Diamond in the Rough

by Shawn Colvin

  Larry had a studio, called the Kiva, in his home in Bel Air, and we agreed that this would be the best place to record Fat City. Let’s just cut to at least part of the chase: Joni Mitchell lived there, too. I was hardly oblivious to that; in fact, I was in a bit of a stupor about it. I wasn’t sure I could handle being in such close proximity to my undisputed hero without losing consciousness. I needn’t have worried. There’s never a lull in the conversation with Joni around. She is an expert storyteller, a master of language, and it was pure joy to listen to her speak in the same poetic yet down-to-earth, streetwise vernacular she used in her songs. She commands your undivided attention, which you’re happy to give. Joni is endlessly fascinating, funny, and intense, still like royalty to me, although she will tell you anything. I found out more about her than I could ever have dreamed, about her boyfriends, her career, and her experiences. She’s low on bullshit, high on opinions.

  I saw her writing a song. Her notebooks were not dissimilar to mine—basic lined paper, notes and lyrics written by hand, but still I could hardly take it in—she was human. I got to see her come into the studio having just woken up, still in her pajamas. We all went out to dinner every night, sometimes to a vegetarian hot spot called À Votre Santé, which Joni referred to as “Mow de Lawn.”

  When I asked her advice about the fact that my boyfriend had called a live-sex 900 number, she swiftly brought out the I Ching and threw it for me, simultaneously confessing that she once had a perv boyfriend, too. She gave me presents—a photograph from an exhibit she had up at the time and an antique Native American silver necklace of hers. We took a lot of Polaroids and had a technique of peeling the backing off while the photo was still developing so we could mark it up with the side of a nickel. I have a Polaroid of Joni hand-decorated by the lady herself—she embellished her clothed image with breasts and pubic hair.

  Joni, 1991

  I was fretting over a lyric one day for a song called “Kill the Messenger”—“Sometimes someone drifts by / And our nets get entwined in the …” The what? Joni looked at me as though I were heinously dense and shrugged her shoulders. “The sea,” she said matter-of-factly. Well, of course. She called me Shawnykins and probably remembers none of this, but I always will. I laughed and ate and talked with Joni Mitchell. Even now I can hardly believe it, but then again I am a classic dork when it comes to meeting famous people. For example, I heard my name being called once while standing outside a Santa Monica hotel. I turned around to answer and found myself looking at Sean Penn. Here is the brilliant thing I said to him: “Oh! You’re a Shawn, too!”

  If Steady On was about getting sober, going to therapy, and the end of my relationship with John Leventhal, Fat City was about feeling good. I think it was an easier record to make, probably because there was no drama between Larry Klein and me. It was a friendly, warm relationship, and so it was more fun, too.

  The song I’d started on the uptown bus to therapy, “Polaroids,” opened the album. The rhythm of that song lent itself to a lot of conversation, a lot of words, a lot of visuals. I didn’t have an ending, and one night I dreamed of two people in love. They were walking on a plank across a huge gully or a crevasse—and she turned around and held up a card that said “Valentine” while he was taking Polaroids of her. That was it; I knew how to end the song.

  Romantically I was inspired by a couple of different men this time around. Remember the nerdy boy who rejected me by feeding the cats and driving me to arson? He was at the core of “Tennessee” and “Monopoly,” proving that it doesn’t take much to get yourself written into one of my songs.

  Musically “Tennessee” was a sort of departure for me. John had written the music, and it was more rock and roll than anything I’d tried to write before. Richard Thompson graced us with a screaming guitar solo, and Béla Fleck played a nasty banjo part—you don’t see the words “nasty” and “banjo” together very often, but Béla does things with a banjo that are rather unusual, to say the least.

