-flood remodeling. She’s been back since then, and will perform there again on Saturday night, Nov. 23, 2024.

“CSPS is a real treasure,” she said by phone from her Chicago home. “It’s an Eastern Iowa absolute. It’s an anchor to parts of the rest of the world.”

How else would we know about Mongolia’s Tuvan throat singers, she mused, noting: “Mongolia came to us.”

If you go

What: Susan Werner

Where: CSPS Hall, 1103 Third St. SE, Cedar Rapids

When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 23, 2024

Tickets: $30 advance, $35 door; cspshall.org/susan-werner

Even though her latest album is “Halfway to Houston,” released in February 2024, her upcoming concert will be her typical cornucopia of styles and sounds she’s gathered and observed from her roving ways.

On the move

“I have two suitcases, one large and one small,” she said. “They sit next to each other in my clothes closet, and have everything I need for my entire life. Let’s see: dental floss, triple antibiotic cream, ibuprofen, a sleep mask, emergency pairs of socks.

“Everything is in those suitcases. It’s not quite like being deployed into action as a Navy SEAL, but you do have to be ready to go.

“I find if I just use one of those two suitcases, and that they always sleep next to each other, I know where everything is, and then I’m never caught in a Marriott at 1 in the morning wondering if I have Band-Aids, right? Just the stupid stuff. That’s the thing — the stupid little stuff.

“It’s a vanity in a Samsonite.”

Sounds like the hook for one her slyly humorous, observant songs.

Next year, she’ll be floating down the Rhine River in Germany with Dar Williams and Heather Malone. The Rhine, Women & Song cruise will move through the Netherlands, Germany, France and Switzerland from Oct. 7 to 14, 2025. (For details, go to facebook.com/susanwernerpage)

“These travel adventures have become a part of my business in a way that I could never have anticipated,” she said, trying to figure why, as she spoke.

“I’ll go ahead and draw this back to my Iowa roots — the idea that you can talk to anyone, that you are interested in other people, that you’re curious, and that you pay attention to people because you may be related to them,” she punctuated with a laugh.

“I didn’t know this, but just the ability to hold conversations with total strangers would be a big part of my business. I do think some of that comes from growing up in a farm town and getting along with people. You may not have their entire story, and you’re willing to hear it. And you’re more than willing to hear it, you’re actually interested in it.”

And of course, this entire interview exchange would be nothing without Werner’s postscript spin.

“The thing to do now is to strike up a conversation with a millennial in an elevator. It freaks them out. They’re like, ‘Are you talking to me?’ They would rather that you had texted them before you said hello, so they would know that you were about to speak to them. …

“Anyway, this surprised me, Diana, that this certain sort of small-town friendliness would actually become part of the business model,” she added. “I remain absolutely shocked at it and grateful for it, because I had absolutely nothing to do with it arriving in my life.”

Instead, she credits her parents, Lawrence and Inez Werner — and growing up in a large extended family, where she learned to play nicely with her cousins, “having to make peace” with them over a volleyball.

“But also, my parents are really curious people,” she said.

“My dad will talk to anybody. He will talk to absolutely anyone. In fact, his nickname is ‘Gabby’ — he will talk to anyone. And my mom is extremely curious. She reads things you wouldn’t expect. She plays chess. Not a lot of farm wives playing chess, so there’s a certain kind of brain power going on there. I just feel really lucky.”

Soaking up sounds

Curiosity got the better of her, too, as an adult.

“If you grow up on a working farm with livestock, you’re not going to get away very much. You never had vacations, because the cows aren’t going to milk themselves, are they?

“So there’s lots of places I haven’t been and there’s also styles of music that I sort of have a romance with — like a two, three-year romance with — and especially when that’s connected to a geographic location.

“I mean, Texas music is a whole thing. Cuban music is a whole thing. New Orleans music is a whole thing. Florida was Gulf and Western, which I didn’t even know was a style,” she said. “It’s where a marimba meets lap steel. If you think of Jimmy Buffett, what is that? Caribbean country, right? And so all the songs were of this style,” she said.

“It’s like an immersion course in a musical style and in subject matter. And the way to really do it is just to go there. Here’s what I did to start the Texas record. I have family there now. That changes everything. Once you have family there, then you become really interested in a place and you want it to succeed. You want it to be wonderful.”

She also has songwriting friends in the Lone Star State, so she asked five of them to pull out a cocktail napkin and draw a map of Texas with five places each one thought she should see “to really understand the place.”

Their answers included El Paso, near the borders of Mexico and New Mexico; Big Bend National Park, also near the border with Mexico; Marfa and Alpine, in west Texas; and Corpus on the Gulf Coast.

“How different a landscape can you get from El Paso to Corpus,” she said. “There’s a reason people live their entire lives in Texas and never leave. It’s enormous.”

Fort Worth also was a repeat among her friends’ suggestions.

“I have been to Fort Worth before, but getting to know Cowtown was a lot of fun for me,” she said. “I got a good number of songs out of Fort Worth.”

Unexpected delights

Connecting the dots also shifted her songwriting into another gear.

“A lot of songs presented themselves while driving,” she said. “Highway 90 from El Paso to Austin was especially productive. That’s Alpine and Marfa. The Lights of Marfa is a real thing, by the way.”

Whether the glowing orbs are caused by distorted headlights, UFOs or ghosts — Werner saw them.

“It’s not just a hippie thing. Yes, I am a hippie, but I’m not that much of a hippie. I thought it was going to be a big nothing. … And there is something, and it’s worth seeing it once in your life.”

She went to the main observation spot — a rest area in the road — about nine miles east of Marfa. The night she was there, the phenomenon drew curious tourists from Australia, Germany and “people from New Jersey on their way home from Phoenix,” she noted.

“There were people from all over the place, and we all just sat there at dusk and waited, and about an hour after sunset, you see these little pinpoint lights moving in the distance, and you’re like, ‘Is that something?’ And you’re looking at other people, you’re like, ‘Is this something?’ And they’re like, ‘I think this is something.’

“I saw them. There’s something going on, and I’m so happy that I went to these places that, again, people you know and had a conversation with, are pointing you to the places that have moved them.”

She stepped outside of another comfort zone, cowriting songs with other Texans. Another thing she said “is just something.”

“In Texas, everyone knows a songwriter. This is not so unusual, whereas I go to my high school reunion, and people are like, ‘Are you still doing that?’

“Actually, yeah, I am.”

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com