SHAWN COLVIN
9:30 Club, Washington, D.C., March 23, 1998

These certainly are the good old days for Shawn Colvin. After garnering mainly critical pats on the back for her first ten years of studio work, the folk-minded singer-songwriter finally received some commercial recognition for her fourth album, 1996's A Few Small Repairs. Last month, Colvin headed to the Grammy Awards as a blue-collar underdog, but left the glitzy to-do with not one, but two trophies for Repairs' thoughtful yet poppy "Sunny Came Home." Most recently, the South Dakotan received her best news of all: In August, Colvin, after playing at least two late-summer Lilith Fair dates, is expecting her first child, a girl.

So it was no surprise that woman-of-the-moment Colvin was in glowing spirits when she played her first of two sold-out solo acoustic shows in the nation's capital. Sauntering onto the bare stage in a bright red maternity dress, the extremely grounded Colvin spent the first five minutes of her set chatting casually about the Oscar festivities ("I'm in an office pool, so I've got a financial interest in who wins") and her recent Grammy coup ("If you watchawards shows long enough, and you cry enough, well, eventually you win").

Of course, there was some singing this evening (although it was interrupted every now and then by Academy Award checks on the monitors above the stage). Colvin opened the musical portion of the evening with a slow, aching cover of Steve Earle's "Someday," then, without even a mention of Helen Hunt or Jack Nicholson, reeled off three from Repairs: "Get Out of This House," "Trouble," and "You and the Mona Lisa."

Credit the strength of Colvin's by turns chirpy and soaring voice for successfullyblending the often irreverent 'tween-song life tips ("If you want to tell someone they have a booger, you say, 'You have bats in the cave'"), stories of her past ("I once fed my little sister a scab and told her it was a burned potato chip"), and Oscar updates with the emotional resonance of her songs. "Another Long One," "Wichita Skyline" and "Steady On," all about tough situations and hopeless escape plans, were moving enough to leave small pockets of awed-crowd silence at their conclusion. Only when Colvin smiled and said "Thank you" did the audience erupt in hoots and applause.

After closing her set with "Sunny Came Home," "I Don't Know Why," and "Nothin' onMe" (which just happens to be the new theme song for the icky Brooke Shields sitcom Suddenly Susan), Colvin encored with concert staple "Polaroids" and Dylan cover "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go." Perhaps feeling a bit guilty for her unconventional set, Colvin motioned for the house music to be turned off and hit the stage unexpectedly for Jimmy Webb's "If These Walls Could Speak." Finishing the song, Colvin bowed and grinned and said, "Thanks for putting up with my Oscar obsession." Hey, Shawn, this is your world now. You do whatever you want.