Leisure Suter

The journey that carried the musicians
through their freshman album started long before the Blues Fest gig
that made Syracusans take notice of the robust singer and her
in-the-pocket band. Suter, 45, was born in Brooklyn, and has spent a
lifetime crafting her abnormally deep voice into a powerful thing of
beauty.

Alexis P. Suter: Larger-than-life blues
chanteuse brings her high-energy band to town for a CD release party at
the Hotel Syracuse on Thursday. MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO

Oddly, that voice didn’t always linger
in the contralto range that currently gives Suter’s band its genuinely
extraordinary tincture. “I had a very high voice as a child, but as I
got older my voice got deeper,” Suter explains. “It got to the point
where I was, like, the only female baritone-bass in different choruses
and choirs that I was in. . .  {Now}
I get all the time when I’m calling {people} and they say, ‘Hi, sir!’
I’ve gotten so used to that I don’t even correct them anymore!”

Suter graduated from Pacific High School
in Brooklyn, having studied percussion, tuba and piano while attending
classes. At the same time Suter’s mother, Carrie, had been pruning the
young singer’s voice. “She would teach me little songs at home because
my church, once a year, would have different programs like the
Christmas program, things of that nature,” Alexis Suter recalls. “I can
remember when I was 4 or 5 years old standing in front of the church
and doing little songs that my mother taught me, and starting from that
foundation: from the church, which most African-American singers start
from.” 

From high school, Suter spent time on
the off-Broadway circuit, a fact that Suter attributes to her ability
to turn her band’s bluesy show into more than a mere concert. “I think
{my musical theater experience} mixes really well with the music to
really, you know, get it a little more dramatic and get the point
across,” Suter says. “You have to actually paint a picture, and that’s
what I try to do.”

By the mid-1990s Suter had been signed
to Epic-Sony Japan, the first black singer to have done so. Yet soon
after Suter had completed an electronic press kit of digital
promotional materials for the media, things had soured; Suter “had
terrible management,” as she puts it, “and I just dropped out of the
scene for a minute.”

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Back in Brooklyn, Suter soon met drummer Ray Grappone and vocalist Vicki Bell, a husband-wife couple who in 1998 had founded Hipbone Records,
a boutique label. As Suter recalls, an ensuing partnership was born of
their mutual attraction: “I fell in love with them because of the
seriousness they have for this craft, as well as I, and the love that
they showed me right from the gate. Vicki is phenomenal. She is a
co-writer, an engineer, a mixer; she is an everything person.”

In fact, Bell is featured as a backup
singer in Suter’s band lineup, but Suter never refers to Bell in that
manner. “People really don’t see it. They just see this cute little
blonde girl on the side, and they don’t know that she is the band, and we get all of our ideas and everything from her.”

Grappone also performs in the band as
the man behind the sticks; Suter’s gig, however, has come after
Grappone’s long string of high-level performances with the likes of
Carol Channing, Donna McKechnie and composer Stephen Sondheim. The
band’s other positions are filled by brothers Jimmy Bennett on guitar and Peter Bennett on bass, and Linda Pino and Glenn Turner on background vocals in addition to Bell. 

Among other sidecar artists, the band occasionally brings in Bruce Katz,
the Hammond B3 organist who gave a workshop at the 2007 Blues Fest, and
who has also performed with Gregg Allman, John Hammond and the
Organiks. “We had another keyboard player, but we had to really get a
balance, someone that could really capture the essence {of our band},”
Suter says. “{Katz} caught it. He’s been playing with us off and on for
a very, very long time now, and all I can say—which has probably been
said all over the world about this man—is that he’s phenomenal.”

The new album features 11 tracks,
refined during the past several years of live performances. On the CD
the group sounds both energetic and dramatic, banking on Suter’s
theatrical experience for an extra kick of spice, yet several songs
like “Hole That I’m In” and “Do What You Do” feature woeful stories
about difficult, dark times. 

“It comes from life experiences,” Suter
says. “Even though we’re a band and we love each other we do all have
individual lives, and sometimes things can get a little rough, you
know? Have you ever heard of people writing letters to themselves?
Writing a song for me to get to you and you take it and pass it on.
‘Go! Now I gave it to you!’ And that’s basically what this writing
thing is.”

Suter is excited to be heading back to Syracuse with her
new CD. “Just being able to share ourselves with people, they treated
us so good {in Syracuse}, you know? We had a wonderful time! It was out
of sight, and any time that they call us to come up there, I’m coming!”

Tickets are $12. For more information, call 263-2254.

—Matt Mumau