Local girl Susan Toney does better than good
By Naughty Mickie  notymickie@earthlink.net

The lights dim as Susan Toney takes center stage at the Ten20 Club in Hollywood. The audience applauds.

"Thank you everybody. Welcome to my living room. I wanted all of you in my living room tonight," Toney quips.

This Pasadena, California singer/songwriter is on the cusp of stardom. Her acoustic stylings range from rock to country with touches of other genres throw in for good measure. She has two albums out, "Strange Child" (Strange Child Records) and "Susan Toney" (Screaming Child Music) and just garnered first place at the recent GINA Festival. Her song, "Just Don't Mention Love," has been grabbed up as the title track for the Miramax film "Little City." But despite all this forward momentum, when we sat down to talk, I asked her to look back.

"I seemed to find myself playing with toy pianos that were a gift to me when I was two years old," Toney recalls. "I remember at my aunt's house or wherever there was a piano or something with strings on it, I'd be plucking at it or wanting to play with it."

Toney took piano lessons in elementary school and classical guitar lessons starting in fourth grade. She also started singing during elementary school.

"I would just sit down and play the piano or the guitar and I had a natural inclination to want to say something so I remember writing songs when I was in elementary school and junior high," Toney says.

She attended both undergraduate and graduate school at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, starting with classical guitar, then changing to studio art and film and television. Toney holds a BA in art and film and television, as well as a masters in film and television.

"I taught guitar in high school and for one summer while I went to college," Toney tells me. "When I first got out of school, the economy was kind of funny and all the people at the television stations were saying that I was overqualified because I had a masters degree in film and television. They said the people on the crews would eat you alive they'd be so jealous. It was difficult to break into television, at least in Dallas, Texas."

She ended up working at Neiman Marcus as a display artist until she moved to Houston and worked for NBC and PBS. Today, Toney's music is her career, but she finds free time enlivening.

"I really really really love the outdoors. I'm very athletic and I like to swim and walk and I like to read and see films. I love to shoot photography and I love people, so I love being around other people and learning about where other people are at. Seeing if I can say something that's encouraging or helpful," Toney shares.

We delve into her creative processes.

"I've always been a truth seeker and the thing that has been most important to me has been principles and has been living within principles and having integrity and being honest and not being deceived, finding out what the truth is." Toney explains, "When you write for a really long time it's like Picasso used to tell all of his students, they'd be doing circles for weeks, for hours, for days, all they'd be doing is drawing circles and the same thing is true about song writing. I studied people who I thought were extraordinary at their craft."

She names off a list of greats, including Nat King Cole, Carole King, Bernie Taupin, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel.

"All the people that could really get to the place where they said what they meant." Toney continues, "I think that's one of the most difficult places to arrive at writing because it is so hard to get to a place in the world because the world is so worldly. We're always told not to be honest. We're always told that won't be popular or that's not what everybody does, so I think it takes a long time to get to a place where you not only feel comfortable, but you can express exactly what you're feeling.

"I'm one of those kinds people that I am inspired many many times, but I think writing is like any other thing, a great writer doesn't have to be inspired. You sit down, you focus on it and the sun doesn't have to right, the moon doesn't have to be right. You sit down and express yourself. If you work at something diligently, you become more skilled at it." Toney goes on, "Sometimes I'll have something in life that will impress me to the extent that I'll have a picture or a message perhaps that I'm trying to put across or something I'm trying to convey that literally has a bottom line. A lot of time that stuff is always going on in the back of your mind.

"There's always something on the back burner that is being thought about. It seems for me that when I sit down the notes, I hear a phrase or a melody line or a chord and then that chord or melody line will seem to go with that idea or feeling that was on the back burner and it automatically comes together because I've been drawing those circles and all of a sudden my hand is free," Toney sums up.

Toney feels it is important for artists to hone their craft and then come out with their "universal, transformed piece that will move people." She seeks the same goals for herself and hopes that her music will touch and help others.

As far as the Internet, Toney doesn't care for music downloading.

"There's something to holding an album in your hand," Toney states. "It was a lovely thing because it was large and you couldn't fit it in your pocket and you had to be careful not to bend the edges and to not scratch it. It did have value to you. The liner notes and all those things, you wanted to know about how somebody got to that understanding of what they were writing about or what they life was like or the experiences they were having or have had. A CD is a microcosm and removed from that, but it is something people must take some care with it and there is something to look at and read."

She also feels that the Internet further isolates people from each other, as they don't have to leave the house to get something or talk to someone in person, which, in turn, Toney feels is bad for society. But she admits that the access to information is fantastic, though.

Plunk in the middle of it all, I have to ask Toney her take on women in music.

"I think it's a great time," Toney asserts. "I want to have the privilege to say for women and to women that it's OK still to have boundaries, it's OK still to have standards, it's OK still to be feminine and to be soft. It's OK to be intuitive and all the wonderful things that a woman is. I think a woman in music can bring an incredible amount of balance into expression because music is really about expression.

"I believe that the cream rises to the top and I think that the people who are diligent, that work hard will be successful," Toney states. "I've worked hard and I believe that I'll be successful and I don't want to be afraid that it will be more difficult because I'm a woman. I just feel that I have some balance to offer. Men have a tremendous amount to offer, but they see things from a male perspective."

Toney is currently working with Michael Mancini to remix, remaster and recut "Strange Child" and is also preparing singles for airplay in the pop and Nashville markets. Mancini will be working on two more songs with Toney for her next album as well.

Success is at her doorstep, although she is waiting to make her move. For example, Toney was previously offered a distribution deal on her record by Universal and IDM, but walked away because it wasn't quite right for her. It seems that patience and persistence will pay off for her in the end, yet Toney's attitude, next to her talent, is her best asset.

"I'm just looking forward to singing to people and making people feel good and to helping them feel hope and kindness and mercy and grace in a difficult time in our world," Toney smiles.

Support the local scene and visit Susan Toney at www.susantoney.com