Feature

It was more than a decade ago Shawn Colvin wowed the critics and earned a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album for her debut offering “Steady On.” After a slough of Grammy nominations, Colvin continued this trend by taking home two more Grammys in 1998. As Colvin strolled with her family through Disney World, we discussed how she found the artistic voice that has won over both the fans and the critics. A voice she, along with opener Brandi Carlile, will share with Mob-towners Oct. 17 downtown at The Temple.

“I started going to church when I was young, then I began listening to folk music,” Colvin. explains “I listened to the radio and Joni Mitchell was a big influence, so I just imitated a lot of people that I heard and figured out how to sing.”

Colvin has been recently compared to legendary female figures in music such as Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris and Joni Mitchell, which is good news to her.

“It feels good,” Colvin says. “These are people who I really admired. I incorporated a lot of their style, and I feel good about that. I still sound like myself, but there’s no denying that I studied those people.”

Even though Colvin may admit to taking lessons from these great musical figures, her songs are all her own with her life and experiences poured carefully into each song. This can definitely be seen in her latest album “These Four Walls.” It has been five years since Colvin’s last album, and she claims to have been driven back to the studio for the sheer fact that she has more stories to tell and more time in which to tell them.

“On some ways, it’s (creating “These Four Walls”) normalizing after becoming a mom and figuring out how my work fit into my role as a mom,” Colvin explains. “She (Caledonia) started school and that opened things up. I’ve been 12 years with the same record label (Nonesuch) and manager and felt like those relationships were going to run their course, so I changed that. All those things contributed to renewing my energy and leading me to a fresh start.”

On “These Four Walls” Colvin did not continue her journey as a musician on her own. Producer, songwriter, musician extraordinaire and previous Colvin collaborator John Leventhal was there to lend a hand on this release. This feat didn’t come without challenges since Leventhal lived in New York and Colvin residing in Austin.

“Fortunately, the way John and I write has never been that we sat in the same room and got the songs started and ended,” says Colvin. “John has a lot of musical ideas, and I have a lot of lyrical and melodic ideas. We can easily do that through the mail by sending each other MP3 files that each of us have done. We only had to get together once every three or four months for two or three times before we felt the songs were done enough for recording.”

When Leventhal and Colvin were finished, the end result was yet another album that has been earning critical praise and satisfying Colvin’s fans for new music. However, Colvin maintains a humble attitude when you ask her how she feels to once again be winning over the critics after so many years.

“I never have this feeling that I could just rest on some accomplishment,” Colvin explains. “For whatever reason, I just don’t think that I’ve conquered the music world that way. I’ve just had some success and good luck. It’s almost an internal thing to realize that the best competitor is you. You need to prove to yourself that you’re not stale. Certain music that you hear in the interim, anything that you think is good makes you want to do better.”

Stephen Centanni is Lagniappe music editor. Contact him at scentanni@lagniappemobile.com.

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