![]() ![]() She learnt to play guitar at 10 and moved to New York in her early 20s where, after playing in various bands, she met John Leventhal, the producer and writer with whom she's maintained a creative partnership for 25 years. Music played a huge part in keeping her together. "Sometimes, I still just want to take the edge off." ![]() It was so nice to take the edge off."Įven today, some 24 years after she stopped drinking, she struggles with it. And if you're that anxious for that long, it takes a lot of energy to deal with it. I don't think anyone escapes into addiction because they feel good about themselves and the world is bothering them. "I didn't drink until then because I was frightened of losing control, but when I started, when I was 19, that was it. In Tuff Kid, she sings "My daddy hit me but he couldn't quit me/ We showed each other how to feel alive", while in The Story, she sings of her parents, "And he never did guess/ in her cast-iron dress/ she was burning beyond recognition".Īfter a difficult childhood, Colvin went to college and it was there she started drinking. Essentially, they tried to break my spirit, which wasn't an uncommon way to bring up a kid in those days." "They weren't prepared for a kid like me. Her parents, who married young, were the product of their time. (Even when she was diagnosed and medicated, in the 1970s, drugs then had dreadful side-effects). Growing up in the 1950s and 60s in the American midwest meant her condition went unrecognised. "I believe in a biological predisposition towards it, and I suffered terrible anxiety and panic and sensitivity." "Looking back, I see I've had a form of depression from when I was around five years old," she says. So, on top of the usual broken hearts and shattered love affairs that singer-songwriters perennially plumb, she also deals with her alcoholism and depression. Citing Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Jackson Browne as influences, Colvin sings about herself. She writes intimate, confessional songs, in what she describes as a "folk idiom that has evolved from old folk music, through Bob Dylan, to personal folk music". But of course we cared.The damage of which she sings is, mostly, her own. When we came into this new record, we wanted to say we didn't care. And when I had tried to make a hit single on earlier albums, it never worked, so the pressure was off. I sold enough records to make a company want to keep me. "On the last record, there wasn't any pressure at all," Colvin explained. Then she suddenly found herself a quasi-pop star in her early 40s with a hit to follow up. Her subsequent records earned respectful reviews and helped her build a strong live following. Since her 1989 debut, "Steady On," Colvin has enjoyed a select and literate audience. "That and Soy Bomb are the Grammy moments everyone remembers.Īll the recognition raised the stakes for this veteran songwriter. "I really ought to thank him," Colvin recalls with a laugh. She also became known as the Grammy-winner whose acceptance speech was interrupted by the rantings of loony Wu Tang Clan rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard. Yet the success of "Sunny Came Home" helped her album sell over a million copies. Even Colvin herself admits she was more than a little surprised that her last album, "A Few Small Repairs," yielded a hit single from a spare acoustic-based song about a woman freaking out and burning down her own house. If that makes for interesting writing, it's hardly the stuff of hit-'em-over-the-head chart smashes. "On the last record, I had a fairly prominent revelation: Things don't have to be resolved in the song," Colvin explained. Always a subtle writer and an understated singer, her new lyrics are more elliptical than ever. But if there's any hope for raising kids well, it's in doing away with dishonest ideas about how the perfect mother should feel or act.Ĭolvin often deals with her feelings in an enigmatic way in the songs. Talking about the problems of being a mother is still taboo. Yet I was trying to hold on to who that old self was. "When I was writing the songs, I felt like I had one foot in one world and one in another," said the singer, who headlines at The Bottom Line Tuesday through Thursday. But nearly all the songs capture a sense of confused searching that rose directly out of Colvin's new life. They talk about plane crashes and boogeymen and remembered dreams. In fact, none of her new songs explicitly mention becoming a parent at all. ![]()
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