Sheryl Crow, little superstar: 2nd album article

by Steven Batten

When Sheryl Crow's debut release, TUESDAY NIGHT MUSIC CLUB, took off in 1994, selling an astounding eight million copies and netting her four Grammy Awards, everybody thought they knew just what Sheryl Crow was all about.

As it turns out, she didn't even know herself.
An overnight sensation years in the making, the 35-year-old Missouri native had seen plenty in her days as a backup singer/musician for the likes of Michael Jackson and Don Henley, none of which adequately prepared her for the roller coaster ride her life was to become.

Crow had, in a few short years, gone from being a struggling L.A. musician willing to do anything for a break to being a reluctant rock star who couldn't catch a break to save her skin. Welcome to life in the fishbowl.

True to form, however, the resilient Crow has overcome. Her self-titled sophomore effort has picked up where MUSIC CLUB left off, commercially speaking, netting her a pair of '97 Grammy nominations ("Best Rock Album" and "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance").

Musically, however, SHERYL CROW is coming from a different place entirely -- straight from the gut, full of heart and steeped in soul. It's as close to being what Sheryl Crow is all about as Crow can offer.

"I didn't want to self-title it because I sort of think that that can be cheesy," Crow admits. "But I felt that with this record, it was just time to do it. There were vast discrepancies in the story about how much I had to do with my last record. This time, there's no question about it."

In addition to writing or co-writing each of the album's 13 tracks, Crow produced and played a variety of instruments, ranging from guitar and bass to her true love, the Hammond organ. The end result is an album that more clearly approximates Crow's vision.

"I really went into it feeling like I knew what I wanted to do and I finally wound up managing to do that," she says. "It just seemed like the right time to call it the Sheryl Crow record."

That newfound focus came at a time when Crow needed it most. She's been the center of a whirlwind of controversy in the months since MUSIC CLUB's whirlwind success. Many of her collaborators on the first record -- the "Tuesday Night Music Club" for which the album was named -- grew jealous of the accolades heaped on her alone, leading to some public grumbling and a rift between Crow and producer/collaborator Bill Bottrell on the eve of recording the new record. The death of another Music Club member -- former Crow paramour Kevin Gilbert -- further clouded the air. Undaunted (and perhaps even more determined), Crow ensconced herself in a storied New Orleans studio, submersing herself in the loose, raw vibe of the city and setting about the task of putting the past in the past and making the best record she could make.

"When I made my [first] record, I made it, by choice, with a bunch of friends, because I really needed to have a great musical experience," she says. "The timing of making [that] record and the fact that I was getting together with this group of people and jamming -- it just was the right thing to do, and it was something that I felt great about."
Crow harbors no regrets regarding the making of MUSIC CLUB -- at least none she cares to air publicly -- but clearly felt it was time to make a stand on her own.

Under Pressure

While topping a mega-seller can be a daunting task (ask Hootie And The Blowfish), Crow says she felt no particular pressure to top MUSIC CLUB's impressive sales. Rather, she concerned herself with making a record that she could be happy with for the long haul.
"At the end of touring for two-and-a-half years, I felt like things were slightly out of control," she says. "With this record, I wasn't feeling the pressure of, 'I've got to sell more than seven million copies.' I was more feeling the relief of going in and working by myself, which was something that I'd been accustomed to doing for years and years.
"The pressure I felt was to have a good musical experience that felt honest and true," she adds, "one that I could live with for the next two years of touring or 20 years of my life. That was what I wanted to feel."

New Orleans

To achieve the swampy, loose vibe that she envisioned for the album, Crow knew she'd have to extricate herself from her familiar Southern California locale. New Orleans afforded her the perfect opportunity to suck up the culture, as well as the seclusion to achieve the necessary focus.
"I chose New Orleans because I knew when I went in that I wanted to make a record that was slightly swampy and moody, and [New Orleans] could lend some of the influences that I wanted," she explains. "I grew up very close to Memphis, so a lot of my influences were from that area -- Tulsa, Memphis, New Orleans. As everyone knows, New Orleans can really kick you in the ass. It's really vibrant and really alive, and that's what I wanted. I wanted that to be painting the picture on the record."
"I had this idea in my mind when I went down there that I wanted to make a record that had the intimacy and spiritual overtones of a Robert Johnson record, but almost Bobbie Gentry-ish, meets '90s Beck or something," she relates. "Throwing it all in the pot and coming up with something that was relative to people now. A lot of what's on the record are sounds that we just pulled together, and that also lent a vibe."

Live And Learn

With the music falling into place according to plan, Crow was able to draw from a wealth of experiences with her lyrics.
"I went into it with a gamut of experiences from the last two or three years, and also quite a bit of raw emotion," she says. "A lot of that shows up on the record. A lot of that emotion, that sort of un-pretty, in-your-face, raw, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes vulnerable -- all those emotions, I think, are present."

