Edie Brickell's children had no idea their mom was a pop star. The former leader of the New Bohemians loved to sing Hank Williams songs to her kids while pushing them on the swings and putting them to sleep, but it wasn't until a friend of oldest son Adrian said his parents had one of Brickell's records that he realized mommy used to be famous. For most of the past decade, Brickell was fine with that.

"I knew I could give up celebrity and I thought I could give up my career," says Brickell, 37, who married Paul Simon in 1992, three years after the New Bohemians had a hit with their debut single, "What I Am." "But I was writing songs the whole time and it meant everything to be with my kids because we had to be in daycare when I was little and I hated it."

Following the disappointing response to her 1994 solo debut, Picture Perfect Morning, Brickell retreated into full-time motherhood, amassing more than fifty new songs, taking jazz guitar lessons and contenting herself with recording demos in her and Simon's home studio.

Her girlish, come hither voice and lazy Texas phrasing intact, Brickell is about to break the nearly ten-year silence with Volcano, an album she said was inspired by the simplicity she heard in the roots and country music songs she sang to her kids late at night. Going beyond the hippified poetry of her New Bohemians work, into jazzier, torch singer mode, a richer voiced Brickell pines for the simpler days of youth on the album's first single, "Rush Around."

"I was amazed at how tongue-tied I felt," says Brickell of the process of writing the lyrics to the acoustic waltz, which unfolds like a child's diary entry. "Must have heard the same song twenty times," she sings, accompanying herself on guitar. "Mama sang and put the make up on her eyes/We were getting ready to go/School and the work whistle blows."

"This record involves a lot of memories, but what I realized about the songs I loved to sing for my kids was how simple they were and how the images came from everyday life," she says. "I was influenced by English bands like XTC and I pulled away from my Texas roots for so long because I wanted to be more of my generation, but I've slowly come around to realize I love the sunshine in that music." Friends and session pros including bassist Pino Palladino (Eric Clapton, Richard Ashcroft) and drummer Steve Gadd (Steely Dan, Paul Simon) worked on the demos with Brickell over several years, but her manager finally convinced the singer that there was an album brewing, one that needed a producer to pull it together.

Brickell had never heard of producer/former teenage guitar whiz and fellow Texan Charlie Sexton, but when she heard what he did with the album's title track, a slinky piano lounge tale of a down-on-her-luck woman, she was sold. The singer was OK with handing over the reins to the younger Sexton, but Brickell has been adamant about keeping a creative space between her music and that of her husband, who produced Morning.

"Just because I'm younger and he's this legend, I didn't want my efforts to be discredited," says Brickell, explaining why Simon is nowhere to be found on Volcano. "I realized people might think it's a mentor situation, which it isn't. I adore his work, but he doesn't speak for me."

He may not speak for her, but Brickell appears to be speaking to him on the Sheryl Crow-like slow-burner "Once in a Blue Moon." Over a watery guitar line, she purrs, "Eyes like faded jeans/Soft and blue and he had seen/Everything and he had been everywhere . . . He was more than fun/She was more than young." Asked if the song is autobiographical, Brickell, who says her songs often unfold in her mind like "little movies" she can't control, demurs with a laugh, "You assume it's about Paul?"

GIL KAUFMAN
(October 14, 2003)