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Mary Sue Twohy
Songs to Hang on Stars
Azalea City

Ever try painting with sound? That's what Mary Sue Twohy has accomplished in her latest CD. Her etheral voice and the swirling Hammond organ of Jon Carroll lend a Van Gogh sky to the stars in the title track. Coupled with guitars and harmony by Pete and Maura Kennedy, it's a suitable background for Mary Sue's vocals. These songs are pure poetry. Truthfully: Three of the lyrics are the words of Emily Dickinson set to music. Perhaps the most recognizable one of them is 'Because I Could Not Stop for Death,' the disc¹s closing song. Produced by Scott Smith and accompanied by Jen Smith of Naked Blue, Mary Sue takes her songwriting to unexplored reaches of the cosmos in this disc. And she's working without a net. In the most traditional sounding track, 'The Ghost of Matt McCann,' an original song co-written with Daniel Greenberg, she sings accapella with only a low drone accompaniment. Most of the lyrics are free form with irregular rhymes -- if they use rhyme at all. Most of the music is loose, as well, the better to show off her voice.

'Songs to Hang on Stars' has no hooks. The songs are put into orbit by Mary Sue's compelling voice, driven by pure visual imagery. She takes big chances and the close listener, looking for something not so down-to-earth, reaps the real reward. Compare her imagery in 'Whole New View': 'Love can't live without hope and her feathers' to Emily Dickinson's words in 'Snowing': 'Hope is a thing with feathers that perches on the soul.' It¹s easy to see where Mary Sue is getting her inspiration. Lucky us.

"If anything Twohy's soprano has only grown more appealing and expressive in the interim, and the choice of tunes this time around consistently serve her well"
(Review of The Risk Involved - 2001)

MARY SUE TWOHY "Songs to Hang on Stars" Azalea City


Friday, November 4, 2005; Page WE06

MARY SUE TWOHY"Songs to Hang on Stars"Azalea City

If Takoma Park singer-songwriter Mary Sue Twohy wins another Wammie for "Songs to Hang on Stars," she'll have poet Emily Dickinson to thank, among others.

Hope, that "thing with feathers," as Dickinson famously put it, is one of the album's recurring themes. On the opening (and title) track, Twohy sings: "We are living on a star/Shining hope for someone far/Touch the earth and know/Somewhere, out there, we all glow." All the while, her lovely soprano shines, too.


Mary Sue Twohy mines the work of Emily Dickinson to explore issues of hope and relationships.
Mary Sue Twohy mines the work of Emily Dickinson to explore issues of hope and relationships. (By Robert Corwin)

That verse was composed by Twohy, but her best lyrics have less to do with a cosmic brand of optimism than with human relationships, the subject at the heart of her haunting refrain in "Baltimore" and the narrative ballads "Missionary Ridge" and "The Ghost of Matt McCann" (both co-written by Daniel Greenberg). Twohy also uses three Dickinson poems to create additional layers of emotional depth and an otherworldly coda (via "Because I Could Not Stop for Death"). As a result, what initially comes across as a fanciful pop-folk album ends up sounding far more intriguing and complex.

What's more, save for the a cappella rendering of "The Ghost of Matt McCann," the arrangements emphasize a neatly tailored array of shimmering tones, vocal harmonies and languid pulses. But then, given a lineup that includes Scott Smith, Jon Carroll, and Pete and Maura Kennedy, that's not surprising.

-- Mike Joyce

"On her debut recording, Mary Sue Twohy sets a dozen delicate butterflies to flight."

"As far as the Goose-Bump meter goes, Mary Sue Twohy is up there with Nanci Griffith, Sarah McLachlan, Iris Dement."

"Mary Sue Twohy is a gentle, but compelling singer..."

"To quote Yoda, "Do or do not...there is no try." There's no trying about The Risk Involved; Twohy just gets out there and does it, and she does it well."

Mary Sue Twohy '91 had an epiphany at a smoky bar in Arlington, Virginia, in 1996. "All through my first song I could hear the clink of glasses and the voices of people talking," Twohy says. "So I set down my guitar and sang 'Sweet Mercy' a cappella. The crowd went nuts." When she stepped away from the mike, she realized her career as a folk musician was about to skyrocket.

At the time, Twohy was relatively unknown in the world of folk music. But several years later she continues to make inroads into the industry. The Washington, D.C., resident clinched the Washington Area Music Association's Best New Artist Award in 1999, has produced two CDs and is at work on a third, and has been lauded by such critics as Mike Joyce of The Washington Post for her compelling lyrics and appealing delivery.

Not bad for a woman who had intended to be an IBM sales executive.

Twohy grew up listening to her father, James Twohy '61, sing folk music in a church choir in Aberdeen, New Jersey. She first realized she wanted to become a singer on a warm Arizona night in 1989 when she heard Maura Geissler '84 sing "Autumn Night," written by her brother, Mark Geissler '86.

