Suzanne McNeil: Press

'Lost in Boston'
Local singer-songwriter Suzanne McNeil perfectly captures the love-and-frustration relationship Bostonians have with their city.

“…A versatility that is unmatched, as jazz, country and pop are all within her range…McNeil’s debut album, ‘Bliss,’ on her own Candescent label, is a startlingly vivid taste of how she melds disparate influences into compelling folk-rock and pop.”

“She’s funky and upbeat as she exudes more than a hint of country underpinnings in her songwriting.”

One listen to “Down the Highway” will have you cryin’ in your beer and wishing you could have been there to beat the piss out of the dude that broke her heart.”

Her natural songwriting talent shines bright in ‘Bliss’. It’s relaxing, smooth and 100% pure enjoyment.”

WOMEN IN MUSIC
SUZANNE McNEIL
Quincy , MA
Unsigned
http://www.suzannemcneil.com/
Singer/Songwriter Suzanne McNeil was born in Massachusetts but grew up on Cape Breton Island , Nova Scotia ( Canada ) where, she says, music is as natural as breathing to the people. Based on her SonicBids EPK however, it seems New England is lucky enough to have her back, right here in Quincy , MA .

Suzanne and her equally talented band (Tim Mahoney-guitar/background vocals, Dave Leitch-Bass, Jason Nute-Drums) seem to be putting out some great rootsy material with a pop rock sound and soulful edge; clean, crisp, quite melodic and enjoyable.

Suzanne’s musical career began in a most unusual way. It seems she truly loved people and helping others and entered into a career of Social Work. However, her passion for music (and I’m sure her friends and fans who noticed her obvious talent) made her decide to send a demo off to an agent to see what developed. From this, she found herself quickly getting road gigs where she lived out of Hotel Rooms in the Mid-West.

Suzanne says she thought she was truly in heaven; getting paid to sing and to bring happiness to others. From that experience she soon found herself performing around the country with various bands and various styles of music. All the while, Suzanne was honing her skills and developing her talent and preparing to pursue a dream; something she could call her own. Now she has put her lyrical and musicical writing skills together to write her own all original CD – “Down the Highway.”

With a very appealing and gentle voice, great writing and catchy material, Suzanne, I feel, has done quite well for her first release. Not stuck in the debut “similar sound, similar content” rut, Suzanne has managed to develop a progressive release where each song takes the listener somewhere else in sound, design and spirit.

Because of Suzanne’s writing and performance style, I feel she is an artist that crosses over into several musical genres. Her music can be enjoyed by alternative fans as well as fans of Pop, melodic rock, singer/songwriter and even into the electronic folk realm. Her material is both entertaining and very enjoyable. Check out her site and her her music to see for yourself!

Metronome Magazine
November 2005
Singer songwriter Suzanne McNeil has an uncanny knack for putting everyday observations to song. Propelled by her beautiful voice, McNeil and her band, Tim Mahoney on guitars, Dave Leitch on bass, Jason Nute on drums, Matt Glover on mandolin, Keith Reid on B3 organ, Nancy McNeil, Scott Bowser and Deidre Wait on vocals and Ducky Carlisle on percussion (Carlisle also engineered and mixed the proceedings), incite poignant sounds capes with their fine playing and singing.
With a folky, laid back delivery, McNeil reflects the female singer-songwriters of the sixties and seventies more than her new millennium contemporaries. She’s funky and upbeat as she exudes more than a hint of country underpinnings in her songwriting.
Best songs: “Unaware,” the chiming “Smile of the Moon”, the cleverly penned three chord strut of “Mr. Noncommittal,” and McNeil’s super-cool cover of Bill Withers, “Use Me”

