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The problem with winning a Grammy Award is, sooner or later, after that warm, fuzzy feeling of euphoria fades away, you're faced with the imposing task of the follow-up. Just ask Shawn Colvin. After an auspicious debut in 1989 with Steady On, which earned her a Best Contemporary Folk Album Grammy, it would be another seven years before her major breakthrough with 1996's A Few Small Repairs and its Song of the Year-winning "Sunny Came Home."
Making that career landmark of an album, she says now, was a breeze -- a veritable walk in the park compared to Whole New You, her long-awaited return after a five-year quiet period broken only by a quirky album of holiday songs and lullabies. The delay had a lot to do with Colvin becoming a new mother in the interim, but just as much to do with the same "what now -- and how?" bear that every artist committed to growth has to wrestle with, no matter how many Grammys adorn their mantelpiece. "I guess the lesson is that you can potentially feel as ill-confident at any point in your career," Colvin explains in a call from her adopted hometown of Austin, Texas. "Not every project can go smooth, but in the end, you just have to trust your standards." Fortunately, as proven with Whole New You, when your standards are as high as Colvin's, the end result is usually well worth the struggle -- and the wait.
It's been five years since A Few Small Repairs. Do you feel butterflies getting ready to jump back into the thick of things?
It doesn't feel that way because I had a baby, and that's what was time-consuming. I just shifted my focus, but I've been real busy -- just not doing music, except for the last year or so making this record. So I don't feel butterflies; I feel ready to go. I feel I have to go, but I think it will be fun, because it's been awhile.
Did all the attention "Sunny Came Home" received give you a confidence boost, like "I've proven myself?"
No. I wish it did. It felt pretty good, but every new project has its way of getting done. It's a process, and I thought I'd cracked it last time, because making that record was fairly smooth, but this record wasn't. It was harder to make, harder to get the songs out, and more time consuming. Not that I hadn't felt those things before in making other records, it's just that A Few Small Repairs was pretty easy.
When you were writing this album, would you constantly ask yourself, "Does this sound like a 'Song of the Year'?"
[Laughs] Well, no it wasn't that so much as radio. It was just completely nuts to think of what we were doing and make any comparison between that and what was being played on Top Forty radio right then. We would think, "Is this something that can be played on the radio?" But almost all of them, hands down, it was "No." Things have changed a lot.
"We" refers to you and [producer/co-writer/ex-boyfriend] John Leventhal, who co-wrote all these songs with you and has worked closely with you for years. How long have you two been collaborating?
Well, the first record was 1989, but we worked together starting in about 1982. We took a little break, worked with other people in the early Nineties, but on and off, it's going on twenty years.
Considering the long history and chemistry you two share, do your spouses ever get jealous?
[Laughs] No, never like that. I think our respective spouses do exceptionally well, and I know both of them really love what we do. But it's got to be a little weird -- it would be for me if my husband worked with an old girlfriend of his. But we really earned where we are. The personal partnership had to go, and we were willing to lose the musical partnership if we were both going to be miserable keeping it going. So I feel like we came back to it in the right way, with the right motives and the right expectations. A Few Small Repairs was when we started working together again after taking a break from each other. It felt like we'd sacrificed and did the right thing, then put our toes back in the water for that project, and we were more than pleasantly surprised by how it felt and how it did.
Between "Sunny Came Home" and songs on the new album like "Roger Wilco" and "Mr. Levon," you seem to have an affinity for writing Ramond Carver-esque short-story songs. Do character-driven songs come more naturally to you than personal songs?
That's really a compliment, and it's kind of ironic, because up until "Sunny Came Home" and another song from that record, "The Facts About Jimmy," I never wrote about a character before. It was always first person. That's what was one of the things that was so much fun about the last record -- my feeling comfortable enough to write a story instead of all the songs being so personal. They're always personal, but it's kind of fun to take a step back and create something fictional. I mean, I didn't burn anybody's house down, and in "Roger Wilco," a guy's in a war, and I've clearly never done that. But it was really fun to get into that attitude.
The title "Whole New You" suggests change. Apart from the way you manage your time, do you feel motherhood changed you much as a songwriter?
Overall, no. I don't think it affected me as a songwriter. I think I write the way I write. Hopefully as an individual you grow, so the particulars change somewhat, but I think my attitude about life remains . . . I've got a certain overview, a certain character, and that always pretty much stays the same.
You brought your [two-and-a-half-year-old] daughter out onstage during your performance at the Newport Folk Festival last summer. Is that a regular part of the show now?
No. If she's at the gig and she wants to come out, I let her come out, and so far she's always wanted to. She's shown no fear so far. It's just fun for me.
Does she seem to have any idea of who you are?
She knows that I sing -- she knows that's my job. She knows that she can listen to me on CDs, so when we're in the car sometimes she asks for "Mama." "Roger Wilco" is her favorite song right now. She sings along to it. She doesn't have all the words right, but that's the one she likes.
One of the contestants on the current season of Survivor was a fellow singer-songwriter from your hometown of Vermillion, South Dakota. Have you been watching that?
I haven't. Are you kidding?
No. But I don't think he lasted too long.
Well, there you go! [Laughs] He was probably too boring. But I've never followed either Survivor. I did watch Temptation Island one time. And I watched the whole show, I kept meaning to turn it off, but I watched the whole thing. So I think I'd be in trouble if I watched that stuff -- I'd probably get into it.
So are you hitting the road soon?
Yeah. I'll be touring all summer, but it hasn't been set up yet. There's a couple of people I'd like to open for, but it may be decided from within my camp that I'd be better off just doing a headlining tour.
Aren't you past the point in your career where you have to open for people?
Not when it's Paul Simon!
RICHARD SKANSE
(March 27, 2001)