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    Concert Preview & Interview: Shawn Colvin

    I spent most of the 90s in college, tussling interchangeably with work, money, relationships, and whatever hopes and dreams I still clung to as a 20-something that hadn’t yet escaped the academic bubble. Most nights, I’d abscond the warm glow of the computer screen in my boxy residence hall room to walk our perpetually rainy Vancouver campus alone, listening to and carefully clutching my Discman. Music was my indisputable sanctuary through better and worse in those days, and I still find respite in those songs that helped me untangle my feelings and quieted whatever unrest was happening in my thoughts.

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    Since I’ve begun my writing career, I’ve had the incredibly good fortune to be able to talk to some of the artists that painted the soundscapes of that era of my life, always intently taking a few moments to ensure they know I’m grateful for their contribution.

    Interviewing singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin, whose Grammy winning folk-rock standard “Sunny Came Home” is among my favorite singles of all time, was no exception.

    “Well, thank you! You know, people think that an artist gets tired of being told that something was good or was a soundtrack to someone’s life, thinking that you’ve heard it a million times,” she replied to my compliments during a phone call from a tour stop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. “No matter how many times you hear it, for me, it’s about the most special thing somebody can say to me, because the soundtrack to my life is, to an extent, my life. Music is a healing force and, you know, is a special kind of…well, all art is special. But for me, music was just everything. If I can be the soundtrack to someone else’s life, I don’t think there’s any greater compliment than that.”

    A re-issue commemorating “Sunny…” and its parent album, A Few Small Repairs, surfaced last September, including a first-ever vinyl pressing. In addition to its original remastered track list, Colvin added live versions of each of the album’s songs to the collection. From a musical standpoint, A Few Small Repairs remains fresh in its masterful exchange between Colvin’s lissome alto and her exquisite guitar playing. From a content perspective, it’s ageless in its contention with the complexities of love and loss, and despite being an intensely personal reflection of her divorce from musician Simon Tassano, Colvin affirms that revisiting it was an exercise in positivity.

    “The really good news is I don’t look back at it with any regret, ‘Oh, we should have changed this, it shouldn’t have been that, the lyric wasn’t right, this production idea wasn’t right, my vocal was self-conscious and didn’t nail the song…’ It really works for me. It was a pleasure to go back and re-learn…some of the songs I do regularly, but not all of them. So in retrospect, it was just fond memories, really, of making that record – which was a lot of fun. Which is not always the case, because some records are more belabored than others. You know, it held up for me.”

    On February 23, Colvin and renowned producer Doug Petty (Rufus Wainwright, Roseanne Cash, Tears for Fears, Rihanna) released The Starlighter, a new album of songs adapted from Lullabies and Night Songs, a children’s music book published in 1965 that joined famed 20th century American composer Alec Wilder’s arrangements with the fantastical artwork of Where the Wild Things Are author and illustrator Maurice Sendak. Colvin’s voice is stunningly warm and accessible, and Petty’s production retains the quaintness of the original songs while providing nuances that are aurally fascinating. Recording the project was a sentimental journey for Colvin, who had grown up with Wilder’s book, and the vision was to honor the songs’ timeless appeal rather than adapting them to fit her own typical approach to making records.

    “I mean, there’s some acoustic guitar stuff on there, but I don’t think they do sound like a Shawn Colvin record,” she insists. “That’s why…that’s not the reason that I like it, it was just…it was cool to do something different. And really the arrangements on the piano and the guitar were based on the book. But the production ideas were really all Doug. I mean, he knows that book and he’s a great arranger. It was really all him. Same with the predecessor to this record, Holiday Songs and Lullabies – that was Doug and [his] production.”

    The album’s title track is featured in a meticulously crafted video based on Victorian paper theatres and the illustration style of children’s books from the same era, and was created by the Manchester, UK/Los Angeles-based motion design studio WeFail. Each scene contains over one hundred layered illustrations, and every element in the video was drawn using a digital tablet before being animated by hand. Shawn’s character in the video consists of thirty individual hand-drawn pieces, each digitally painted before motion design was applied to create the complete figure.