  I wrote “Round of Blues” for my new love (not the perv), an Englishman, Simon Tassano. Simon was lithe and light, with golden skin and hair, the bluest eyes, the loveliest mouth, a beautiful man. I bought him a silver sun on a beaded silver chain because he was Sunny Simon, always cheerful. In the early days, I started to fall in love with him upon hearing him sing Joni Mitchell songs, badly. Simon is a thoroughly charming, easygoing master of the soundboard and peerless caretaker for Richard Thompson, with whom I toured America and Europe in 1991. I was still promoting Steady On, and Richard was promoting his album, Rumor and Sigh. I would open the show each night, then play rhythm guitar and sing backup in Richard’s band during his set. To this day this tour stands out as one of my favorites ever. I worked my ass off, had the time of my life playing with and learning from Richard, who is simply brilliant, and fell in love with Simon. Who was engaged. But not to me.

  Richard Thompson tour, Newport, RI, 1991

  (Photograph courtesy of Simon Tassano)

  Every tour should come with a warning about falling in love while on the road. (And if you tour Europe, the warning should be in large red capital letters.) It isn’t real life. It’s fairly simple out there, romantically so, breezing in and out from one city to the next, one’s only actual responsibility being to show up and play each night, which is a pleasure. Of course you’re working, but it is really about pleasure: the pleasure of playing, the pleasure of camaraderie, the pleasure of food and sleep and entertainment—and love affairs. We resisted each other for as long as we could, until I told him I’d be willing to have a relationship with him for the duration of the tour, no questions asked, no expectations. I’m not normally capable of such compartmentalization, but he was so dear and it made me so happy to be near him. I didn’t see him as a philanderer, just a guy stuck in a moment that he couldn’t get out of. Somewhere along the way, I think it was in western Canada, he told me he was falling for me. I was wearing a black dress with a golden sun on the front, lent to me by my friend Elly Brown. Now we had a problem. Ultimately, Simon made the decision to break off his engagement in order to pursue a relationship with me, and I was glad, although in hindsight, with a few more heartbreaks under my belt, I truly regret the pain I brought into his fiancée’s life. But we were in love; it was a runaway train. Backstage at a gig in Cornwall, England, I wrote the first lines to “Round of Blues.” It’s Simon’s song.

  Simon and me, Sydney, Australia, 1992

  (Photograph courtesy of Tom Godano)

  During the making of Fat City, I went with Simon to visit his son in Australia. I remember camping with Simon and Tom, looking at the stars and finding Orion. It was a romantic notion to me that we could all see that same constellation, no matter where we were, even with thousands and thousands of miles separating us. When I got back to L.A., I took a lush piece of music that Larry had given me and began “Orion in the Sky.”

  Because of Simon there are some other affirmative love songs on Fat City, like “Climb on a Back That’s Strong” and “Object of My Affection,” both of them infused with hope and promise, not exactly my forte on Steady On.

  Recording with Larry meant using an entirely different group of musicians than those on Steady On. We had David Lindley, whose solo on “Polaroids” still makes me cry. I especially wanted to use the Subdudes, a rootsy outfit from New Orleans who reminded me of the Band. They played on “Object of My Affection” and “Tenderness on the Block,” a cover of a tune by Warren Zevon and Jackson Browne—which was also up-tempo and hopeful! (What was in the Kool-Aid??) I’d written a song with Elly Brown called “Set the Prairie on Fire,” and Larry brought in Booker T. Jones to play a sultry organ part, while I asked Chris Whitley, a labelmate and one of my favorite artists, to add some slide guitar. That song also featured Jim Keltner on drums, and I was beyond excited to work with him. We recorded six takes of “Prairie,” and Jim never played the same part twice, which is an aspect of his genius. The difficulty was in choosing which drum take wa
s the coolest.

  The best surprise when it came to players was certainly Steuart Smith. Steuart plays the guitar with crazy precision and a true, true heart. I’d seen him at the Bottom Line in New York accompanying Rosanne Cash, and I remember telling him afterward that I couldn’t stop smiling when he played. There was this whole incestuous minidrama going on where Rosanne was now dating, and working with, John Leventhal, I was working with Steuart, and Larry had just finished producing an album by Rodney Crowell, Rosanne’s ex-husband, using Steuart and John on guitar. Yikes. But I felt so lucky to have found Steuart, who in addition to being an amazing guitar player is one of the smartest, funniest, most passionate, sincere, and hardworking people I’ve ever met. Nowadays Steuey is an Eagle, and I’m still mad at Don Henley for stealing him, but who can blame him? Steuart rocks.

