Flying with Suzanne Vega

It’s hard to believe it’s been 40 years since Suzanne Vega came out with her first self-titled, critically acclaimed 1985 debut album. With an alt-rock career filled with memorable hits such as “Tom’s Diner” and “Luka,” Vega’s new album, Flying with Angels, is just as hauntingly mesmerizing as ever. The woman cannot sing a false note. 

I had the pleasure of speaking with her ahead of her upcoming show at the Lobero on February 14. Here are a few choice snippets from our conversation.

Can you talk to me a little bit about the inspiration for Flying with Angels?

I think it’s a very modern album. … It was written during the COVID pandemic, more or less. So almost everything on the album has some reference to stuff going on lately, especially here in New York. The “Rats” song [a perfect punk-ish ode to big city life, see the animated video at bit.ly/3LSNcMY] was made up of different anecdotes I was reading about on some of the apps, like Nextdoor.

What about some of the other new songs?

Some of it is reportage. … “Last Train from Mariupol” was made from images in the news and some stories from The New York Times [listen at bit.ly/4k0vHqq]. But it’s a personal response to the situation. So, you know, it depends on how you look.

I always wonder how the album came together. Do you start with an overriding concept, or is it more like, “I’ve got 10 songs, 12 songs that I like; I’m ready”?

It works the second way. If I started with a concept, it would be too limiting. And most of the time, there’s a kind of desperation about making an album. You know, you’re scrounging around for ideas; there’s something scary about working on an album, because what if you fail? What if you write a piece of garbage, and no one wants to do that. So, you’re always afraid that, you know, maybe this is not going to other standards. 

And so that’s why I have Gerry Leonard, who is my musical director, and he sort of gives me a safe place to come and thrash out ideas. … And then you try and find what is the thread. And in this case, I had wanted to call it “Survival of the Fittest,” but my manager complained that that would not be a good title for the tour — “Survival of the Fittest.” And I agreed with him that that sounded too much like a game show, like Survivor or something. So, I thought, “Oh, well, Flying with Angels.”

You also have to be careful what you name something, because inadvertently sometimes it casts a little bit of a spell. When I had the 99.9F° album, everyone came down sick. So, I thought, “Well, Flying with Angels, that sounds good and protected where we’ve got help from unseen sources.”

I think we need all the angels we can get these days. When you are performing now, you obviously have a lot of songs to choose from, and you’re playing older stuff and newer stuff. How does it feel when you’re playing songs you wrote a long, long time ago? Does it feel different? 

Yeah, it feels different. It feels great. I mean, the thing is, I like singing them, and the audience likes hearing them both ways. When we start with “Marlene on the Wall,” people just go crazy, which is great fun. So, it’s not the way it was in the beginning. And in fact, I’ve been playing it for so long that it doesn’t even seem like it’s from any particular era to me, because I have the overlays of all the years that I’ve been singing it. So, yes, I sing the songs I know people will like to hear, and then we figure out which of the new songs fit into the set, and hopefully they bring something good, like a bit of energy or something up-tempo or something in a major key. So, at this stage of the game, yeah, we pick and choose. 

We’re excited to have you back in Santa Barbara. Is there anything else you want to tell people about the show?

Oh, we’re excited to be out there, and it’ll be really nice being in California in February, living here in New York in the winter, and it’s been a while since we’ve toured in California, so we’re very excited. We’re working hard to make a good show, and we can’t wait to get there. 

Suzanne Vega performs a career-spanning show at the Lobero Theatre (33 E. Canon Perdido St.) on Saturday, February 14, 7 p.m. See lobero.org for tickets.