Sheryl Crow Crosses the Country Divide
By
Bob Doerschuk
© 2013 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.
Sheryl
Crow didn’t get off the Greyhound in Nashville, with guitar case in hand and
a heartful of dreams.
Actually, though, in a way, she did. She didn’t arrive
by bus, but otherwise she could relate to the excitement and apprehensions that
many new arrivals feel as they first set foot in Music City.
Of course,
Crow had certain advantages, having already achieved worldwide superstardom and
earned nine Grammy Awards and six Platinum albums, including two that have reached
triple and one, Tuesday Night Music Club, that’s seven-times Platinum.
Still,
when she bought a place outside of Nashville about five years ago, she felt like
an outsider, albeit a well-connected one. Drawn to Middle Tennessee by the lifestyle
as much as its musical opportunities, Crow began reaching out to some of the folks she knew in town.
“I got
to know several people through Kimberly Paisley,” she said. “She had a girls’
dinner and introduced me around. I started to make friends. Nashville is much
like a small town. People don’t show up with casseroles, but they make sure
that you’re finding your way.”
Kimberly’s husband, Brad, invited
her to a writing session with Chris DuBois. “Talk about a crash course in songwriting!”
Crow remembered. “Brad and Chris work over a long period of time to make sure
their songs are right. And you can tell. Some of Brad’s songs are so beautifully
crafted that it’s intimidating.”
Amusingly, DuBois has a mirror image
of that first session. “It was very intimidating to write with someone like
her,” he admitted. “Brad and I have always been big fans of hers, so just
the thought of sitting down in a room with her was nerve-wracking.”
Everyone
soon calmed down enough to write a haunting tune, “Waterproof Mascara,” about
a mother’s sadness at not being all she should be for her young daughter. That
was the start of a series of songs written by Crow with DuBois and other Nashville
stalwarts, 12 of which wound up on Feels Like Home, her newest release
on Warner Bros. and, by her own description, her first true Country album.
“There
are songs from my old catalog that are ‘too Country for Country,’” she said.
“‘All I Wanna Do’ has that feel from the intro to the outro. It’s the
same with ‘If It Makes You Happy,’ ‘Strong Enough to Be My Man’ and ‘Can’t
Cry Anymore.’ But there’s also a lot of stuff on the new record that doesn’t
sound like Country. One of them is ‘Waterproof Mascara’; another is ‘Crazy
Ain’t Original These Days’ (written by Crow, Al Anderson and Leslie Satcher).
And that’s OK too, because the Country format now encompasses a lot of things.
“When
I first started, every label in L.A. said, ‘We don’t know what to do with
you. You’re too Country. You’re too blue-eyed soul,’” she recalled. “I
feel like I’ve always been like a suburb of Country Music — and now Country
Music has grown and engulfed my suburb.”
Crow revels in the freedom
she now feels. “A lot of the songs I had written in the name of rock ‘n’
roll were devoid of range,” she observed. “I can sing range; I just haven’t
had the opportunity, because I haven’t been able to write those songs. People
ask me, ‘Who are your favorite Country singers?’ Well, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly
(Parton) and Emmy (Emmylou Harris), who are all big-range singers. Tammy (Wynette)
was a big-range singer. So is Connie Smith. So it’s such a treat to go out and
play ‘Give It To Me’ (Crow and Jeff Trott) and ‘Waterproof Mascara,’ songs
that have a big range, and pull an audience into a song they’d never heard before.”
No stranger
to writing with others, Crow had to adjust to methods that are unique to Nashville.
“People here write in threes,” she said. “I’d never experienced that before.
I think it’s probably because the objective is to get the song finished in order
to up the percentage of getting cuts — not in a bad way, but obviously you’re
going to get a better chance to get it recorded if it’s finished.”
Crow insists
that Country has allowed her to put more of her true self into her music. Some
of that has to do with how the format mixes the lead vocal. Crow’s co-producer,
Justin Niebank, realized the best thing he could do for her on Feels Like Home
is let her hear herself as clearly as possible.
“I’d gotten
so used to producing myself that the last thing I would concentrate on was being
a vocalist,” Crow said. “But Justin gave me the freedom to just walk up to
the mic and sing. I never actually heard myself sound so good in my headphones.
Who could expect that I’d feel so inspired at a job I’ve been doing for 20 years?”
“As simple
as it is, the headphone mix is one of the great missing links in making records,”
Niebank said. “When people put on headphones, it should sound like a record.
Putting up microphones and running them through mic pres ain’t the gig; it’s
getting the headphones so when people put them on, they’re blown away.”
Crow’s
embrace of the Country lyric tradition makes Feels Like Home a career milestone.
“In my early days, I masked almost any true emotions in a narrative,” she
said. “I would create a character and hide behind her. Now I’m older and I
love writing from the first person. It doesn’t put me in fear. I feel differently
about my art. My life informs my art in different ways than it ever has before.
So now, I like making people feel prickly with an emotion.”