Who: Singer/Songwriter

House: Dunster

Hometown: Medford, Massacusetts.

Current Residence: Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Spotlight: Ten years ago, Susan Levine was an exhausted ex-New Yorker looking for respite in Santa Fe; now she’s the toast of the contemporary folk scene. Levine, who had moved to New York City after college planning to become a musical theater actress, told 02138 that “the feeling of starting over 2000 miles from everything I’d known, in a place where no one…had preconceived ideas of who I was or what I should be” inspired her to write. She eventually began to feel that songwriting “was more ‘me’ and more honest for me than acting ever was…[it was] something that was all mine, but that I could give away as well.” Levine’s songs are simultaneously rooted firmly in a narrative folk tradition and unlike anything you’ve heard. Her voice is both delicate and robust, and her poetic lyrics are worldly without being world-weary, and candid without being cynical. After moving back to Boston, Levine debuted her first album, Scatter Me, to a packed-to-the-gills Club Passim in November 2001. Levine recently completed the rough mixes on her as-yet-untitled follow-up album. No word on a release date yet, but until then there’s always MySpace.

Ground Covered: In her thespian days, Levine toured with Theaterworks USA, a theater company that adapts children’s literature into musicals. The accommodations weren’t exactly plush (Levine describes “six people, costumes, and a set” crammed into one van), but Levine gained an inside view of everything “from theaters in Manhattan, to Indian reservations in Arizona, to huge theaters on “Broadway” in South Dakota, to “cafetoriums” in Kansas.” These rapid-fire experiences of unfamiliar places eventually served as inspiration for her songs.

Day Job: While she was living in Santa Fe, Levine’s inner “type A Harvard grad” persuaded her that she “needed to ‘do something’, i.e. go back to school.” She earned a degree in Music Therapy, and subsequently started working as a music therapist.

Friends: Levine is still tight with her original Dunster House crew, a liberal-arts-y bunch including a Dartmouth economics prof and a television writer.

Back in the Day: Levine’s attraction to the limelight while an undergrad prompted her father to dub Harvard an “$80,000 theater camp.” The happy camper, who says she chose her English and American Literature and Language major because it was “the closest [she] could get to being a theater major”, appeared in at least three shows every semester. Levine also had the distinction of going over well with the tough crowd at the Crimson, who knocked her only for “[not] exactly [looking] the part” in a production of Brighton Beach Memoirs (she played “a sickly eleven-year-old”).

Pooch: Some dog owners spoil their pets with bites of leftover steak; Levine’s mutt, Joe, has his own web site. On his dog blog, Joe rattles off his likes (“meat,” “cheese and milk,” and “my mommy” top the list) and dislikes (mailmen and “people in big coats and hats who walk down the street without looking at me”; consider yourself warned), as well as waxing eloquent about his passion for squirrel-chasing.

In her own words: “The songwriters I loved were somehow able to take the personal and make it universal, to paint portraits and describe events with details that didn’t tell you how to feel, but allowed you to see an experience through your own lens. I continue to strive for this in my songwriting.”

*SusanJLevine.com
*Tooth or Consequences: Review of The Tooth of Crime [The Harvard Crimson]
*Porter’s Aged Nymph Goes Astray at Harvard: Review of Nymph Errant [The Harvard Crimson]