Susan McKeown

Susan McKeown (born February 6, 1967) is an Irish folk singer and songwriter.

Susan McKeown was born on February 6, 1967 to John Ryan and Jane Ann (Jeannie) McKeown in Terenure, Dublin, Ireland. She was greatly influenced by her mother, an organist and composer who died in 1982. Susan briefly attended the Municipal College of Music, Chatham Row, Dublin – now incorporated into the Dublin Institute of Technology) – as a teenager before abandoning a potential career in opera order to sing folk and rock. Together with John Doyle, McKeown formed The Chanting House in 1989. Mainly performing as a duo, they toured Europe with Donogh Hennessy and other musicians, playing of original songs and traditional tunes. They released a cassette-only album called The Chanting House in 1990.

Upon graduating from University College Dublin McKeown was awarded a scholarship to attend the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Manhattan, so in 1990, with a bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland, she relocated to New York City. Doyle followed and they were soon to join forces with Seamus Egan and Eileen Ivers, with whom they recorded one live cassette and one track, "If I Were You", which they contributed to the album Straight Outta Ireland in 1993. McKeown's musical collaboration with Doyle ended with his departure in the summer of 1993.

With new musicians, as "Susan McKeown and the Chanting House" she performed at clubs such as Sin-é, Fez, The Bottom Line and the Bowery Ballroom, and recorded a cassette album – Snakes – in 1993. But it was the release of Bones in 1995 – an album of original songs with her take on a centuries-old keen (caoineadh) and an arrangement of Robert Burns' "Westlin' Winds", later recorded by Fairport Convention – that earned her a reputation as a singer-songwriter and launched her solo touring and recording career. In 1997 she recorded three albums: her own Bushes & Briars (Alula); Peter & Wendy, the soundtrack to the Obie Award-winning Mabou Mines theatrical production of the same name, which was composed by Johnny Cunningham; and Through the Bitter Frost & Snow, a collaboration with bassist Lindsey Horner. At this time, she began to divide her work into albums of traditional music (Bushes and Briars, 1998) and singer-songwriter albums (Bones, 1995; Prophecy, 2002).

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