Keep On Growing

The highs and lows of the past three years have helped Crow to grow immeasurably as a songwriter. So much so that even she's noticed the changes.
"I've actually gotten to where, in the last few years, I can listen to music again and not feel like I've got to be splicing and dicing it and trying to teach myself the ins and outs of why something is great," she says. "I can really listen to music and really appreciate songs as songs. I'm really enjoying songwriting again.
"The fun thing about it is not knowing exactly what's going to come out," she adds. "A couple of times on this album, I had the experience of writing a song top-to-bottom on-mic, and really never knowing what it meant until much later on.
"That's exciting for me," she says, "because I know now how to write a song now. I know how to craft a song. But the ones that are really cool and special and that mean something are the ones that don't always come from that 'I know how to write a song' place."

Making A Difference

Among the most gripping tracks on SHERYL CROW is "Redemption Day," a last-minute inclusion Crow penned after a trip to war- torn Bosnia with First Lady Hillary Clinton. The experience awakened a restless, yearning spirit in the singer.
"You see all these great documentaries on people like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Richie Havens, and the whole folk period," she notes. "It's a frustration to me, although I can slightly remember the Civil Rights Movement --early '70s, late '60s -- because I'm just that old -- that music in some ways has lost that vitality and that camaraderie and that spirit of making a difference.
"A lot of what's going on, the lyrics are speaking of frustration and apathy and self-deprecation," she says. "It's not like this unified voice. I hate that I'm not getting to be a part of that. I don't feel like there's this great musical community that I'm a part of. In some ways, I feel a little bit cheated."

Home

Spending some time at home again after more than four years of album-tour-album was another eye-opening experience for Crow.
"It's very, very confusing being home, particularly after having toured for two-and-a-half years," she says. "Initially, I got home and I got right back into the studio and I got into that creative process. And when it was all done ... I'm still kind of reacclimating myself. It just takes a lot of reckoning to reacclimate yourself to real life. To come home and suddenly be cooking your own eggs and not ordering off of a menu and not having two hours every night to blow off that steam, it's a little frightening."

On The Road Again

It makes perfect sense, then, that Crow finds herself returning to her familiar gypsy lifestyle. She kicked off a 38-city tour January 30 in Austin that will bring her to Cleveland for a March 8 performance at the State Theatre. With a new band in tow -- including holdovers Todd Wolfe (lead guitar) and Scott Bryan (keyboards/percussion) along with newcomers Jeff Trott (guitar), Tim Smith (bass) and Jim Bogis (drums), Crow is ready and raring to go.
"It is really a blast," she enthuses. "This music is really fun to play live. Although my last record was fun, it was a little more mid-tempo, and this is a lot more groovin'. And I've got a good band. It's going to be fun." Sheryl Crow on

SHERYL CROW

"If It Makes You Happy" -- "That song, for me, just is what it is. It's a credo that I have, that if you're in the moment and you can find some joy in that, it just can't be that bad. You've got to make the best of your situation and not always be looking past the moment, because then you'll miss out on what life is.
"That's been a battle for me, always has been. Having a little levity has been my real challenge."

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"Maybe Angels" -- "I wrote that right before the Grammys with Bill Bottrell. I really wanted to write a song about what people believe in and the search for some sort of spirituality.
"During the last record, we had this fascination with the whole alien thing, and whether the government had covered up the whole Roswell thing. And right around that time was the anniversary of Elvis' death and birthday, different anniversaries, and John Lennon's death. We wrote this song about the experience of seeking spiritual leadership. There's got to be something bigger than us -- God, aliens, John Lennon, whatever." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A Change" -- "That was the first song I wrote after Bill left. Being a songwriter can get you into trouble, because often times although you write about things in life and things you experience, a lot of times you'll write about things about other people that you know. I wrote [this] song about people just not being able to handle life, you know, as a day-to-day experience. It's a barrage of conscious stream, day-to-day vignettes that everyone will experience." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hard To Make A Stand" -- "I wrote that with Bill around the same time I wrote 'Maybe Angels.' There was this character, maybe he's 65, who hung out in Pasadena near where we were working. The guy is? -- was? -- a cross-dresser, a really strange-looking guy. Maybe a little demented, I'm not sure, or maybe highly intelligent. But he'd always give you a flower and talk to you at length, and generally it didn't make too much sense. He called himself Miss Creation. "He kind of hung around the coffee shop, and one day he wasn't there -- they had asked him to leave -- and he had slipped a note under the door saying, 'If I'm not here, you're not here.' That was just kind of his way of thinking -- I guess it's kind of existential. I just thought it was interesting. There are people in the world every day who are striving to figure out who they are and why." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Superstar" -- "That song definitely was inspired by the John Fante book, ASK THE DUST -- not the story, but more just the feel -- sort of slinking around the seedier parts of L.A. I've always had this fascination with the way media creates heroes and overnight successes and then just drops them.
"Right now, we as a nation have such a fascination with stardom. It's a growing illness that this nation has. Maybe the world. It's a really discouraging pattern that we're in. That's what this song is about, though it's kind of poking fun at it -- the transparency of it all."

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