"I was at a concert on the back porch of The Catholic Worker in Phoenix the summer before my junior year at Notre Dame when I heard Maura sing a love song written by her brother," Twohy recalls. "The song was so beautiful; I wished I could sing and play like that."

That wish inspired Twohy to grab a guitar and start picking. In exchange for homemade cookies, Twohy received informal guitar lessons from fellow Domer Cletus Kennelly '84. Twohy chose folk as her genre because she was familiar with the style of music. "Folk music is lyric-oriented; it's about people and grass roots," Twohy says. "I think people are attracted to this type of community music -- music that is by and for the people."

Like other folk artists, Twohy draws on personal experience when writing music. The lyrics for one of her songs derive from her father's battle against meningitis in 2003. Another, "The Risk Involved," explores the sensation of falling deeply in love. That won the "Best Song of the Year" citation in 2002 from the Washington Area Music Association.

The singer-songwriter had an inauspicious start at a deli in Rapid City, South Dakota, in 1991. "I couldn't even finish my song, I was so nervous," Twohy says. She apologized to the crowd and returned to her table to the sounds of "sympathetic applause" before driving back to Pine Ridge, South Dakota, where she was teaching on an Indian reservation. In subsequent years she juggled a full-time job at a not-for-profit in the nation's capital with frequent singing gigs, which netted almost no income. Once, at a folk concert in Annapolis, Maryland, she earned a "nice slice of homemade pie" for singing two songs.

But persistence paid off for the soprano. By 2002, she had sold some 3,000 CDs and watched as sales of both her records -- Training Butterflies and The Risk Involved -- went to second pressing. Twohy also was making a name for herself as an entrepreneur. Two years ago she opened her own national music publicity company, BTM Communications. Now she helps other folk and country artists garner media coverage -- all while maintaining a rigorous touring schedule of her own, which includes being on the road several times a month.

Twohy has been compared to such female folk-music powerhouses as Sarah McLaughlin, Nanci Griffith and Iris DeMent. Tom Shakeshaft, a federal prosecutor in Chicago, first heard Twohy, who is 5-foot-2, sing at a birthday party for a friend in Washington, D.C., four years ago. "What's so amazing is that she is such a small person, but her voice just fills the room," says Shakeshaft. He was so impressed that he offered Twohy financial assistance to produce her second CD. "Hearing her play live is a powerful experience. You can't stop wondering where that voice is coming from."

Twohy is grateful for the success she has achieved in the industry. One of the first songs she ever recorded is a paean to the patron saint of musicians, Saint Cecilia.

"After my performance [in Virginia], I knew I had made a breakthrough with my music and wrote 'Saint Cecilia' in gratitude," Twohy says. "I began to realize that when you connect into the artistic realm, you connect into the divine. . . . It is a humbling experience."

Twohy's CDs can be ordered through her website at: www.marysuetwohy.com, through Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com or by writing Twohy at P.O. Box 11430, Takoma Park, MD 20913.

Ruth Ann Keyso-Vail '91 is a freelance writer and photographer and the author of Women of Okinawa: Nine Voices from a Garrison Island.

The Risk Involved (Azalea City)
Artists have come to dread their sophomore efforts, for good reason. A second record separates the sheep from the goats. It's a true
test of someone's ability to come back with something listenable after a memorable first record.

Takoma Park songwriter Mary Sue Twohy, however, selected songs that
showcase her airy voice and she wrote or co-wrote four of the 11 tracks on her second studio effort, "The Risk Involved."
It doesn't hurt that this disc was produced by Pete and Maura Kennedy, who lend backing vocals and
instruments. Mr. Kennedy also produced her debut recording, "Training Butterflies," in 1998. She won
the Washington Area Music Association award for best new artist in 1999.

Miss Twohy and her voice, however, remain in crisp focus on this record that celebrates innocence and strength, not only in the lyrics and song selection, but also in their delivery.
The songs Miss Twohy wrote stand out, although she does a credible job with Si Kahn's "Luray Women," Richard Thompson's "How Will I Ever be Simple Again" and Nanci Griffith's "Old Land (You Are Holy)."
With Darryl Purpose, Miss Twohy wrote "Gift of the Magi," which was taken directly from the famous O. Henry short story. She co-wrote a song about a hope chest called "Box in the Closet" with Mary Gordon
Hall.
Miss Twohy's own composition, "The Song of the Lark," deals with
fear and the heartbreak of a young woman's failure to be open about her feelings from the start.
The title track, co-written with Franklin Taggart, about the transcience of of love, is possibly the most poetic effort on the disc.
Expect to hear more of Mary Sue Twohy.

"The haunting acapella Twohy does on 'Sweet Mercy', you just want to break down and sob during this one - every time"