RIDGEFIELD — It's one thing to be a good songwriter and another to be a consummate storyteller. Long-time fans as well as newcomers will witness the best of both when Grammy winner Suzanne Vega arrives for an 8 pm show October 21 at The Ridgefield Playhouse.

Those familiar with her globally popular hits including “Luka,” “Tom’s Diner,” and “Marlene on the Wall,” know that Vega has a unique talent for transporting listeners into the world she creates within each song — making it easy to see subjects through her eyes and in many cases, conveying their pain, joy, lust, or disillusionment so effectively that one is immediately drawn in as though they are part of the narrative as well.

Vega’s songs have tended to focus on city life, ordinary people and real-world subjects. Notably succinct and understated, her work is immediately recognizable — as utterly distinct and thoughtful as it was when her voice was first heard on the radio over 30 years ago, her official bio relates.

Vega was born in Santa Monica, Calif., but grew up in Spanish Harlem and the Upper West Side of New York City. She was influenced by her mother, a computer systems analyst, and her stepfather, the Puerto Rican writer Egardo Vega Yunque. There was a heady mix of multicultural music playing at home: Motown, bossa nova, jazz and folk. At age 11 she picked up a guitar and as a teenager she started to write songs.

Having studied dance at the High School for the Performing Arts, Vega later attended Barnard College where she majored in English Literature and minored in theater. In 1979, after attending a concert by Lou Reed, she began to find her true artistic voice and distinctive vision for contemporary folk. A receptionist by day, she would hang out at the Greenwich Village Songwriter’s Exchange by night. Soon she was playing iconic venues like The Bottom Line and Folk City.

At first, record companies saw little prospect of commercial success, and Vega recalled how her early demo was rejected by every major record company — twice by the very label that eventually signed her.

Her self-titled debut album (A&M) was finally released in 1985, co-produced by Steve Addabbo and Lenny Kaye, guitarist for Patti Smith. One million records later, it was clear that Vega’s voice was resonating around the world. “Marlene on the Wall” was a surprise hit in the UK and Rolling Stone eventually included the record in their “100 Greatest Recordings of the 1980s.”

Vega's 1987 follow-up, Solitude Standing — again co-produced by Addabbo and Kaye — elevated her to star status. The album hit #2 in the UK and #11 in the States, was nominated for three Grammys (including Record of the Year) and went platinum in the US, selling three million copies worldwide.

“Luka” is a song that has entered the cultural vernacular, likely the only hit song ever written from the perspective of an abused boy.

The opening song on Solitude Standing was an a cappella piece, “Tom’s Diner,” about a nondescript restaurant near Columbia University. Without Vega’s permission, it was remixed by UK electronic dance duo DNA and bootlegged as “Oh Susanne.” Suddenly Vega’s voice was showing up in the most unlikely setting of all: the club.

She permitted an official release of the remix of “Tom’s Diner” under its original title, which reached #5 on the Billboard pop chart and went gold. In 1991, she brought the remix and other unsolicited versions of the song together in a compilation called Tom’s Album.

Vega also holds the distinction of being christened “Mother of the MP3” by the technology’s creator, who used her recording of “Tom’s Diner” to refine its compression algorithm.

During times away from her music career, Vega has also enjoyed success as an author, having penned The Passionate Eye: The Collected Writings Of Suzanne Vega, a volume of poems, lyrics, essays and journalistic pieces. She has also garnered great reviews for her acting after joining the cast of an Off-Broadway revival of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.

In an exclusive interview with The Newtown Bee ahead of her Ridgefield Playhouse show, Vega talked a lot about her songwriting, her latest projects including her live release, An Evening of New York Songs and Stories, originally captured in concert Café Carlyle in New York City; what folks can expect from her Ridgefield set; the pivotal role her late, longtime friend Lou Reed played in her career; and even how she served as an inadvertent inspiration or mentor to countless female singer/songwriters who have come along since her self-titled debut hit the charts in the mid-80s.

The Newtown Bee: It could be said that you helped usher in a new era of incredible female singer/songwriters who may not have enjoyed their own successes without your million-plus-selling debut paving the way to some extent.

Suzanne Vega: That's a nice thought. I think that it's not just that I may have inspired a couple of people to start writing songs themselves. I think it was just as true that I helped the industry realize that women could write songs, and lyrics, and play their own instruments. I think I helped open doors in that way, too. I think I helped show record executives that this wasn't just a fad held over from the 1970s, but an ongoing thing. My initial demos were pretty much rejected by everyone including A&M, who rejected it twice. Then finally, on the third try, we found a great A&R person called Nancy Jeffries who came to see me live and decided I was worth taking a chance on. So it wasn't easy getting accepted. I guess you never know, but you always hope your own voice and your own style will stand up over time. That was certainly my hope and my wish back in the early 80s. And it's very gratifying all these years later that it came to pass and I still have women reaching out to me and writing to me about how they were influenced by my work.

