Suzie Ungerleider & Caroline Marie Brooks

Hugh's Room Live Presents Suzie Ungerleider and Caroline Marie Brooks for an intimate performance at The Paradise Theatre.

Suzie Ungerleider officially opens a new chapter of her already distinguished and highly successful career with the release of her Juno-nominated album entitled My Name is Suzie Ungerleider. Bursting with her trademark evocative melodies and trenchant lyrics, it's the tenth solo studio album by the American-born, Canadian-raised artist revered for such landmark records as Johnstown, Sleepy Little Sailor and A Girl In Teen City. It's also her first since the artist formerly known as Oh Susanna announced that she would now record and perform under her birth name.

At this new junction on the road she has travelled, Suzie chooses a path uniquely her own by saying “so long” to her longtime moniker Oh Susanna. Making a decision that is at once personal and political, Suzie came to the realisation that she no longer wanted to be known by a stage name with historic associations to Minstrelsy, a tradition both demeaning and dehumanising to black people. The song 'Oh Susanna' was published by Stephen Foster in 1848 in “plantation dialect” that the songwriter later corrected. But its original sentiments are so deeply offensive that Ungerleider knew it was time to shed the association. “Twenty-six years ago, when I decided to use the name Oh Susanna, I never intended to conjure this horrifyingly racist imagery and belief system – this is not what I believe in or stand for,” she says. “I no longer wish to use a name that is associated with a system of white supremacy that has served to uphold and encourage violence, destruction and hatred upon the lives of black people in America and around the globe.”

There’s a wall, in your family home. It’s next to an old stairway that leads to an attic you never go into, but the wall is alive and lined with photos. On Everything at the Same Time, the first solo outing from Caroline Marie Brooks (⅓ of Good Lovelies), those photos are taken down and carefully dusted off, ready to have their stories told by someone intimately connected to their finer details. Over 11 tracks, Brooks leads a vivid journey through feelings familiar to our hearts. Gentle guitar work laying a backdrop for Brooks’ sweetly divine vocals, layered with wurlitzers, mandolins and steel guitars to evoke feelings of memories both lost and found.