For singer/songwriter Shawn Colvin, now in her fifth decade as a recording artist, it's a performance style that she's steadfastly stuck with from the very beginning – the golden rule being that any song she might write or be given had to stand up on solo acoustic guitar too, "because that's the basis of what I do, and always has been, to play and sing alone."
With a new UK and Ireland tour starting at the end of this month, celebrating the 30th anniversary of her fourth and best known album A Few Small Repairs, Colvin is looking back on the platinum-selling record and its seemingly unlikely rise to the top of adult contemporary radio.
"My most vivid memories of making it have to do with how fun and simple it was, which has not always been the case," she tells BEST FIT. “The previous three records, there was always a push to find a single. I don't consider myself a singles artist, so things were kind of forced and compromises were made on my part. But our edict with A Few Small Repairs was, we don't care about radio. We're gonna do our best work with no compromises and that's that. Of course, the irony is I had a hit song.”
Written towards the end of the sessions, inspired by the cover art she'd already chosen for the album (a three-eyed woman holding a lit match), “Sunny Came Home” was a runaway success, giving Colvin a top ten hit on the Hot 100 and winning her two prestigious Grammys, for Song of the Year and Record of the Year, in 1998. But there's much more to A Few Small Repairs besides. It's a deeply personal album for Colvin, written at the time when her first marriage was ending, with other standouts including “Wichita Skyline” – a song that touches Colvin to this day – and “What I Get Paid For”, a co-write with Crowded House's Neil Finn, who added his voice to the chorus.
A Few Small Repairs also benefits from the production and writing of Colvin's close collaborator John Leventhal, who has played an instrumental role in her most successful albums, including her 1989 debut, the haunting “Shotgun Down the Avalanche” is fundamentally a document of their crumbling romantic relationship at the time.
Having landed a contract with Columbia Records through touring with Suzanne Vega, eventually went on to win the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1991. Colvin also sang backing vocals on Vega's masterpiece “Luka”, with Vega later returning the favour on Colvin's superb “Diamond in the Rough” – also the title of her 2012 memoir – and both were part of Sarah McLachlan original Lilith Fair tour in 1997.
Born in rural South Dakota, raised in Illinois and later in London, Ontario, Colvin has long called the Texan city of Austin her home, and this patchwork of North American locations is evident in her songs, with her music combining a mix of yearning, personal scar tissue, joy, and life on the road. Aside from the eclectic nature of the songs that Colvin lays out below as the soundtrack of her life, her love for the big screen is equally evident, with at least two having movie connections, both with strong American historical timestamps. Colvin herself appeared in the movies Grace of My Heart and , the latter inspired by the life of Nashville guitarist Hank Garland.