Sue Bailey

In this age of slick, pre-packaged, “American Idol”-style pop music, Sue Bailey is a rare and wonderful jewel: a true singer-songwriter who understands love, and better yet can communicate its nuances to any audience, whether she is playing to a packed East Coast nightclub, a renowned Nashville café or a local coffeehouse.

With each guitar chord, with each story she tells of how a song was created, Sue, with her warm stage presence and ear-to-ear smile, creates a uniquely energized and interactive environment with her listeners, who leave feeling as if they are her new best friends.  And it doesn’t hurt that her voice is as rich and rangy as they come, serving her well as she belts out her unique mix of both country/folksy/bluesy ballads and what she calls her humorous “kickin’ fun tunes.”

“My songs speak to anyone who truly feels life,” says Sue.  “There isn’t a person in any of my audiences who hasn’t experienced at least one of the life situations I sing about.  Funny, sad, happy, real-life situations – all of them speak to me and inspire me to write songs from pure core emotion.”

Citing as her greatest musical influences James Taylor, Karla Bonoff, Dan Fogelberg, and Anne Murray, she continues, “I’ll often mine song material from something as small as an unexpected moment with strangers.  One great example is my song “Flying.”  By chance I saw a father and his little girl outside as she was learning to ride her bike.  The joy in her face when she mastered the bike touched me and it paralleled the joy you feel as an adult when your heart soars with a new love.  I wrote that song in maybe 20 minutes.”

After she graduated from a small West Virginia college, where she honed her skills playing in campus coffeehouses, she turned professional, performing in hotel lounges in the capital city of Charleston.  Returning to her hometown of Haddonfield, New Jersey, in the mid-1980s, she continued to perform, and became a regular at many of South Jersey’s most popular restaurants and clubs.  Three years later, she was off to Nashville to explore the limits of her talent.

Her ten years as a successful singer-songwriter in Nashville produced songwriting partnerships with such renowned songwriters as Patti Ryan (“Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places”), Danny Mayo (“Keeper of the Stars, CMA Song of the Year 1994), and Tricia Walker (“Looking in the Eyes of Love”, 1998 Grammy award for Alison Kraus).  Sue was a frequent performer at the Bluebird Café, the world-famous singer-songwriter club where only the best original and acoustic music is aired.  Throughout her years working in Nashville, she added to a steadily growing catalog of songs that remain her best loved and most requested.

After returning to the Delaware Valley, Sue performed for three years as the singing/guitar-playing half of the popular duo, Sweet Namaste. Now on her own, Sue continues her songwriting and performs at venues in the Greater Philadelphia area.