MUSIC REVIEW: Shawn Colvin at the Mahaiwe

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on April 17, 2010 - 12:33pm

Classical Music

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Great Barrington, Mass.
Shawn Colvin
April 16, 2010

Review and photography by Seth Rogovoy

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass.) - It’s been twenty years since Shawn Colvin’s major-label debut, Steady On, which made her one of the first of the new-folk scene (just behind her friend and fellow singer Suzanne Vega) to return the kind of intelligent pop-folk songcraft to the airwaves and pop charts that had gone mostly missing for the previous decade.

Colvin was no overnight success, however. She had been plying her trade on the folk coffeehouse scene for well over a decade, in places like Austin and Boston and mostly in New York City, where she even was a one-time duet partner with Lucy Kaplansky, as well as a stalwart of the Fast Folk Collective, alongside the likes of Vega, John Gorka, David Massengill and Richard Julian.

Still, when Colvin hit the big time, first with her Grammy Award-winning debut album, and then, a few years later, with her multiple-Grammy-winning breakthrough album, A Few Small Repairs, she was still developing as a performer - battling stage fright all the time while finding her groove as a singer and guitarist and mining that magical vein whereby a singer with a guitar can take a crowded theater and make it feel like one of those 30-seat Greenwich Village folk cofeehouses she used to play.

Colvin performed that magic last night at the Mahaiwe, in a balanced, assured set of music that, given her correct sense that this was a crowd of longtime fans, leaned heavily toward older favorites, with a generous number of songs chosen from that wonderful debut, Steady On.

Colvin was an engaging presence, combining her utter professionalism with a healthy helping of disarming, seemingly off-the-cuff observations -- what she joked was a 50-minute “therapy session.” There was the typical Bob Dylan worship; the stories behind some of her songs; updates on her career (she’s writing a memoir); and obeisance paid to the beauty of the theater and the intelligence of the crowd.

But mostly there was her music -- Colvin’s perfect melding of theme, mood, lyrics, rhythm, and melody that all fuses together and creates a harmonious, signature sound, a kind of mood music. So much energy is invested in the writing of the lyrics and melodies -- they are so perfectly crafted and support and comment upon each other with mathematical balance and precision -- that by the time Colvin performs them, she’d really have to try hard to mess them up.

Rather, Colvin only adds to them with her insinuating vocals and her considerable guitar chops. Those chops are probably her most underrated quality and her secret weapon -- while understated and never drawing attention to itself, Colvin’s guitar-playing could serve as a model lesson for aspiring singer-songwriters who think it’s enough to strum basic chords. While Colvin’s recordings typically make use of a basic rock band, and while she sometimes performs with full-band backing, she knows how to create an orchestral sound all by herself -- just enough that’s needed.

With plenty of suspended fourths and major-seventh chords, Colvin constructs musical tension into the foundation of her songs, but she adds to the musicality with unresolved open chords, hammer ons, pull-offs, bent and vibrato and stretched notes, bass notes, fillips, short runs and fills -- nothing flashy, nothing showy, but all in the service of the overall mood and effect, that had her fans and those new to her music equally pleased by her wonderful, generous concert at the Mahaiwe.

Warmup act Garrison Starr, who had her own brief brush with near-fame a few years ago with a couple of well-distributed recordings before the bottom fell out on the record business, could have been the Shawn Colvin of 1985 in her aw-shucks demeanor and her determination to win over a crowd that she acknowledged right up front probably had never heard of her before last night. Once Starr warmed up and demonstrated the variety of her songwriting and revealed more of her personality, she transcended obvious reference points including Lucinda Williams and Indigo Girls to establish her own personality.

She also hid a gorgeous natural vibrato that she finally unleashed and let sail on a stunning rendition of the folk chestnut, “The Water Is Wide” - as compelling a version as any I’ve ever heard.

Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living’s award-winning editor-in-chief and music critic.

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