After Dinner Speakers: Suzanne Vega, Wayne Hemingway, Winston Scott

Suzanne Vega was born in Santa Monica, Calif. in 1959. She grew up in an Hispanic neighborhood in New York City, believing she was half-Puerto Rican, until her novelist father told her that he was really her stepfather, and that her biological father was white and had not seen her since she was a baby. This sparked something of an identity crisis, which eventually culminated in a reunion with her biological father almost 20 years later. She later discovered that her parental grandmother had also been a musician, a drummer with the Merry Makers' Ladies Orchestra in the U.S. in the 1920s and '30s. As a teenager, Vega attended the High School of the Performing Arts, where she studied dance. Teaching herself to play the guitar, she began to write songs, fueled by discovering the music of Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed. By the time she attended her first rock concert -- a Lou Reed show -- at the age of 19, she had abandoned her plans to become a dancer and, while at Barnard College, performed her own songs in student cafes and the folk clubs of Greenwich Village. After leaving Barnard, she worked as a receptionist while gradually building up a strong following for her solo acoustic performances on the folk circuit. After numerous abortive attempts to interest several major record companies in her demo tape, glowing reviews from music critics wooed A&M Records into offering her a recording contract - despite having turned her down twice before. In April 1985, her debut album, Suzanne Vega, was released, produced by Lenny Kaye and her co-manager, Steve Addabo. Its collection of self-penned literate and understated songs, showing only a passing resemblance to neo-folk, received universal critical acclaim and Suzanne Vega came to be regarded as the vanguard of a new generation of female singer-songwriters. The album reached No. 11 on the U.K. album chart and provided her first major singles hit, "Marlene on the Wall." The release of her follow-up, Solitude Standing, was buoyed by the huge success of the single, "Luka," which broke new ground in the pop charts, written, as it was, from the viewpoint of a child abuse victim. The song was to bring her numerous awards from organizations, fighting child abuse, for the recognition it brought to the issue. It also garnered a Grammy nomination, and an MTV award for best female video. In 1990, Days of Open Hand, co-produced by Suzanne Vega and Anton Sanko, was released to a mixed critical reception -- while more experimental musically, it moved the focus away from the introspective viewpoint of the two previous albums, to observations of the external world.. Later that year, a surprise money-spinner surfaced when a little-known British dance re-mix duo, DNA, released a bootleg recording of "Tom's Diner," the a cappella track from Solitude Standing, with a heavy dance beat overlaid. Putting aside the option of legal action, A&M decided to release the track with Suzanne Vega's blessing. The song stayed on the British pop and dance charts for weeks. The following year, Vega compiled Tom's Album, a quirky collection of unsolicited versions of "Tom's Diner" which she'd been sent by fans and musicians, in the wake of DNA's experimentation. She also contributed two tracks to Deadicated, an album of covers of Grateful Dead songs, and began writing for her new album, 99.9F, which was released in mid-1992. Produced by Mitchell Froom, it was more technically innovative than her earlier work, relying heavily on percussion, distortion and more accessible pop and techno beats. Her concert appearances included the Woody Guthrie Tribute in New York and a benefit for Italy's Berloni Foundation, organized by Luciano Pavarotti in Modena, in aid of leukemia patients. She toured for much of 1993 in support of 99.9F and appeared at a benefit concert for Amnesty International in London. She has campaigned in support of Amnesty's Working Group for Children.