She was a major pop star for about 15 minutes back in 1997. Before and since, she’s been one of the leading lights of “Americana” music and perhaps the most important singer/songwriter – male or female – of the last 20 years. She’s a big favorite of ours at Popdose; you can read some of our many thoughts about her here, here, and here — and those links don’t even include the brilliant Idiot’s Guide that was lost in the Jefitoblog Disaster of 2007.
Last week Popdose horned in on Colvin’s downtime at home in Austin, TX, following the July 3 conclusion of the high-profile Three Girls and Their Buddy tour – on which she matched songs and wits with Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin and Buddy Miller. Starting this week, Colvin is hitting the road on her own throughout the summer and fall. After opening a couple shows for Jackson Browne this weekend in New England, she’ll be headlining smaller venues armed with nothing but an acoustic guitar and her catalog of folk-pop gems. She’ll no doubt perform some of the songs that appear on her new Live album, which she considers her first proper in-concert recording.
What made this the right time for a live album?
No other reason than the fact that I haven’t really done one. There were some live cuts on [1994’s Cover Girl] record, but for someone who’s been playing live for so long, and doing it solo in a way that audiences have always seemed to appreciate, it seemed like, why not now?
Well, there was the Live ’88 CD.
Oh. I’d kind of forgotten about that…
Sounds like you don’t consider it a major part of your catalog.
(laughs) ’Spose not, huh?
I never heard much about the circumstances of that release [which was an expanded version of the Live Tape she sold at gigs before signing with Columbia in 1988]. Were you involved much at all? Do you have any rights to the material, or receive any royalties from it?
Well, I have rights to the material … My recollection is that it was a release on a small label [Plump Records] that belonged to my manager at the time. It was sort of a favor to him.
I was at one of the gigs at the Bottom Line [in New York] where you recorded the live tracks that appeared on Cover Girl.
You were there? Huh! Well, those were solo performances, but they got added onto. I had an A&R guy at the time who was also a musician – and that’s a bad combination. He said he wanted to “semi-produce” some of those live tracks, so it didn’t turn out to be purely what I had envisioned. I mean, the studio tracks on that record were what I wanted them to be, but some of the live stuff didn’t come out the way I would have liked it to. (more…)
