"As good as I thought this record was, I was certainly prepared for it to be ignored," says Shawn Colvin of her latest, "A Few Small Repairs." "I've been doing this a while, and I think one subscribes to, 'hope for the best, expect the worst.' It's a very unpredictable business."
So unpredictable that, from out of ostensibly nowhere, the silver-voiced Colvin has found a bona fide hit on her hands with "Sunny Came Home," from "Repairs." It may surprise newcomers to discover, however, that Colvin became a musician before Jewel and Fiona Apple learned to walk. Born in Vermillion, North Dakota, the singer took up her first guitar at age 10 and was making her living as a musician by 19.
But it wasn't until 1989, at the age of 31, that she released her recording debut, "Steady On," co-written with musician and boyfriend John Leventhal. A year later, she was awarded with the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Performance. She split from Leventhal, collaborating with other producers for 1992's "Fat City" and 1994's "Cover Girl," which features renditions of songs by Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and the Police.
It's been a long road for Colvin, who reunited with Leventhal to write and produce "Repairs." Colvin recently took two weeks out from her "With A Mission Tour" (which arrives at Berkeley's Greek Theater at 3pm today) to perform with the all-woman Lilith Festival. Whether "Sunny," Colvin's tale of a home-torching housewife, will inspire listeners to do likewise remains to be seen. She certainly has touched a nerve.
Q: How is Lilith Fair going?
A: It's going really well. It's obviously very popular, it's well-attended. All the performers that I've seen have been extremely good and professional, and there's been some group get-togethers on stage. I performed with Sheryl Crow, and then the Indigo Girls have everybody come out for "Closer To Fine." Sarah [McLachlan]'s doing a Joni Mitchell song where I'm going to come out and sing.
Q: You've suddenly become quite well-known. Has your audience changed?
A: Well, I still have my loyal fans and I guess there are some new ones, but they all seem to mix together really well. (laughs) Of course it's really fun to play the single in concert, 'cause people sing along.
Q: Is that new -- people singing along?
A: Yeah. I mean, at certain concerts in cities where I do really well, they sing along to some songs, but this is across the board. Even if I'm playing at Lilith to an audience that doesn't know me very well yet, you can count on that song.
Q: How did you start writing songs?
A: I've been making my living more or less as a musician since I was about 19. And I've played in all kinds of configurations. I've played by myself, in country bands, in rock and roll bands, in bluegrass bands. When I moved to New York I met John Leventhal and we started a writing relationship that was very important to me, because I was kind of a reluctant writer. In him I found a partner that provided music and it made things easier for me. Slowly I began to become a songwriter. I probably didn't know it was what I'd do for the rest of my life till I was about 30. I'd been doing it a long time but at 30 I had to make a decision. And I was tempted to stop.
Q: What kept you going?
A: I don't know. I didn't want to look back and say I hadn't tried hard enough.
Q: Did you expect that you'd ever be on good terms with John Leventhal again?
A: I expected I'd be on good terms with him. I didn't know if that would involve working together because that involves a lot of time spent, a lot of necessary trust. It just happened bit by bit. First we talked about writing, then we did some writing, then we recorded -- you know. The next thing we knew we were pretty much on our way to a record. It worked out really well. It was fun. Before, it was a lot of angst. I'm sure I'll write with him [again]. That's just something that's almost meant to be.
Q: There's a lot of attention on women musicians, especially with Lilith Fair. Suddenly it's "yay, women!" What's your perspective on that?
A: I don't think about it too much. I guess what I feel needs to be pointed out is that nobody goes, "yay, men!" The very fact that we do that shows that we have a ways to go. But I think this is forward motion. I don't think anyone is attending [Lilith] to show their support for women's music. I don't think anybody's paying just to be supportive of a cause. It's good music and people want to hear it.
Q: Do you think the climate of the music industry has changed since you started?
A: Yeah, I do, but you have to remember that the bottom line was, it was shown that a woman performer could make gazillions of dollars. That changed the climate.
Q: You just finished working on a video for "Me and the Mona Lisa." What's that going to be like?
A: It's basically an excuse to advertise me. (laughs) There's an attempt being made to acquaint people between the face and the name. It's something that needs work, in my particular case.
Q: I thought the last one did that pretty well.
A: I did too, but MTV didn't want to play it very much. VH1 played it a lot. MTV kinda pissed me off. The song's really big in the kind of charts they pay attention to, and they still say I'm a VH1 artist. They're an important factor in recognition, so I'm trying to keep making videos that identify me.
Q: You once said, "I don't care what people know... If you're too introspective, it's not moving." Yet your songs are so personal. How do you strike a balance when you write?
A: That just has to do with the process of songwriting and your own objective opinion about how you create distance so that you feel that you've done more than vent your spleen. I did cover songs for years, and I did songs that moved me. I didn't care what the person experienced. What did I know about who they were? [The song] could have been a year old. It could have been 20 years old. But it survived. Artistically, that's what you want to pull off -- stuff that people are going to like for a long time, and that you yourself are going to like performing. You don't want just a little narrow-minded snapshot of something.
This article was originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle.