Some singer-songwriters shift product by the millions and thus warrant the cover of magazines like Hot Press and Rolling Stone. Others instead produce small works of art that appeal to a similarly limited audience and are too often overlooked in the profit-driven climate of contemporary pop. This is surely true in relation to the latest album by Shawn Colvin, A Few Small Repairs.
After four albums, she says, without a major breakthrough, money is still an issue for me. I still have to tour to make a living as my top selling album, say, 300,000, doesn t meet all the costs.
For the money I spend on a record, $200,000, which is pretty average, you have to sell 400,000 records to start getting a return.
And even now, supporting Sting is not really a money-making deal for me. The only hope is that, this way, people will get to hear about the new album. So I do get a bit angry and jealous when I see someone arrive out of nowhere and suddenly sell millions of records.
And Lord knows people should hear Colvin s new songs. For those who suspected a form of creative drought was taking place when she did that last album of cover versions, Cover Girl, the new album sees Shawn Colvin, singer-songwriter, roaring back into the fray with a vengeance.
I never had a spell when I was completely dry, I was always jotting little things down, she asserts. But I must say that I probably am brought to the most sustained level of inspiration, as a songwriter, when I m in pain and have some distance on it.
A lot of these new songs, in a way, come out of my marriage breakdown. I was married for two years but that ended a little while back. The album is not just about that, people in the States certainly see it that way, which sort of gets to me. There s a lot more going on in this album.
A Few Small Repairs certainly proves that we, the fans, often gain when an artist loses on a personal level.
That s fine, and true, Shawn reflects and you understand that. But there also is the thing that people want to experience pain, through someone else, as though, by doing that, you won t have to feel it yourself. So you have this sycophantic, misguided interest in some other people s lives. That s another reason I say that it is a disservice to this album when someone says, in the press, that this album is just about a divorce. It s not. It s about loads of things. The music business, my sister, my family, lots.
And what about the idea that it also deals with the idea of a woman going insane ?
That s okay! laughs Shawn. Divorce and madness! But, seriously, yes, this album does, at points, capture the experience of a woman on the edge. Me. I felt horribly depressed, destructive, self-destructive, insane, not wanting to live. But it was all internal. I ve never burned a house down, never killed anyone. And by writing about all these things, you do, in a way, I guess, ward off madness. Though it s a fine line you walk, obviously.
How deeply is Shawn effected by the desire she expresses in the song, If I Were Brave ? with its verse But I have this funny ache and its burning in my chest/And it spreads just like a fire inside my body/Is it something God left out in my spirit or my flesh/Would I be saved if I were brave and had a baby ?
Oh, I still desire that, she says, plaintively. My sister had a baby and I latched myself onto her experience and they were very sweet, allowing me to watch, and all that. And maybe that is as close as I ll ever get to that experience, though I know, of course, it s not the same thing.
But then this is about the most common dilemma that strikes women my age, being 40 years old and never having had a child and now being forced to think about it because you don t have all that time left. And in your 40s you really do begin to understand that there is a drive to create life so that death seems less final. It is a really pointed issue in my life right now, but maybe I will do it with the man who now is involved in my life.
But then, even though people say it is the best thing that can ever happen in your life, Raymond Carver once said that although he loved his children, they drove him crazy! And that the only reason he wrote short stories was because the most he could get, here and there, was a half hour away from his screaming children! So maybe it won t be all I imagine it will be.
But in the meantime, doesn t Shawn Colvin s work compensates to a degree for not having children?
That is a consolation, yes, especially if you can believe that the work you do is for the greater good, Shawn says, smiling. But still, I would like to have a child and continue to produce albums such as this, if that is possible. And, as I said earlier, have a little more success! n