Diamond in the Rough by Shawn Colvin

Author:Shawn Colvin [Colvin, Shawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins US
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

First Grammy night, 1990

(Photograph courtesy of Stokes Howell)

At a function the night before the awards show, I ran into Bonnie Raitt backstage—I’d never met her—and she grabbed my arm. “I voted for you,” she whispered. The secret’s out, Bon! Holy, holy, holy shit. You know what? It just doesn’t get any better than that.

13

Days Go By

Larry Klein, 1991

All this time we’ve been a face in the crowd,

Now we’re living in color and laughing out loud.

The First Avenue uptown bus from East Third Street to Thirty-fourth Street was my mode of transport to visit my therapist, Myra. I’d been seeing her since 1985, after trying and firing several numbskulls in the mental-health profession. One, for example, upon hearing me profess to feeling pretty bad, quipped, “What else is new?” Sacked her. No doubt I was boring, but she was getting paid to be bored. I’d also seen an intimidating, butch woman who informed me, as a matter of course, during our first—and last—session that I wasn’t allowed to hit her. Oh, okay. Then there was the one who proudly told me I had a “scrappy” personality. She ended sessions by getting up to wash dishes—her office was in her kitchen.

Myra Friedman was smart, funny, perceptive, and grounded, a bubbly Jewish redhead with patience and empathy to spare for all of us neurotic fools. Her place felt safe, I suppose because she felt safe. She has been able all these years to witness and validate my external successes and failures, along with my internal milestones and setbacks, while still managing to confront me gently and steer me carefully toward autonomy and self-awareness.

The time had come for a follow-up record to Steady On. I felt then, as I do now, that if Steady On were the only record I ever made, I’d be content with that. But clearly another album was expected, which was both thrilling and terrifying. While promoting the first record, I made attempts to remember snippets and bits of lyrics and melodies, some of my own and some from John, so I’d have a slight head start when it came to getting twelve new tracks together. I was on the bus ride to Myra’s office, and I was thinking, God, why can’t I just feel the pure, unconditional love of the archetypal mother and be done with this shit? Then I heard a lyric—“Please no more therapy / Mother take care of me”—and although I didn’t have the breakthrough with Myra I was hoping for that day, the line I’d heard in my head and the rhythm to it were locked in. That song became “Polaroids,” and it was the last song I would ever debut at Passim. I recall sitting backstage there sometime in 1990, putting the finishing touches on it. I had to have the song ready for my people at Passim so they could see I wasn’t a slacker.

The writing process for my sophomore effort had begun, but I didn’t know what to do about a producer. Musically the obvious choice was John, but personally I wasn’t so sure.

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