Putting Energy Into the Things She Loves, Suzanne Santo Releases “Yard Sale”
GETTING HER START ACTING IN NEW YORK WHEN SHE WAS YOUNG — Suzanne Santo moved to Los Angeles while coping with her first heartbreak. “Music was the medicine to heal my ‘broken heart,’” she says, poking fun at her younger self, but it’s easy to tell there is truth in that. “To this day [it] is still so valuable; it is just the most pure source energy and fulfilling place I can go at any moment.” As for how music became her career path, her roommate at the time had a friend who booked local open mic nights, and another friend that produced music. She performed at her first open mic, which has impacted her to this day. “I met so many people that night that I’m still friends with that have furthered my career, and it’s very weird,” she explains. “I almost didn’t have a choice. Music was just hitting me upside the head like, ‘Go this way!’ so I just listened to the call. The more I do that in my life, the more things just really line up. So I don’t feel like I had a choice, and I’m fine with that.”
In February of this year, Santo relocated from Los Angeles to Austin. As with many of her life experiences, there was a sense of clarity with this decision, as if Austin was screaming her name. Moving shaped her life in so many ways, as she expresses excitedly: “I met this incredible man that I’m deeply in love with, and my career’s in a place that I never thought it could be. I’m being held so dearly musically; I keep meeting all these friends, and people are showing up for me. There’s a freedom here that I didn’t have in L.A. — musically and energetically.”
Her upcoming album Yard Sale will be released on Aug. 27. She recorded the album in Los Angeles, and reflects on how thankful she is for the musicians and friends that worked with her. “To have the volume of great folks that participated is something I’m so grateful for, kind of amazed by, and just solidifies the whole live by the sword, die by the sword music community that I really respect and love,” Santo says. Originally, this album was meant to be a self-release like her first solo record, Ruby Red, which released in 2017, but she signed on with the record label Soundly, which helped the process become more collaborative.
Before she set out as a solo musician, Santo was a part of the duo honeyhoney for 12 years, with the musician Benjamin Jaffe. When discussing the differences between that and being a solo artist, Santo is anything but bitter, showing love for both experiences. “honeyhoney was a very shared experience of collaboration and some of that was codependent and restrictive, and some of that was where I cut my teeth as a songwriter and grew as a musician,” she says. “I reached potential I did not know I was capable of in the studio, as a songwriter, as a musician. That was very valuable. The difference is: by myself I have the freedom to do so much and really expand, and I was sort of limiting myself for a while in honeyhoney in that sense — both of us were. We were sort of staying in a lane together. After a while, we grew out of it. But we still love the band and love the music.”
Santo has learned a lot about herself with Yard Sale.She wrote her new record while in both literal and emotional transition, creating many of the songs while on tour with the artist Hozier. She opened for him and played in his band for a year, and devoted any extra time to writing songs. “I’ve never really written songs that way,” she starts. “It was a really interesting transition from having a luxury, from say, the comfort of my own home, or even my own touring with my music. It was actually quite off the beaten path for me, so I appreciated knowing that I could be malleable in that way, that I could make it work under somewhat stressful circumstances,” she says. “Essentially, it’s not easy to write around other people, but I would just do it because I absolutely had to.” When she arrived back home from tour, she made sure to set a schedule for herself with the last batch of songs she had to write, and wrote every single day. “You kind of have to flex your muscle. You know, they say once you get to work the muse shows up. So it was a little bit of both of those things. The muse was hitting me upside the head like, 'Let's go!’ And then I also had to coax her out.”
Santo has a very open outlook on the world, and embraces her challenges along with her successes. The time she has put into her craft and the lessons she has learned have given her a very well-spoken way of sharing advice. An essential lesson she shares is the importance of collaboration, saying, “Wherever you decide to put your attention is where your energy is going to go. If you put your attention in needing to be the one that has the best idea, or proving yourself in a way rather than just finding the best song inside of yourself, that stuff goes a really long way. Always at the center is the music and the writing, and I honor it. It comes from a pure source and it took me a little while to stand up confidently with that rather than feeling like I had something to prove when I was younger.”
Santo’s biggest inspirations are her life experiences. She is drawn to her childhood, family, and intimate relationships. “Father’s Daughter” is the song most meaningful to her personally; it appears on her last record that she made with honeyhoney and touches on these themes. “You get some of the worst qualities of hand-me-down from your parents, but you also get some of their best qualities, and it’s up to you to mitigate where you stand as a person on that reception of your lineage,” she explains. “You’re receiving these traits and qualities —some genetically and some just learned behavior. I really love my father a lot, and I had to reconcile at some point with the sides of him that weren’t the greatest, but in the end I’m so lucky to be his daughter.”
There are so many aspects of being a musician that Santo loves, but her favorite part is performing. “I could write songs all day and ‘get a real job,’” she says, “but the playing it for other people … There’s so much value in that exchange, and it is my absolute favorite thing in the world.” Performing shaped her career, and gave her extremely powerful moments. The experience that meant the most to her was the opportunity to sing for Joni Mitchell, at a music conference called National Association of Music Merchants. “A few artists and I got to sing Joni Mitchell’s songs while she was in the audience, and I sang ‘River,’” she says. “Afterwards, she came up to me. She was in a wheelchair because she’s very ill, and she held my hand and said, ‘That was just beautiful honey, that was so beautiful.’ I just burst into tears, I could not keep it together. The honor of it — I’ve been listening to Joni Mitchell since I was a teenager.”
Santo reflects on how having an audience also positively impacted her though the pandemic. “Recently, I made an Etsy store and sold handwritten lyrics,” she says. “Aside from it doing really well and helping me out financially, each order was custom and I’d have these one-on-one experiences with people in email. It was so powerful to hear what my music meant to people, email after email after email. I did this last year because I didn’t tour, and my whole operation shut down. So I opened this Etsy store, and not only did it pay my bills, but it was such an emotional support of just getting that experience and remembering that I have these people. They have my back.”
Santo’s new album represents her extremely well, through her stories and even just the name of the album. Yard Sale is both metaphorical and literal to her, reflecting her “different incarnations of life” and carrying a nostalgia from going to yard sales with her grandmother as a child. When trying to pick a favorite song off the album, Santo compares it to picking a favorite kid. She narrows it down to “Mercy” and “Save for Love,” calling them “reflections of the grander transitions in my life and the ethos that I live by.”
When Santo’s album releases, she plans to tour again; she hopes to headline theaters. Most importantly, she wants to enjoy every second of this incredible experience she has made possible for herself. She is doing her best to enjoy every aspect of her life right now. “I want to live my best life and feel great. I exercise and I eat well and take all kinds of supplements. I have such a boner for it right now,” she laughs.
“Bad Beast” and “Common Sense,” the first singles from her album, are out now.
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