"There’s really nothing quite so satisfying as collaboration. I love to sing and play with other people and I love to co write. It's thrilling.” Shawn Colvin

An Interview with Shawn Colvin

By Mariah Fleming

Q.I’ve interviewed you before, and I’m really pleased to be doing it again. Thank you.
A.Well, thank you.

Q.You’ve played MIM several times. How do you like the MIM concert space?
A.It’s fantastic, I’m always glad to be back!

Q.You work with a diverse array of tremendous musicians like Steve Earle, Richard Thompson, Loudon Wainwright, Mary Chapin Carpenter and many others. Are there any musicians you haven’t worked with that you’d like to work with?
A.Wow. That’s a hard question. I’m sure there are. I mean, I’ve been tremendously lucky. I can’t even emphasize how lucky I’ve been to have met and worked with some of my favorite people. I mean, so many. James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Richard Thompson, Bonnie Raitt. I’ve spent some time with Joni Mitchell.

Q.Can you tell me about it?
A.Yeah. I did a tribute to her. I haven’t worked with her per say but got to know her a little bit.

Q.That’s wonderful.
A.Yeah, it is. And I've worked with people like Emmy Lou Harris and Neil Finn. That’s such a hard question (laughs) because I know there are! I don’t’ want to get too hung up on this; I’m just so grateful for the ones I have worked with.

OK, I'll move on from there.Shawn Colvin

Q.Your writing has such emotional courage and fearlessness. Has it always been that way for you or has it developed over the years of writing?
A.Well, I appreciate that, I hope it’s true. When I started writing that was kind of part of how I wanted to go. The direction I wanted to go is just to kind of, I don’t know, tell the truth, I guess…my truth I guess. But telling emotional truth… that’s what has meant the most to me from the people I knew and the people who have helped me. Eventually I think I told stories and got a little more fictional, but initially it was just ‘say what you know.”

Q.For years I’ve loved people like Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro and searched for another woman artist whose music reached me in the same way. Your work touches me in much the same way.
A.Oh, well, that means a lot to me. I love those artists.

Q.Most of your songs are about relationships, love or angst. They’re not protest songs, except for one of my favorites among your covers. It’s “American Jerusalem” by Rod MacDonald from “Sunny Came Home”. How did you find him?
A.I’ve been doing his songs since about 1982. He was someone I met in Greenwich Village after I moved to NY in late 1980. It’s just one of my favorite songs, so I started doing it way back then.

Q.I’ve read your 2012 Memoir “Diamond in the Rough” twice. It’s a captivating book.
A.Oh thank you!

Q.In the book you’re brutally frank about your struggles, particularly with depression, which is so stigmatized. The first person I ever read about who had a struggle with depression wasn’t really a celebrity herself but her dad was…Kathy Cronkite. I don’t know if you’ve ever read her book but…
A.Yeah I’ve read her book.

Q.Oh did you? Well, reading her book way back when made it ok to talk about it. I imagine your book has had the same effect on some readers. When did you first realize you were depressed?
A.I was depressed since I was a kid, but I don’t know that we called it that or understood that ‘til I was about 19. And even then it was a long road. I went in to denial. I was like “that’s not my problem.” And I just drank over it y’ know (laughs at herself) which really made it worse. And I’d say in my late 20’s I finally accepted that I was a chronic depressive and it was just something I was going to have to treat for probably my whole life.

Q.Did your writing initially evolve out of your struggles with depression?
A.I’m sure it’s informed my songs to some extent…you know?

Q.Yes. I think it’s tremendous that you talk about depression because the stigma that remains about depression is just astonishing.
A.Well, it scares people, you know? There definitely is a stigma about it. Some people don’t want to accept that’s it’s an illness. Actually, a lot of people don’t want to accept that it’s an illness. And even the depressed person doesn’t want to accept it. Because it makes no sense, you know, "I don’t feel good, I feel depressed and bad. Isn’t there something I can do? Isn’t there something that I did to make this happen that I can stop doing?" And unfortunately a lot of people’s close friends and loved ones are like “Oh, it’s this or that and you should snap out of it." And when you’re depressed you are sometimes too depressed to want to get help, so it’s complicated.