    Colvin hopes The Starlighter can be appreciated by adults as much as it might be by younger audiences. It’s a lovely testament to the fact that often the music with which we grow up often doesn’t stray far from our hearts.

    “I like to think it can be enjoyed by folks of any age. And I think we sort of short-sell kids sometimes. I was only eight years old when I learned these songs, and I had taken piano lessons since I was six years old. I fell in love with those arrangements, and they were not simple. They were emotional for me, and I think music just resonates in simple ways for kids, and in some ways no so simple.”

    While The Starlighter continues to find audiences, Colvin is currently on tour with country legend and longtime friend Lyle Lovett. On Wednesday night, their Together on Stage show makes a stop at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium at Ohio University in Athens. The decision to tour with Lovett was a mixture of professionalism and personality.

    “Lyle’s one-of-a-kind,” she muses. “I just always say that because it’s true. He’s an amalgamation of influences, some of which I’m familiar with – Texas songwriters, some of which I became familiar with when I moved to Austin in the 1970s. He was already there cutting his teeth on all of these great storytellers and songwriters. But he has his own dry wit and sense of humor, but also very deeply emotional and serious stuff, moving stuff. He has a certain angle on things that I don’t think anybody else does. Plus, he’s a great guitar player and a great singer, and we play together on some of these songs. He’s a fine, fine harmony singer, and he’s just a great performer and stage presence. I have to stay on my toes, because his wit is so quick that I [laughs] have to really bring my A game.”

    Colvin has already begun work on her next studio album, the proper follow-up to her last set of largely original songs, 2012’s All Fall Down.

    “You know, [I’m] just [in] the writing process, which for me is always – most of the time – challenging,” she reveals. “I’m a reluctant writer. I’m confident about a lot of things, but I’ve never been a particularly confident writer. But I know when I like something and when I think I’ve found the voice that I want to sing in – and I don’t mean that literally, I mean whatever I’m portraying or whatever feeling, or person, or character, or place. I feel like I know when I’ve found it, it’s just kind of hard-won sometimes. So, just in the writing process, and I always feel I don’t every depart too much…I think I write diverse stuff, and I make jokes about only writing heartbreak songs, but they’re not all heartbreak songs, you know?

    I think I’ll just write the way I write, and production values will have something to do with the sound of this next record, but I really don’t know what they are, so…”

    Writing those new tracks requires a bit of discipline rather than free association of the mind.

    “I generally need to sit down and feel up for it. I try to take notes, both literally and in my head, as well if I overhear a conversation, or I’ll put down a little melody on voice memo when something comes up. But generally, to get to the meat and potatoes of it, I’ve got to make time and show up for it. And more so now, it’s somewhere other than being home. It’s a little easier now because my daughter has moved out. When we lived together, our house was about family. And it wasn’t the place for me to write anymore, sort of. But I’ve reclaimed it a little more because I’m alone a little more, and I can do that now.”

    Shawn Colvin will appear with Lyle Lovett on Wednesday, March 21, 7 p.m. at Ohio University’s Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium, 47 E. Union Street in Athens, Ohio. Tickets are $35 to $55 (plus taxes and fees) and are available via OU’s Events Services websiteMore information, including purchase links for ‘The Starlighter’ and ‘A Few Small Repairs, 20th Anniversary Edition’ are available via Shawn’s official website.

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    Grant Walters
    Grant Waltershttps://columbusunderground.com
    Grant is a freelance writer for Columbus Underground who primarily focuses on music and comedy. He's a Canadian transplant, born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and schooled in Vancouver, British Columbia. Grant is also the co-author of two internationally acclaimed books: "Decades: The Bee Gees in the 1960s" and "Decades: The Bee Gees in the 1970s." He has also penned numerous articles and artist interviews for the nationally recognized site, Albumism.
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