Although country fans have since the late 1980’s recognized that Suzy Bogguss is an incredibly gifted singer and songwriter, it was with her last CD Swing in 2003, that non country music fans first experienced Bogguss’ excellence as a vocalist. Although she set out to make a country swing album, Swing was widely embraced, and critically acclaimed within the jazz community. With her current CD Sweet Danger, the two-time recipient of a Country Music Association award has stretched the boundaries again, and this time we can anticipate that the pop music community will warmly embrace her music. Bogguss can no longer be pigeonholed as a cowgirl with a guitar and a song, but she has a right to expect that critics, and fans alike will simply refer to her as one of today’s top vocalists.

Bogguss recently took time out from promoting her CD, touring, being a mother to her son, and a wife to songwriter Doug Crider, to talk to me on the phone from her home in Nashville. Having a conversation with Bogguss is a lot like sitting down for a chat with an old friend, she is affable, witty and laughs easily. The girl who started life in the small town of Aledo Illinois, and has become a platinum selling recording artist, talked about Sweet Danger, the previous CD Swing, and the things she values most in life.

Although Bogguss admits to pushing the envelope, in recent years, “The truth is (she says laughing) I have always been pushing boundaries. Even in the days when I was trying to make records that would fit the (country) radio format (I was pushing the boundaries). When I started at Capitol, I did a record called Somewhere Between, and it was very cowboy oriented stuff, but it was also eclectic, because it had some tunes that were more what you would think of as country pop tunes. The thing that always came up (from people) at the label was ‘Why isn’t the music more lush, and why there aren’t there more instruments on here?’ The label gave me more (free) reign, so I started layering more,” she says.

“As time went on I wanted to make sure that the personalities (of the musicians) were coming into play with the material. I always tried to make sure that with whatever band we had in the studio that I made the best of the situation that I was given. I have always had a feel for pop music, but I might have had a bluegrass guy, so I would throw him into the mix.  I used these amazing players, who were artists in their own right, and created the music in that way. That is the way it has always been for me, putting different types of people together, to make something that doesn’t have just one sound, but has a lot of personality from a lot of different things,” says Bogguss. 

When she set out to create Swing in 2003, Bogguss did not anticipate just how much she was about to stretch as an artist. She recalls hooking up with producer Ray Benson from the country music group Asleep At The Wheel, “I had known Ray (Benson) for a really long time, as a performer and as a friend. I had opened some shows for Asleep At The Wheel, back in the eighties in Montana. I went into the project (Swing), thinking that we were going to make a western swing album. My first thought was, I like to sing this western swing stuff, and there is a side of me that always had this cowgirl image going on. I thought that would be really great, but when I started sending him material, I stumbled upon some songwriters who were much more in the thirties and forties swing vein. The first thing that Ray said to me was, ‘This is jazz. This isn’t swing.’ I said, (as she laughs), ‘Is that a problem?’ He said, ‘Absolutely not, I love these songs. It is just great.”