The Noise-Rock around Boston-Issue 258 january 2006
SUZANNE McNEIL
Candescent
Bliss
10 songs
About 35 seconds into this, the names Suzanne Vega and Alanis Morissette were wrestling for supremacy in my mind. But praise the Lord, they vanished pretty quick (The Cowboy Junkies took over, but that’s cool with me). Just because Suzanne may sound a bit like someone else doesn’t mean jack-shit. This is a bit more countrified that one would expect after the first cut, but one listen to “Down the Highway” will have you cryin’ in your beer and wishing you could have been there to beat the piss out of the dude that broke her heart. There are tears a-plenty here (the title track will have you curled up on the floor if you actually have a heart), but there’s an overall uplift that makes it feel more like gospel than Opry. When John Mayer sings the blues, it feels like a rip-off. Not the case here. These songs didn’t come out of some generic cheat-book. Never met her, but she must have some stories to tell.

It isn’t just country---there’s plenty of genre-bending (and where isn’t there these days?), as well as an oddly fitting, soulful cover of Bill Withers’ “Use Me,” to make it all rise above. Like going to a swanky lounge and finding a few peanut shells on the floor. Fine, fine stuff.(Tim Emswiler

The Patriot Ledger (South Boston, Mass.)
January 23, 2006
MUSIC PREVIEW: McNeil is on a constant musical journey

