Connecting with her audience has been a fundamental part of her career since she graduated from Illinois State University with an art degree and began touring the coffeehouse and club circuit. 

After five years crisscrossing the country in a camper truck, Bogguss landed in Nashville and immersedherself in the creative community. She found like-minded writers who believed in songs with style and substance. Her big break came when a talent scout from Capitol Records saw her perform at Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s theme park in East Tennessee’s Smokey Mountains. A tape of her music that she sold at the park got into the hands of a label executive and three weeks later she was signed. 

 Her strong, supple voice and straightforward style were a clarion call for country fans looking for music with meaning. Songs like “Aces,” “Drive South,” “Someday Soon,” “Outbound Plane” and “Letting Go” soon took her to the top of the country music charts. Along the way she won raves from critics and her peers in all genres. She won the Country Music Association’s Horizon Award in 1992 and album of the Year Award in 1994, ASCAP country and pop awards for her songwriting, and in 2005 a Grammy for her contribution to the Best Folk Album, Beautiful Dreamer, the Songs of Stephen Foster.

The only way to describe her career arc would be as an evolution. One project inevitably led to the next. That’s one of the reasons she’s so excited about Sweet Danger. 

“The whole process was so natural,” she says. “From my friendship with Jason through the whole writing and recording process. It was challenging at fi rst because this was new territory for me, but when I let go and surrendered to the experience it happened so easily. I left New York sort of mesmerized with the whole process. Everybody just wanted to make something—to create.”

The joy and creative freedom she felt imbues every note of Sweet Danger. Always a sublime, controlled singer, she hits a new milestone with this collection. By stretching, testing and challenging her limits, she’s captured the best vocals of her career. 

Like all of her previous work, the new record is fi lled with songs of emotional integrity. She covers Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now” and creates a totally new vibe by stripping the song down to its emotional core and rebuilding it with a tight acoustic ensemble. Verlon Thompson’s “No Good Way To Go” is an inner diolog on how to end a relationship, half sung and half spoken with smoldering sexuality. She turns to husband/songwriter Doug Crider for “In Heaven,” the emotional centerpiece of the album. The song, which deals with love, loss, letting go and moving on, is especially poignant because it was written about close friends of Bogguss and Crider. It also has an incredible, instantly, memorable melody. 

She remains consistent in her unwillingness to be defi ned by the expectations of others. She’s always been the type of artist to boldly listen to her instinct and chase that wily muse where it leads her. Suzy Bogguss has always, and will always take the road less traveled...and that has made all the difference.

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