Interview with Shawn Colvin about her memoir ‘Diamond in the Rough’, her new album, and other things

When I was 18, I started performing with my friend Sean. We were just two kids playing songs we wrote, backed by Sean’s acoustic guitar. People called us a folk music act and I had no idea what that meant. So, I started buying up any folksinger music I could get my hands on, to school myself. 

A year or so later when I purchased my first guitar (an Alvarez, for $100), the guy at the guitar shop told me I should check out Shawn Colvin. My songwriting reminded him of hers, and he thought I’d find a lot of inspiration in her work – the whole soft-spoken singer thing, telling hard stories with catchy songs. So I picked up a copy of A Few Small Repairs (which had just dropped) and quickly became a fan. Through the years, I’ve seen Shawn play live probably a dozen or so times, and have watched as her songs worm deeper and deeper into the most intimate reaches of her psyche. Now, as if the intensely personal tales from her songs weren’t intensely personal enough, she’s entering the realm of book author. Her memoir, Diamond in the Rough (titled for a song off her 1989 release Steady On) tells her story in a way untouchable by any song. 

I’ll be back later with my thoughts about the book (I’m just starting to read it), but for now, here’s my recent interview with Shawn about that project, her new album All Fall Down (out June 5), working with Buddy Miller, and more…

Kim Ruehl:Let’s start with the book. This is a new medium for you, right? Have you ever written anything like that before?

Shawn Colvin:No. Not even close. Nope.

KR: How did it come about?

SC: It was not my idea. My manager – I’ve known him for a long time – said, “You have a story to tell.” I was thinking: We all have a story to tell, that doesn’t mean people will be interested in it. I said, “No, I can’t write a book. I wouldn’t know where to start.” He told me to start with a chapter or two. I thought, that I can handle. I was using song titles and that reeled me in. I knew what the chapter would be about if the song title was “Suicide Alley.” [laughs] Eventually I just used the lines from “Sunny Came Home”… I wrote a few chapters and I had a book agent. They got me a contract to write a book. By that time I kind of wanted the challenge. I thought, I love these chapters and…you want me? Well, okay, I’ll rise to this challenge. Maybe I do have something to offer.

It was a struggle…I finally came up with a purpose that I was comfortable with. I don’t mind telling persoanl stuff, obviously. But, I thought I could be helpful, that there would be things in this book that any number of people might identify with. I feel like I’m being pretty honest.

KR: Your songs are very personal as you said and very story-like, but putting the non-verbal part of that aside, the music, was that scary? Did it feel unnatural for you to write without that element in there?

SC: Yes, it was entirely scary and completely different from writing a song. I’ve been asked that before – how did one inform the other? It didn’t. It was a whole different animal, writing a book.

Songs are far shorter and you’re held in parameters, pretty strict parameters if you write like I do. There’s rhyme scheme, you have to follow that. There are verses and choruses, the title which you probably end up repeating, the melody. The length of the song is rarely over three or four, maybe five minutes. Those things anchor me. It’s like doing a jigsaw puzzle. It can seem overwhelming but I feel like I know what I’m doing. When I’m done, I’m confident that I have a result I’m happy with. I’ve worked on it enough and it’s done. It doesn’t matter if anyone lieks it – I like it. This was a different foray. It was a ballsy thing for me to do because I realized I can write this way. I wasn’t partiucularly confident about it [in the beginning].

KR: How long did it take you?

SC: It took three or four years. Not writing constantly, but finding the time to do it and getting clear on how I was organizing it and how one thing could chronologically and cleanly go from one chapter to the next. You have to edit, you can’t put everything in your life in there. So, there are those decisions to make, decisions on how you’re going to portray other people, where you’re going to go with that. It was new…I’m repeating myself. [laughs]

KR: Why did you choose “Diamond in the Rough” as the title?

SC: It’s one of the first songs I ever wrote, which I say in the book that it made sense to me – “This is who you are.” Given some of the challenges I’ve had, like alcoholism and depression and so on, and as long as I’ve had those challenges – since I was little in one way or another – I actually came away with a diamond. I could write, I could write songs. I had an identity as a songwriter finally, a voice I could depend on. “Diamond in the Rough” is about that – that song. Given that picture I had of myself in the mud [on the cover of the book], I just thought it all fit.

KR: At the same time, you’re releasing a new album. Aside from the fact that your songs tell your story too, does the album have anything to do with the book?

SC: I’d say there’s some nostalgia in terms of some of the songs I’ve chosen. One of them reaches back to my early days in Austin when I lived here in the ‘70s. That was the first time I met Buddy Miller, who produced the record, so there was a connection there. Another cover I did was something I did a lot in New York, by a songwriter who was in the crowd, in the songwriting crowd that I hung with. That’s nostalgic for me and harkens back to New York, which was a big part of the book. You know, just the fact that Buddy produced it, to me, has a big connection with the book, in this nostalgic sense, that I reached back with this record to some degree.

KR: Tell me about working with Buddy. 

SC: As long as I’ve known him, it’s ironic that we didn’t collaborate sooner. We lost touch to a certain extent after he moved to Nashville. Then we reunited with the Three Girls and their Buddy group, which is me and Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris and Buddy. I was enjoying the work he was doing with other artists. I really love Buddy. His musicality is off the charts – he’s an amazing singer, a ridiculous guitar player and instrumentalist. He knows the musicology. And he just moves me. It went really well, I really trusted him. He put the band together. He said, “I really have a vision and I hear sounds that are going to work on this record.”

I didn’t choose the band at all. I really love the way it turned out. Buddy is somebody I could really trust as the process went on, which is very comforting to be able to know he’d tell the truth. He’s so nice and so sweet, I was afraid he wouldn’t tell the truth, but he did, even when it wasn’t pretty.

KR: He seems to have a knack for making the songs as simple as they can possibly be without losing anything.

SC: He does, and it’s ironic because at least in my case, he put a lot of instrumentation on these songs. He knew that he wasn’t going to use it all in the entirety of the song. He could hear when he was going to bring in a little accordion for dynamic and emotional tweaking and when he was going to bring it out again. So he has a guy playing accordion on a whole song, and I was like – but, but, but…but we already have two guitars, another guitar, and a violin and bass and drums…what other kind of stuff are we gonna put on this? He totally knew what he was doing. He created dynamics. He did keep it simple, but it didn’t really appear that way at certain points. He knew. He knew what he was going to do.

KR: So how about All Fall Downas the title? Was that your favorite song on the record?

SC: I have a tendency to choose what I think is a strong song. I don’t know if it’s my favorite song on the record. It’s hard to choose a favorite. I love it. I think it’s a little irreverent, I love the chorus, and it’s just fun. It’s got an attitude. I like it when that happens. I like to write more intimate songs, but I love it when I get a little bit more of a rocker, a pop song – that’s just fun.

KR: Do you thnk you’ll write more books?

SC: I would say no, but you never know. Hopefully, maybe I could write articles. If anyone sees fit to ask me to do that. But a whole book – woof. Not sure about that.

KR: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

SC: I had an interviewer the other day say, “You know, I got to a point in this book where I was a little scared for you. Are you okay?” Yes, I’m really okay. I’m doing great. No depression! 

Shawn Colvin’s summer tour dates can be found on her website; photo by Annaliese Moyer

Kim Ruehl is on Twitter: @kimruehl