“I moved so much, both emotionally and physically, while making this record. I’ve gotten good at knowing what I need to keep holding onto and what I don’t.”
– Suzanne Santo
Distance, time, perspective. On the long road to catharsis, sometimes a long road is just the ticket. For vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Suzanne Santo, it took a grueling world tour and worldwide pandemic to pen and then polish the 12 songs on her stunning second album, “Yard Sale.” She began writing the album while touring the globe with Irish musician Hozier in 2019, a gig that frequently found her pulling double-duty as his opening act and bandmate. “We never stopped,” Suzanne says of the trek. “Looking back, I can recognize how much of a game-changer it was. It raised my musicianship to a new level. It truly reshaped my career.”
Not that her musicianship needed raising. A live wire on guitar, fiddle and banjo, Suzanne caught our attention a few years ago while touring through Southern California in support of her first solo album, “Ruby Red.” Her sound is a genre-bending cocktail of forward rock-n-roll, Americana, and Southern-gothic soul spiked with profoundly personal lyrics and an acrobatic voice – forged over a decade performing as one-half of the LA-based duo HoneyHoney with musician Ben Jaffe. As one critic put it, Suzanne performs with a depth and intensity that will not fail to move you.
On “Yard Sale,” as the title implies, we find Suzanne in transition – with big pieces of her life scattered on the grass. Grappling with troubled relationships, traumatic events and internal demons, her songs are raw, urgent and haunting with deep backstories looming just outside the periphery. But through each darkness shines a ray of hope, a making way for better things to come. “I was broken up with while writing the record,” Suzanne says. “I fell in love again while writing the record. And I learned to fearlessly follow my gut, in all places of my life.” Wise words and compelling work to help shake us from our pandemic funk. | 