The Bee: I know fans are very much looking forward to seeing your show at the Ridgefield Playhouse. Will that be a solo show, or will you be bringing support with you?

Vega: Yes, on this date I'll be traveling with Gerry Leonard, who is a guitar player but very much like a band. He's an excellent electric guitar player but equally and beautifully proficient on acoustic guitar. He was David Bowie's musical director for many years, and toured with him so he has a wide range of abilities. We have a lot of fun, and having him on stage gives me the ability to steer the show toward being either more electric sounding or acoustic sounding. There will be a variety of different sounding songs.

The Bee: By no means does your latest project, An Evening of New York Songs and Stories, capture the number of songs inspired by your New York experiences. So if there was room for just two more New York inspired songs on that album, would they be easy ones to pick?

Vega: I guess I'd have to go back to the original list of songs we originally developed for the album to do that and then it would be easy, but I can say that it was equally fun picking covers that fit into the New York theme. Beside "Walk On The Wild Side," we're doing a cover of the Blondie song "Dreaming," which has a lot of references to traffic and turnstiles. New York City certainly provides an endless source of inspiration.

The Bee: Yes, you have a really cool take on Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side" on the new album. What was your relationship with him like? Did you learn a lot from him as a fellow artist?

Vega: I became acquainted with Lou Reed's music I'd say back in 1979, and almost immediately became a fan. I spent a day or two being repulsed by some parts of his live act, but I got very deeply into his song writing and realized how brilliant he was. After that I started going to see him all the time and met and started being friends with him in 1986. We remained friends until the end of his life. The main thing I learned from him was the way to put truthfulness into a song.

Before then I suppose Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan was my barometer of what was truth in a song. But Lou brought that to another level because some of the things he wrote about were things I actually experienced — things about life I felt that I knew. Not so much the drug life, but about the violence of life on the street, the hustling that goes on and that sort of thing. So I wanted to do that myself — incorporate what he said in my own work. The other thing I liked about how Lou Reed worked was that he was not afraid to write in the opposite gender. That was really fascinating. Some of his work, like "Stephanie Says" or "Caroline Says," were from the point of view of women. And he did that very easily and not self-consciously, so when I wrote "Luka," I felt very much under his influence.

The Bee: Are there any specific spaces or places in New York City or beyond where you go or have gone, to really get your creative songwriting juices flowing?

Vega: Yes. There was a point in time where I didn't have a place in my apartment to write — I always was feeling cooped up and confined. So I became a patron at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And they had a patron's lounge on the top floor, so I would go up there and order tea, and fooled around with my writing dictionary. I got a lot of writing done there, I could look out over the park and soak in all the atmosphere.

The Bee: By sheer coincidence, we're doing this call on the eve of 9/11. And your bio reflects that your Grammy-winning "Beauty & Crime" album contains reflections of that immense tragedy. Can we talk about how your 9/11 experience translated into song?

Vega: Wow, yeah. I was here for 9/11. I had just moved uptown from living downtown and I was on the Upper West Side, but I had moved from an apartment where I could clearly see the World Trade Center towers from my windows. I could not believe the devastation. And the song "Anniversary" was written exactly one year later on the first anniversary. During that year I also lost my brother, who had been working with a production crew at the World Trade Center, and he happened to not go in that day. And so a lot of his friends on the crew witnessed so many horrifying things that he was struck by so much guilt — I guess survivor's guilt — that he became obsessed with Ground Zero. And he died within a year of that.

So when I sing the song "Anniversary," I'm thinking back on that entire year, what had happened, and I knew so many people who died and who lost people, so "Anniversary" was probably the first song from Beauty & Crime album to be written. And it took me about six years to process the whole experience and write all the little stories in that album. I think of Beauty & Crime as a mosaic made up of those little tales that comprise a bigger story.

The Bee: I think the most contributions to your new project were drawn from that album.

Vega: You're probably right, there are a lot of songs from Beauty & Crime, but I guess depending on how you slant it, you can make most any song about New York. I'd written most of them here, and New York is a central theme that runs through most of my life and therefore, my work.

The Bee: Is the show we're going to see in Ridgefield a replication of the Carlyle set, or will you be mixing in or switching out some other selections?

Vega: We are going to have a few of An Evening of New York Songs and Stories selections as a mini set, but it would be a shame to just stick to that album because people come to hear other songs as well. They like to hear "The Queen And The Soldier," or they want to hear other songs so I'm really cognizant of that. We're doing probably the more familiar material up front, moving into the 'New York' set, and closing with some of the newer things people have been enjoying. Then we'll probably close with the bigger hits, throwing in a cover or two along the way.

The Ridgefield Playhouse is a non-profit performing arts center located at 80 East Ridge. For more information or to purchase touchless print at home ticket ($58.50) go online at ridgefieldplayhouse.org or, visit or call the box office 203-438-5795.

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Editor John Voket can be reached at john@thebee.com.

Check out Suzanne Vega performing "Luka":

Suzanne Vega does her hit "Solitude Standing" in concert with a full band: