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The Space Lady

A San Francisco street musician in a winged helmet who played a Casio keyboard through an echo pedal for years, then toured the world in her sixties after a compilation of her old recordings appeared.

Origin
Colorado
Years active
1970s-2000, 2012-present
Genres
space music, synth pop, psychedelic pop, outsider music
Labels
Amazing Thingz, Night School, Castle Face, Audible Love, Mississippi Records, Les Disques Bongo Joe
Also known as
Susan Dietrich, Suzy Soundz

Colorado, San Francisco and Boston

The Space Lady is Susan Dietrich, formerly credited as Suzy Soundz. Wikipedia says she was born in 1948 in Pueblo, Colorado and grew up in Las Animas; The Quietus agrees on Pueblo, after her parents moved from Roswell, New Mexico, while Vice says she was born in Las Animas. Her parents were classical musicians, her mother a pianist and her father a violist, and she studied piano and flute and took up acoustic guitar in college. She left Las Animas in 1966 for the University of Colorado at Boulder, and left after just over two years for the San Francisco hippie scene.

She met Joel Dunsany, a draft dodger, in the late 1960s, and they lived without identification or jobs. The Quietus reports they lived in a cave on Mount Shasta, where she saw a UFO above the treetops in 1972. She sold artwork and poetry booklets on the street in the 1970s and began busking in Boston in the late 1970s, playing pop covers on accordion until it was stolen and destroyed, when she switched to a Casio.

The helmet and the street

In 1983 she had a Casiotone MT-40, a microphone and a delay pedal, and a winged helmet with a flashing red light. Back in San Francisco in 1984, the Berkeley Barb named her The Space Lady after she placed second in its Favorite Street Musician contest; Bandcamp Daily says a contest host kept calling her that and the name stuck. She played in the Castro, the Haight and BART stations until 2000. Dunsany wrote most of her original songs and built her stage rig. In 1990 she released a cassette hand-produced by Dunsany, which became the basis of her Greatest Hits.

In 2000 she retired, left Dunsany and returned to Colorado to care for her parents, studied nursing at Otero Junior College in La Junta and worked as a charge nurse. That year Irwin Chusid's Songs in the Key of Z, Vol. 2 included her cover of "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)".

The return

Michael Kasparis of Night School Records heard her on a mix CD in 2011, and after a first unanswered email, Eric Schneider, her second husband, replied in 2013 that she was ready to return. She resumed performing in 2012. Night School released The Space Lady's Greatest Hits in 2013, and Record Collector's Paul McGuinness compared her to Joe Meek and Daniel Johnston and called it bizarre and beautiful. She began a first club tour at 66 in 2014, taking in the United Kingdom in April and western Europe in October and November. Later releases include The Space Lady's Back! (2016) and On the Street of Dreams (April 30, 2018), and a short documentary, Space Lady, directed by Sophia Feuer, screened at ShortFest in 2022.

Her grandson Skyler Wright managed and toured with her. Setlist.fm logs 83 setlists, and her most-played songs are "Born to Be Wild" and "Synthesize Me" at 21 each. Chusid places her in the outsider-music lineage with Daniel Johnston and The Shaggs, and The Berliner called her an antecedent to Ariel Pink and Julia Holter. She has said her philosophy is peace, love and compassion, citing Thich Nhat Hanh.

Records

Songs

Daniel Johnston

Where to go next

Official

Reference

Interviews

Live performance archives

Sources

  1. The Space Lady, Wikipedia
  2. The Space Lady: Cosmic Intervention, The Quietus
  3. The Space Lady Has Landed, Vice (2014-01-02)
  4. Exploring the intergalactic wonders of The Space Lady, Bandcamp Daily (2021-08-24)
  5. Interview: San Franciscan busker The Space Lady, The List