Shawn's Showdown

SHAWN COLVIN is not happy. The critically acclaimed American singer/songwriter has just learned that her record company, Sony Music, has deleted her debut album, Steady On, from their UK catalogue.

"They didn't even have the courtesy to tell me directly - I just heard it through the grapevine," she says. "I mean, I'm very proud of that record, it's my work, it's the only thing I want to leave behind in this world. I'm proud of the new album too and I'm happy to promote it, but something has gone wrong - I just don't deserve this treatment."

What makes this move on the part of the record company all the more mystifying is the fact that Steady On won a Grammy Award in 1990 as the best album in the Contemporary Folk category. Surely such an accolade is a record company marketing man's dream?

"No not at all," she says. "They felt that I won the Grammy at the wrong time for them - they weren't ready for it! All my friends and family were waiting for the 'Grammy Award Winner' sticker to appear on the album cover after the awards ceremony - but it never appeared, I can't understand it. I just didn't win the Grammy in a timely fashion for them and that was that."

On a break from supporting Chris Isaak on his European tour, Shawn Colvin is in Dublin to play a one-off gig at Whelan's to promote her new album, Fat City. Her recently acquired distaste for record companies is palpable as she gets into her stride.

"They have this attitude towards the artists - kind of like, 'don't tell them, they're just little children'. I know I shouldn't complain that I can't create what I want to create but the record company makes things very difficult. Marketing has become a monster. With precedents being set by artists who sell 28 million copies, that seems to be everybody's pie in the sky so the idea of supporting an artist who maybe breaks even and provides something for the musical community is just not the main thing anymore. We'd all like to make money - I'm co-operating! But the president of my record company hasn't come to see me play since 1989 - it doesn't make sense."

While she may not be too enamoured with the internal machinations and the corporate behaviour of record companies right now, Colvin can have no complaints about the musical luminaries who have rallied around to assist her on both her albums. The credits on Fat City read like a who's who of top rank, mainly West Coast musicians. People like David Lindley, known for his work with Jackson Browne and Ry Cooder, Ritchie Hayward and Bill Payne from Little Feat, Bruce Hornsby, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jim Keltner, Richard Thompson and the legendary Booker T. Jones, all contribute stellar performances to the album. Topping this, the record is produced by Joni Mitchell's husband, Larry Klein, with a cameo appearance by Joni herself on percussion. But then, Shawn has long had a musical support group around her.

Born in Vermillion, a small town on the wild plains of South Dakota, she inherited a love of folk music from her father who exposed her to the likes of Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte and the Kingston Trio at an early age.

"My dad taught me to play the guitar when I was ten and I started playing at school parties and that kind of thing," she recalls. "When the family moved to Carbondale where the campus of the Southern Illinois University is situated, I started getting into the folk scene there and I formed a folk-duo with a school friend. Joni Mitchell was definitely my biggest influence at the time."

She graduated to harder rocking bar bands soon after that and was offered a chance to join the Dixie Diesels - a popular country swing band based in Austin, Texas. She moved there for a while with them but still didn't find what she was looking for. In search of her own musical identity, she decided to head for New York after a brief period in San Francisco. Following further stints with various bands she took the decision to become a solo artist and concentrated on writing songs.

Colvin soon gained a reputation on the then-burgeoning New York and East Coast folk circuit, opening for people like Steve Forbert and The Band's Rick Danko. In 1988 she won the New York Music Award as "Best New Vocalist" and with rave reviews for her live performances she soon landed a deal with Columbia and set about recording her first album, Steady On. She had become friendly with Suzanne Vega and Bruce Hornsby and both helped her out on her debut.

"I felt it was a good idea to have Suzanne on the album," she explains, "because the music press were already making comparisons between the two of us. It's really stupid - they'd never do that with male singers but they like to pitch women singers against each other and try to find out who's the best. I thought I'd nip that in the bud right there and get Suzanne to sing on the record."

The release of Steady On was followed by almost two years of non-stop touring during which Colvin appeared at major festivals all over the States and in Europe. She also found time to sing backing vocals on several of Mary Chapin Carpenter's albums with whom she's become good friends over the years.

The new album, Fat City, isn't a radical departure from the debut, with the songs continuing to showcase her distinctive acoustic guitar playing and strongly melodic songwriting style. Lyrically, deals in romantic themes which she conveys in textures and landscapes evoking a strong sense of colour and emotion. The album's only cover song, Warren Zevon's 'Tenderness On The Block', suits her husky vocal style which is not unlike that of Rickie Lee Jones.

She found the second album more difficult than the first despite the great reaction to the debut. "There was more pressure on me after the success of Steady On but I took my time with it, what's the point in rushing these things?," she asks rhetorically.

But Colvin is not too happy about her categorisation in the marketplace, something she feels might be impeding her progress. "They market me as what they call 'adult contemporary' which is primarily 'soft rock' as opposed to 'alternative'," she says, "I don't know where the best place for me to be is - they both have their problems - but the annoying thing is that one seems to cancel out the other. If you like 'alternative' you're not supposed to like 'adult contemporary'.

"What annoys me," she continues, "is the fact that the so-called alternative radio stations in the States play stuff like Soul Asylum, Toad The Wet Sprocket and even REM who have elements of folk in their sound. But the marketing men have completely polarised the too different elements."

For all that, Fat City has received universally favourable reviews and has already outsold the debut. Now, is thinking about the next one.

"I've already got some ideas about the new album but even though I haven't been in the studio yet I've been getting a lot of feedback (from the record company) about what I should and shouldn't do and that's a bit distressing."

Plans for the future?

"Well I'm supporting Clannad on some dates in Europe and then it's back to the States to plan my wedding - I'm getting married in September to an Englishman who happens to be Richard Thompson's sound engineer. I stole him for a while to do sound for me and we hit it off!"

So the music industry isn't all bad, after all!