by Shawn Colvin
Alternate cover for Whole New You, 2001
(Artwork courtesy of Julie Speed, with photograph courtesy of Kate Breakey)
Whole New You was released on March 27, 2001. It tanked. What a difference four years made. Nobody bought it; hardly anybody heard it. The climate of hit radio had changed completely, and the abundant promo opportunities offered before by Columbia were close to nonexistent. It had been too long—five years—since the previous hit record, and the people at Columbia felt that the material was not going to be radio worthy.
Labels are run less and less these days by music fans and more and more by businesspeople, and the concept of building an artist slowly so he or she will have staying power is being abandoned for signing manufactured acts that can have big hits right out of the chute. There’s no room in it for someone like me. I am not your big-hit artist, although I did have a big hit. The climate had changed; it wasn’t about women singer-songwriters anymore. That had passed.
In many ways I don’t really feel as if I’m in the music business anymore. What I do is kind of archaic. I don’t belong at a label that’s going to want a million-selling record. That’s just not me, and aside from one song and one record, it never really was. I go and play shows with a voice and a guitar, and people come to see me because that is what they want to hear.
Of course, there are great opportunities now that you can have a studio on your iPhone and basically anybody can make a record and put it on the Internet. I think it’s pretty cool when I see a commercial and there’s this strange song that they just plucked from somewhere and some unknown person gets this big boost. But there is a downside, too. Everything just seems so disposable. I feel I really don’t know what’s out there. I listen to old stuff. I’m not in touch with what’s vital except through Callie sometimes.
With Whole New You, my manager met with the president of the label who told him flat-out, “There’s nothing I can do with this record.” But my manager didn’t tell me this until later. I was the last to know. I just slowly figured it out. It was a very bitter pill. Over the course of the next year, I fired my manager, left Columbia, bought a new house, and got divorced. Again.
17
A List of Names
The Manhattan skyline, a bed and a byline.
I’ve come and I’ve cradled your face.
And I won’t be the last one to commit crimes of passion
With a shoot-out and a chase.
I’m deeply ashamed to have been divorced twice, but not as deeply glad as I am to be divorced. I have a commitment problem and some pesky trust issues that just don’t jibe with boy-girl intimacy. It’s something I’m learning about myself—I am a loyal friend, a dedicated mother, a dependable colleague, a loving sister and daughter, but I am a lousy girlfriend and an even worse wife.
Here is a list of the men I have found attractive: men who don’t want to be with me, men who do want to be with me but can’t commit, men who want to be with me but have some fatal flaw, men I don’t know, men I know but who refuse to give up fantasies of changing. I seem to yo-yo between blonds and brunettes. If my former boyfriend/husband was blond, then the brunettes have a better shot, and vice versa. Oh, and gray and balding are now copacetic, too. For instance, my last boyfriend was blond and big. My current interest is graying and skinny. I think it’s a form of retaliation, of not giving the last one the satisfaction of even thinking I’m trying to replace him. Of course, it’s all one big mess of penis envy and Electra complexes, but let’s table that for now. I also believe I attempt to shore myself up in the “this one will be different” department by changing the scenery, if you know what I mean. But it’s useless, mainly because I’m always in the equation, the one constant. There doesn’t seem to be any way around that.
As I said to Stokes once, “Why can’t I find a man with more than potential?”
You see, at the beginning I want to believe, as all of us do, so much so that I ignore huge red flags. I’ve discounted sexual addiction, alcoholism, financial improprieties, still being married, homosexuality, toxic narcissism, compulsive lying, and more often than not just your garden-variety bad-boy-dyed-in-the-wool hounddoggishness. Everybody has something, I rationalize.