  Larry Klein turned what seemed like a horribly daunting prospect—making music without John Leventhal—into a joy. When we finished up Fat City, it was time to go on tour again. I got the late, great T-Bone Wolk to play bass, Jeff Young on keyboards, Kenny Blevins on drums, and Steuart on guitar. I was still with a bunch of boys, but this time I had a bus! My first-ever bus tour. I can still remember pulling in to a town, getting off the bus in my uniform of a pair of men’s striped pajamas, and going into a radio station for an early-morning drive-time interview.

  Simon defected from Richard long enough to run the tour and do the sound. I fared considerably better during this outing than on my previous one, what with having a boyfriend, a bus, a band, and Prozac. I’d learned what I could and couldn’t do vocally, although we did a cover of “Look Out Cleveland” that I’m pretty sure didn’t do the song justice. We opened the show with “Dead of the Night” and did this little medley of “Tracks of My Tears” into “Cry Like an Angel.” I had a blast.

  There was just one problem in my life now: Simon lived in London, I lived in New York. We both figured that all we really needed was a nearby airport, and beyond that we were wide open. So we did the only reasonable thing two people in love can do—we moved to L.A.

  14

  You Always Knew It

  The Masters of Rhythm and Taste, Italy, 1993

  (Photograph © by Guido Harari)

  This is my window to the world.

  Simon and I settled in Los Angeles, and I had an idea for my next record. I figured for all the cover tunes I’d learned and played all those years, I ought to record some of them, and besides, I just hadn’t written much since Fat City. I decided to ask Steuart Smith to produce. The record was called, aptly enough, Cover Girl— title courtesy of Simon.

  “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” which opens the record, was one of the first songs I learned that represented a departure from all the singer-songwriter material I’d been covering since I was fifteen. I played it in the Bleecker Street days in the mid- to late 1980s. I learned Tom Waits’s “Heart of Saturday Night” up in the attic in Berkeley, 1979. Dylan’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” is another from that time period. I’d gotten deep, deep into “Blood on the Tracks,” and I swore I’d wrestle a melody out of that song. The Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” is a cover I’m really proud of. After listening closely to the lyrics, I discovered the sweetest love song inside their perky, bouncy arrangement.

  There were two fairly obscure songwriters that I was keen to record—Willis Alan Ramsey and Judee Sill. The covers of these two songs—“Satin Sheets” and “There’s a Rugged Road,” respectively—are truer to the original artists’ versions simply because they are obscure, and I wanted to represent the originals. Willis Alan Ramsey put out one record in his life. I learned about it when I moved to Austin, in 1976. Everybody in Austin knew about Willis. It’s one of the best records I’ve ever heard—a desert-island disc. I even got to see Willis play a couple of times in Austin in the seventies—and that era is gone. He’s missed.

  Judee Sill was my own discovery. I was still in high school and scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. We had a college radio station, WTAO; we played that in the ice-cream store. A song came on called “There’s a Rugged Road.” I just stopped what I was doing. The singer was a woman, an acoustic guitar, and then these otherworldly, heavenly harmonies come in on the chorus. I was able to track it down to Judee’s album Heart Food. She made two records, and I love every song on both.

  Steve Earle says the fact that I recorded his song “Someday” made a difference to him at that time in his life. I never will feel like I came close to touching his version, but I was obsessed with that song, and if it meant something to Steve, then I can go on living.

