Bogguss' voice shines with pared down, pure style

"Oh, I love that room," says singer Suzy Bogguss when asked about her coming performance at the Central Arkansas Library System's Ron Robinson Theater in Little Rock. "The sound and the acoustics are just perfect. It's very intimate."

Bogguss and her band, guitarist Craig Smith and bassist Charlie Chadwick, are returning to the theater Friday -- the first time since playing there in September 2014 as part of the Arkansas Sounds concert series. She also holds the distinction of being the only artist without an explicit Arkansas connection to play the series.

"She's not only a high-quality artist, she's also a high-quality person," says Arkansas Sounds Music Coordinator John Miller. "When you have someone of her caliber, you make yourself available and we've been blessed that people have responded."

Back in 2014, Bogguss was touring behind Lucky, her album of classic Merle Haggard songs. It's a gorgeous collection that finds Bogguss keeping faithful to the originals, channeling Haggard's hymns to the workingman's blues through her sparkling vocals and spare production.

"I didn't get a chance to talk to him about it in person," she says from her home in Franklin, Tenn., where she lives with her songwriter husband, Doug Crider. "He was on the road like crazy and we were, too."

Though they didn't get the chance to visit face to face before Haggard died April 6, Bogguss says the country legend approved of the album, which she released on her Loyal Duchess label: "He was very complimentary and sweet about the record. In an interview, he said he never thought about the effect it would have with a girl singing these songs and that it hit him emotionally."

Bogguss, 59, grew up singing and playing music in Aledo, Ill.

"It was just like [Leave It to Beaver]," she says of her childhood. "It was this perfect little town with neighborhoods full of kids around the same age, riding bikes and swimming. It was a small town and a beautiful place to grow up."

After graduating from Southern Illinois University, Bogguss lived for a while in a camper truck while playing music. She eventually headed down to Nashville, Tenn., where she performed at Tony Roma's restaurant and picked up a gig at what was then a Silver Dollar City location in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. She caught the ear of Dolly Parton, who sent a talent scout to check out Bogguss' sets at Tony Roma's, and was hired to play back in Pigeon Forge when Parton turned Silver Dollar City into her Dollywood theme park in 1986.

By 1987, she'd released her first singles on Capitol Records and her album Somewhere Between was released in 1989.

Her breakout commercial success would come a couple of years later with 1991's Aces. That album shot Bogguss into the country stratosphere with the songs "Someday Soon," "Outbound Plane," "Letting Go" and the title track.

More albums and hits came -- the John Hiatt-penned "Drive South," "Just Like the Weather" and the anthem "Hey, Cinderella," among others.

She recorded Simpatico, an album of duets with Chet Atkins, and then took time off after the birth of son Ben in 1994.

Bogguss returned a few years later but parted ways with Capitol Records after 1998's Nobody Love, Nobody Gets Hurt. She has continued to record and tour, however, and became a frequent guest on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio program and also toured with the show.

Expect Friday's concert to feature highlights from all stages of her career, she says.

She and Crider run Loyal Duchess from their home, where they also record, she says. Besides Lucky, which was financed by a Kickstarter campaign, there was also 2011's American Folk Songbook, which featured Bogguss' interpretations of classic folk songs like "Red River Valley," "Froggy Went A-Courtin'," "Rock Island Line" and others.

The indie route isn't exactly new to her. She was selling self-recorded tapes of her music out of the back of her truck back in the Dollywood days.

"I invented it," she says with a hearty laugh. "Well, not really. But it feels like a real natural progression. I loved the fact that I had a big machine behind me and so many people working on my records. I feel very fortunate to have had that, but it also doesn't feel weird to go back to our own little cottage industry. We make our records at the house mostly and my husband does all the artwork."

Up next, she says, is a project that will find her revisiting Aces, 25 years after it was released, with simpler production.

"It's going to be Aces redux, an updated version without the reverb and '90s drums."

Weekend on 07/21/2016