My song “The Facts About Jimmy” I wrote for someone I never actually dated but was entirely, madly in love with. I believe I’d met him twice, and he jerked my chain a couple of times. He was an absolute dreamboat. He invited me to dinner, and I couldn’t believe he might even be interested in me. But ultimately the most that ever happened was that he touched my foot in a hotel room, which I thought was a good start, but there was no follow-up, and I was somewhat bitter. At the time “The Macarena” was at the height of its popularity. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing that song and seeing the accompanying video of two aging Brazilians and their moronic dance. As is the case with all gigantic dance hits, however insipid, once they’re in your aural atmosphere, you cannot get rid of them.
One night I was visiting Stokes, and he insisted we watch a pay-per-view video channel and purchase the Macarena—he had succumbed. Stokes is my go-to guy for a man’s perspective; he gives it to me straight. After hearing the paltry details of my Jimmy situation, he paused and said, “I don’t know why, but for whatever reason he doesn’t want to fuck you.” Right then and there, I knew what I had to do. I called Jimmy—I didn’t know about caller ID yet—and left “The Macarena” on his voice mail so he would be infected with it. Like getting an STD without the sex.
I guess one of my most creative acts of revenge occurred with my second husband, Mario. Callie was itty-bitty brand-new, and I was deep into breast-feeding her. She was deep into colic. I tried to keep a record of when she nursed, but it read like Kafka, and I resigned myself to just popping out the breast anytime she yelled, which was constantly. I learned to pump a small village’s worth of milk after each feeding so we could freeze it and Mario could handle some of the legwork. One day she just wouldn’t eat. I’d give her the breast, and she would latch on and then shake her head like a pit bull. When Mario offered to try the bottle, I was offended. If she didn’t want it from the source, why would she want the bottle? He reasoned that he made the bottle milk hot.
“It’s coming out of me at ninety-eight point six degrees, for Christ’s sake!” I shouted.
“I think I make it a little warmer than that,” he countered demurely.
Well, that was it. Knock my mothering any way you want, but don’t tell me that my damn breasts are not doing their job. The next morning I took some of the steaming breast milk he had warmed for a feeding, sweetly offered him a cup of coffee, turned my back, and fixed it with breast milk. He never knew the difference.
Lest you think I’m nothing but a retaliatory witch, let me assure you there have been acts of benevolence on my part where men are concerned. I’ve shown remarkable restraint at times by not calling them in the middle of the night, not calling their new girlfriends in the middle of the night, not calling their best friends in the middle of the night, and not calling their relatives in the middle of the night. Sometimes I have not gone through their wallets or important papers, nor checked their cell phones to see who they’ve called. I’ve done my best not to steal or maim their clothing. I think I may have mentioned some issues I have with abandonment and so forth. I am sometimes given to extreme reactions. But mostly in my head. I do know right from wrong; it’s just that at times I ignore what I know.
While in relationships I love to jump out of cars. I suppose it’s for dramatic effect. Most women can tell you a story about how they jumped out of a car at some point during a fight with their man, most usually while the car was stopped or at least slowing down. Simon and I had a fight while driving from L.A. to Austin when we moved there. I have no earthly idea what it was about, but I ended up stomping around a grassy meridian on I-35 near Waco.
While visiting New Zealand with my last boyfriend, I was involved in another car incident. Our relationship was unfortunate in
that he was more of a girl than I was, and there really can’t be two divas in the house—it won’t work. The man was obsessed with product. He had better hair crème, soap, body lotion, shampoo, conditioner, and face scrub than anyone else I knew. After he broke up with me, he wanted back some lip balm he’d ordered and had had shipped to my house. So I put cat shit in his new trail shoes, which had also been sent to my house after the split, and naturally he was not too happy about that, although I can hardly blame him there. Every girl knows you don’t fuck with another girl’s shoes.