Q.And it seems to me that depression is a pretty rationale response to the world today.
A.Yeah, there’s that. And there’s situational depression. And then, you know, there’s chemical brain chemistry depression, and one can really affect the other so it is complicated.

Q.Let’s get back to the artists you admire. Does it still excite you to meet people that you grew up admiring?
A.Oh, yeah! Definitely! I get tongue-tied and so it’s…it’s…well, you can’t convey to someone how much they mean to you! They hear it many times, and I’m sure some are more grateful than others to hear about it. So the thing that strikes me that is particularly amazing, given that I’m in this business and I’ve got this career, is I’ve been able to meet people that meant a lot to me who like what I do. And that's a connection I’ve always dreamed of making. So that’s a beautiful thing when that happens! So, oh yeah! If I meet people that I admire and don’t know, I’m tongue tied and scared and overwhelmed.

Q.I think that’s so nice because the flip side of that would be if you were so sure of yourself that it didn’t faze you, and that would be really sad, you know?
A.(Laughs) Oh well, you know. I appreciate people who are cocky. But that’s just not how I roll. (Chuckles)

Q.Let me bounce back to Joni Mitchell for a second. I think you said you did a tribute to her? Is that something that’s available to the public?
A.No, it was on television. It was several years ago it was an A&E special. I did a couple of songs with Mary Chapin Carpenter and Joni Mitchell was in the audience and it was terrifying!

Q.I can imagine.
A.Yeah…

Q.I saw her in concert in Montreal many years ago. I still can’t get over that I saw her. That’s really wonderful that you did that!
A.Yeah, it is. It really was wonderful.

Q.Late last year I saw John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett perform together at MIM and I know you’ve worked with Lovett before. When you play with someone else in concert, how do you arrange it? For example, they sat on stage and shared songs with each other and then they played on a couple of songs together kind of thing.
A.Well, usually the same kind of thing only maybe not sitting down. We'll have chairs and sometimes sit down when the other is playing and we don’t have anything to sing or play on in that particular song. That’s a pretty intimate thing. I like it when you sit down.

Q.When I first saw you it was easily 15 years ago. You had John Leventhal with you on guitar and brought Patti Griffin on as a guest. Do you encourage your relationships with other singer songwriters, and if so, do you find that to be gratifying?
A.Yeah, not with everyone, though. You can’t know everyone. But there’s camaraderie between a lot of us and healthy competition that I think is really important. And yeah, I guess there’s really, for me, nothing quite so satisfying as collaboration. I love to sing and play with other people and I love to co write. It’s thrilling.

Q.If you hadn’t been able to make a living doing your music, what do you think you would be doing with your life?
A.I honestly don’t know. I’ve been asked that before. I would probably be helping people somehow. I’d be teaching or helping people with depression or addiction or something like that.

Q.Roughly how many days a year do you spend on the road?
A.I guess I’m on the road…I don’t know. I guess sixty? Sixty shows. Which translates to a hundred days or something.

Q. When you’re back home, do you spend a lot of time writing?
A.Well, I like to spend time with my kid, that’s my priority.

Q.Your daughter Caledonia is about fifteen now, right?
A.Yes.

Q.Was she the little redheaded kid in your “All Fall Down” video?
A. Yeah, she was, the one who came out first.

Q.On “All Fall Down” you worked with so many great artists like Emmylou Harris, Bill Frisell and Allison Krause. And of course, the iconic Buddy Miller, who produced it in Nashville and also played on the record. Did you record that live?
A.A lot of it was done live with me playing and not always singing but at least playing with the rest of the band. It was really loose, and a lot of it was done live. Yeah, I really like that. And Buddy is a fan of that kind of recording and so am I. If the players and artists can play, why not just be spontaneous?

Q.How did you get connected with Buddy Miller in the beginning?
A.I’ve known Buddy since 1976.

Q.As far as putting together sets for your touring gigs, do they vary much from gig to gig or do you have set lists that you always stick with?
A.I like to wing it, although I’d say, depending on the record that I just made, I kind of change it up and sometimes play a lot more new songs if I’ve just put a record out.

Q.So, are you working on a new album now?
A.Now I'm just trying to write, talking to producers and trying to write.

June 9, 2014

Contact the author of this article at Editor@MusicAndMoreAZ.com.