Singer/songwriter Suzanne McNeil will play at the Holy Ground in Quincy and The Snug in Hingham this weekend. (Courtesy photo)
By JAY N. MILLER
For The Patriot Ledger
Connecting the geographical dots in Suzanne McNeil’s young life could get complicated. Born in Framingham, she was raised in Cape Breton, went to college in Nova Scotia, and ran a school in Vancouver after graduation, before following her musical urge to a variety of jobs singing on cruise ships.
Which eventually led to her landing back in the Boston area, where the Milton resident now teaches 115 preschoolers by day, and nurtures her singing career by night.
McNeil’s musical journeys are almost as all-encompassing. Her Cape Breton upbringing led to a Celtic flavor in her work, although she tends toward folk-rock these days. But those days and nights on cruise ships led to a versatility that is unmatched, as jazz, country and pop are all within her range.
McNeil appears at The Holy Ground in Quincy on Friday, fronting her quartet.
On Saturday, she’ll be at The Snug in Hingham in a duo format with guitarist Tim Mahoney.
McNeil’s debut album, ‘‘Bliss,’’ on her own Candescent label, is a startlingly vivid taste of how she melds all those disparate influences into compelling folk-rock and pop. The album was recorded at Ice Station Zebra in Medford, with Ducky Carlisle as engineer and mixer, and a backing band of musicians McNeil met at the weekly Wednesday open mikes at The Holy Ground.
‘‘Unaware’’ opens the album with a rocking fervor that suggests Christine McVie’s heyday with Fleetwood Mac, although jazzy and folk undertones give it a unique flair. ‘‘Smile of the Moon’’ is the kind of delectable folk tune that evokes Lori McKenna’s best. The title cut suggests a Sarah McLachlan-like dreamy pop, but with serious alt-rock grit. And one of the CD’s most tantalizing cuts is a cover of Bill Withers’ old hit ‘‘Use Me,’’ with Mahoney’s fuzz-toned guitar and Keith Reid’s Hammond B-3 organ crafting a funk-rock treatment that honors, yet expands, the soul classic.
McNeil keeps her day job in education with a preschool program designed by a child psychologist and an off-Broadway composer, called Music Together.
‘‘We do things like teach the kids seven or eight different rhythms in one class,’’ said McNeil. ‘‘Most adults would be too confused by it to take it all in, but the kids are so natural and open they pick it up right away. We do our best to get the parents involved too, and it’s usually a nice sound we produce. The program has expanded into Canada, Italy and even Russia now, and is headquartered in Princeton, N.J. We have no school as such, but use a room in one of the local churches, and right now I have 115 kids in class every morning. It’s a lot of fun and allows me to be not such a starving artist.’’
One of McNeil’s first Boston jobs was in the house band aboard the Boston Harbor cruise ship The Odyssey.
‘‘The Odyssey was like playing a wedding every night,’’ she said. ‘‘We had to literally play everything. They hired a lot of people from Berklee School of Music for that reason.’’
But when McNeil began exploring her solo potential, she found not many clubs willing to book an unknown from Cape Breton who plays folk rock.
‘‘I had a tough time getting any gigs on my own,’’ McNeil said. ‘‘But when I mentioned Cape Breton, Gerry Hanley at The Holy Ground asked me to come on down. I sang a song one night with (Holy Ground regular singer) Derek Keane at (neighboring affiliate club) Paddy Barry’s, and that’s what got me going.
‘‘Gerry even helped me find the church room for our preschool. I’ve been doing their Wednesday open mikes since they started them, and most of the musicians on the album are people I met there.’’
As her performing career began to take off, McNeil also discovered the joy of songwriting. She wrote nine of the album’s 10 songs, five with Mahoney as co-writer.
‘‘Last year I started writing in earnest, and found I loved the process,’’ she said. ‘‘I could’ve written five albums, I had so many ideas. The CD is all over the place stylistically, but I think it has a basic folk-rock theme. Coming from Cape Breton, I’ve always been labeled a Celtic singer, but I’ve always wanted to rock out. There is also, I’ve found, a fine line between Celtic and country music, so there is that influence in my work too. I’m still finding my own way.’’
When she’s writing, she starts with a story, she said. ‘‘I always seem to write the words first, and I guess that’s a result of my years of teaching. I am usually hearing melodies in my head as I write, or even in my sleep.
‘‘On the song ‘Bliss,’ I was literally hearing the vocal harmonies in my head as I wrote it. Tim does the opposite, and begins with the music first, so we complement each other very well.’’
The CD is available on McNeil’s Web site, suzannemcneil.com, or through cdbaby.com, at shows, and at Best Buy stores in New England.
One associate of McNeil has devised a plan to market the tune ‘‘Mr. Noncommital,’’ a jaunty folk-rocker about a reluctant swain, as a single, so a special re-release of the CD is in the works.
When she’s not teaching or working her solo career, McNeil sings most weekends with The Online Band, a Berklee-rich big band led by vocalist/saxophonist Dave Ayotte, which also includes Dixie Dreg T. Lavitz.
‘‘I am one of three singers in that band. It’s mostly jazz in high-end country club settings, with a lot of stunning musicians.’’
In her show at The Snug in Hingham, McNeil will be in duo format with Mahoney, while The Holy Ground show will be a quartet adding drummer Jason Nute and bassist Dave Leitch. Special guests might also pop up at the Quincy club, since most of McNeil’s cohorts at the open mike have sung or played with her many times.
‘‘You get real music lovers at The Snug,’’ McNeil said, ‘‘and it’s a very intimate, tiny room. As a duo, Tim and I will do a lot of originals, pop, rock and country, and we do a lot of girl-guy vocal things. At The Holy Ground we will do one set as a duo, and then do two full-band shows. It is basically a trio with me playing guitar too, but my sister Deirdre Wait and Scott Bowser are likely to join us for vocal harmonies.’’
And about that cover of ‘‘Use Me’’?
‘‘I loved Bill Withers’ soul, but as a white girl doing it, I knew we had to change it up,’’ she explained. ‘‘I knew what I wanted, upright bass for instance. But the bulk of that song was a collaborative effort with the other musicians, trying to give me what I wanted and trying different things.
‘‘A lot of that song’s success comes from the band, and I learned a lot. But the way Ducky ran the studio, it was always just a fun time exploring all these ideas - I can’t wait to make another record.’’

Suzanne McNeil
"Bliss"
Genre: pop
In her debut release, Suzanne McNeil unleashes a refreshing collection of songs full of personal journeys, experiences and love. Her natural songwriting talent shines bright in “Bliss”. It’s relaxing, smooth and 100% pure enjoyment! The catchy tunes with have you singing along in no time!