Anyway, when we arrived in Auckland, my bag didn’t show up. This is disastrous in and of itself, but especially when you’re meeting your boyfriend’s parents for the first time and you’ve just traveled a trillion miles to do it. We made our connection to Christchurch, got the rental car, and set off to see the folks. Okay, yes, yes, of course New Zealand is beautiful. But it’s cold down there. And windy. And all I had were my plane clothes. I was a plane-clothes defective. And I was jet-lagged. And nervous. And Mr. Nancyboy didn’t care—he had his bag with his Fresh Sake Hair Cream. I knew I was supposed to feel like Cate Blanchett in Lord of the Rings, but in fact I was just in a cold, windy, foreign country, in a car that was on the wrong side of the road. I began to cry, and we pulled over. Get the picture? I hope so, because if you don’t, this is what you will hear: “I’m cold! I’m bloody cold!!! Can you not see this??? I have no bag!! I’m wearing the same clothes I’ve been wearing for thirty-six hours!!!! I don’t know anyone!! And I’m coooooooold!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
I’ll never forget the look of shock on his face—his eyes got very wide, and his Dudley Do-Right jaw dropped. “Fuck!” he said (a man of many words), as though I had just asked for a twelve-course meal (that he would have to pay for). I jumped out of the car and began to roam the streets of Christchurch. See, this is always a good trick. Men don’t want you roaming the streets; it sets off something primal in them, as if you may become mating prey for another beast. Besides, he was hell-bent on impressing me with his wonderful birthplace, since he felt it was akin to Bethlehem. He drove around and found me, I conceded to getting back in the car, my point was made, and we went to a store and bought a jacket. And you don’t even want to know how I felt about not having my jammies. Hold on a sec, I’m shivering.
Which leads me to mention some interesting facts about me. I can travel without anything at all except: a high-thread-count cotton sheet, a fan, my medication (don’t say it), and my pajamas. If I love you a lot, I’ll sleep naked. That’s it. Because anything else you can buy, but I need these things immediately; my peace of mind depends on them. When I went to the Tour de France, I didn’t have the proper adapter to make my fan work, and I practically slept with the guy at the hotel who rewired it. I love coconut cream pie. I’ve never broken a bone. And I’ve never written a book. Maybe you can tell.
18
Bring a Sweater
These Four Walls, 2006
(Photograph courtesy of Tracie Goudi)
Up on the rooftop I can remember
Borders I had to break.
Now I can see I had this life
To make.
My former manager told me once while I was out doing press and radio promotion all day and a show every night, “The show is the least important part of the day.” I was shocked and offended to the core. He was implying that the promo push was the most crucial thing, but it isn’t so. The most important thing, every day and every night, is what to wear. And that’s how I began to write for my next record, These Four Walls. With an ode to a dress.
As usual I was low on material—I hadn’t written anything since Whole New You bombed. While I was on tour during the summer of 2003, I was booked at Red Butte Garden in Salt Lake City. Things were finally coming back into balance after divorce número dos and the change-up in labels and managers. My new manager, Ken Levitan, got me off Columbia and onto Nonesuch, a small label under the umbrella of Warner Brothers. Emmylou Harris told me one time that she loved her record label. I’d never, ever heard anyone say that. She was on Nonesuch, and that’s where I wanted to go. Ken managed a lot of my friends and colleagues and mentors: Emmylou, John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, Patty Griffin, Buddy and Julie Miller. I was in good company.
My dressing room at the garden in Salt Lake that afternoon was an amazing greenhouse on a hill overlooking the basin, and I noticed that I was content. It was time to get ready for my show, so I put on a light, sheer, airy dress that I loved, by a company called Dosa. I felt satisfied, happy. It occurred to me to jot something down.
I put on my finest summer dress,
So light and thin, it was my best.
I brushed my hair, I held my breath,
I went out to face the wilderness,
I went out to face the wilderness.
I liked it. That was the first thing I’d written in a really long time. You know, one of the major pleasures in my life is buying clothes. I get visceral, tactile, visual satisfaction out of clothing—the sculpture, the textures, the colors. It’s an art form. It makes a big difference to me, the clothes I choose to put on my body. Which doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be expensive or fancy, although that often helps. “Summer Dress” gives a more hopeful version of the character that I tend to write about, who feels oppressed by her surroundings. This time she gets free, but not without the proper wardrobe.