  As I mentioned earlier, one of the artists who really taught me the most about relating to an audience, and about being a performer and a songwriter, was Greg Brown, one of the first artists I ever opened for, back at Passim. I’d always loved his tune “One Cool Remove” and liked the idea of doing it with my friend Mary Chapin Carpenter. I also covered the Band, Jimmy Webb, and “Killin’ the Blues”—that has-no-rhymes gem by Roly Salley from my days with Buddy—and a great song called “Window to the World” by a Tennessee band called the Questionnaires, led by Tom Littlefield. Tom and I co-wrote a song called “Trouble” that I would record on my next album.

  This was a full, joyous time in my life. Simon and I got married in 1993 in the desert out at Twentynine Palms in Joshua Tree National Park. I’d now made three records. Tours were launched for both Fat City and Cover Girl, and Simon managed and did sound for them. I’d finally gotten used to that aspect of my job; in fact, I was more than used to it—I was loving it. Larry Klein, Steuart Smith, and I formed a trio for the road, and it was the best band I ever had.

  We called ourselves the Masters of Rhythm and Taste, and we were a lean, mean outfit. I’d never felt so at home musically. There was just enough sound, and every note and beat counted; there was no fat to trim, no drums to sing over—Steuart said we were wearing drummer repellent. The essence of each song had to be captured by just the three of us, and to my ears we sounded fuller than an entire orchestra. There was magic and mojo among me and Steuart and Larry, both onstage and off. We were friends and bandmates, a perfect little microcosm of artistic and social heaven. I was with Simon, so the likelihood of road-induced hanky-panky was nil. The three of us were tightly bonded through our love of music, of course—and a thoroughly sick sense of humor.

  The aforementioned Rudy Ray Moore Zodiac tape was required listening on the bus, post-show. I can’t even quote it here—it’s just too blue—but it decompressed us and set the stage for whatever movie we might decide to watch. And watch repeatedly. Steuart and Larry were fans of The Bad Lieutenant, a Harvey Keitel film so depraved it was barely watchable. I preferred a PBS special called The Donner Party, a perky documentary about cannibalism. Thereafter Steuart referred to our backstage cold cuts as “Donner party platters.” While watching Alien, Steuart had the bright idea of slowing the film down frame by frame just at the moment the creature shoots out of the egg and attaches itself to John Hurt’s face. He claimed that it was all done with raw chicken.

  Steuart was extremely picky about movies; his guru was New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael. We all loved Martin Scorsese. Raging Bull and Goodfellas were staples on the bus. (I met Ray Liotta one time and asked him to please say, “Karen,” just once. He did.) I brought The Last Waltz and Casino. Casino might not have been as perfect as some other Scorsese films, but it has that great Scorsese rhythm along with a killer sound track. About a quarter of the way through it one night on the bus, Steuey, who’d had a little wine, stood up, slammed down his glass, and muttered, as he stomped back to his bunk, “It’s sloppy, it’s mean-spirited, and it’s shit.” It may have been when Joe Pesci stabbed a guy in the neck with a fountain pen.

  About midpoint during our show every night, Larry and Steuart would go offstage so I could do a couple of songs by myself. I had a standard joke that I would tell about their having to leave the stage to be treated by
the medical staff because they were drug addicts. I explained that I was a responsible employer and wouldn’t force them to go out on the street to satisfy their habit. One night while I was saying this, Steuart rode a bicycle behind me across the stage.

  Before we went on each night, Larry would pull me aside. He would solemnly take my hand, turn it over, and put his finger in my palm. “Shawny-Shawn-Shawn. Here,” he began, “here is the audience. You must put them here. And then”—and as he said this, he would subtly tilt my hand from side to side—“you must play with them. You must always give them something,” he would say, “but do not give them everything.” At a small club in Italy, we once did a thankless, awkward show where only members of the press were invited. Most of them didn’t speak English, and I wager most of them didn’t want to be there. I was tired, and I was not in the mood. When we went on, I stood very still and closed my eyes, never opening them once throughout the entire performance, giving probably the most lackluster show ever. Backstage afterward, Larry threw up his hands in mock despair and wailed, “But you must give them something!”