All the songs on These Four Walls were written primarily in a two- or three-week period during which I went to a studio in Austin called Cedar Creek. Technology being what it is, I had MP3s of tracks with the music John had written, which were downloaded to a software program called Nuendo. I could sit by myself at a computer, with a good microphone, press a button, and record melodies, nonsense, as many ideas as I could come up with, over these tracks. Bit by bit, they began to take shape.
Writing is like a sport. You have to show up, and you have to practice. Yes, there are times that are more or less convenient, and there are times when you are more or less motivated. But it’s about showing up. Some days the lyrics just start to come out from an unconscious part of you. Other times you’re so conscious of them not coming out that you want to scream. And sometimes you do. Scream. But as long as you keep making yourself available to the music and to the emotions you will fill it with, good things can happen. As I started the process this time, I was having some trouble making any good things happen. I was, as they say in the writing biz, totally blocked.
If writing is a sport, I was in desperate need of a coach. Stokes came to Austin to help, and he did this exercise with me where he would take little phrases out of the newspaper and make me write them down. Then he’d give me a certain amount of time to use them in a song. It’s a great exercise, because it makes you realize that whatever you write, it’s going to take you somewhere. “Fill Me Up” was one of the phrases he gave me, and that became the title for a great, uplifting piece of music I had from John. To me it’s always been a song to my audience, and to Callie.
I wrote a line when I was at my sister’s one day: “I’m gonna die in these four walls.” I meant it from a humorous standpoint at that time. Kay lives in the suburbs of Austin. It was Sunday, and the kids were playing in the pool. The adults were outside, too, drinking beer and grilling burgers. There were sports inside on the TV. It was just the way I had grown up. And there we were again. I thought, Whoa, I am really dug in.
When I moved back to Austin in 1994, I always felt as if (and it sounds so morbid) this was a good place to die. There was just something about it for me. There always has been. So I took that one step further in “These Four Walls” and adopted the point of view of somebody who’s nearing the end of her life, looking back—not with regret, just with appreciation and wistful sentiment, at peace. The guitar music by John is very simple to play, and it moved me immediately, so much so that I was hesitant to go after it, but I found the heart of it, I think.
Many years prior I had written the lines “Hey everybody in the old
schoolyard, / We took it all the way and we took it hard,” to an old musical idea of John’s that I’d always liked. The phrase “tough kid” came to me, and the song, titled “Tuff Kid,” followed pretty quickly. It’s basically about me in junior high and high school, a kid having a hell of a time of it at home but armed, in this case, with her guitar, which was fast becoming her identity.
“Cinnamon Road” to me is mainly just imagery. John unknowingly inspired it. He told me one day about the place where he kept all the painful memories in his life; he said it was like they were in a box somewhere. It’s about regret, it’s about longing, it’s about the past. It’s the idea that no matter what you do, the things that anchor you and even the things that weigh you down are always going to be the same, your whole life. The events that devastate you, the lovers and friends and family you lose—the things that by all accounts you’re supposed to get over, I guess, but I don’t think you do. I don’t think you ever do. I don’t think it ever goes away.
“The Bird” was started from a scrap of paper that I had, scribbled with the words “What I like about the bird …” I call it my low-self-esteem song, and it’s similar in theme to “Another Long One” from my first record. I did have a dream about an old boyfriend, which starts the song. I dreamed that we were young again, that I wasn’t a needy, dysfunctional alcoholic and I knew how to be empathetic and giving.
I was going through a phase that’s never really ended, I guess, where I was decorating my house. I want color, and I want clutter. Sparse does not work for me. It needs to be a little crazy. I really appreciate houses that have white walls and beautiful artwork and negative space, but I can’t do it. For at least two years, maybe longer, I was putting samples of color on my wall—and that appears in “Fill Me Up” when I mention “French blue” and “the right shade of tangerine.” I wouldn’t doubt that I had a hundred quarts of paint in my garage and totally patchworked walls of this color, that color. It was insane.
