Shawn Colvin
October 25-28, 2012
City Winery, New York, NY
November 7-8, 2012
City Winery, Chicago, IL
citywinery.com
For the past few years,
Grammy winning singer-songwriter Shawn
Colvin has made the intimate Soho club City Winery her base when playing
New York City during her annual fall “residency.” (She also comes to Chicago’s
own City Winery for concerts on November 7 and 8.)
It was no different on
October 25, the first of a four-night residency through October 28. For 100
minutes, Colvin held her audience in thrall with just her voice, acoustic
guitar and pocketful of superb songs: for the second half of the concert, she
was joined by Mary Chapin Carpenter, whose low harmonies beautifully
accentuated Colvin’s own voice. The pair had just flown back from an eight-show
run in England, Ireland and Scotland—but jetlag was nowhere in evidence.
Colvin, whose latest
Nonesuch album, All Fall Down, came
out in June—following a six-year hiatus after the release of These Four Walls—writes deceptively
simple songs that incisively dissect relationships with straightforward but
cutting lyrics. On display was a trio of melancholy tunes from the new record, “Knowing
What I Know Now,” “Seven Time’s the Charm” and “Change Is on the Way.” Colvin,
whose engagingly chatty banter between songs is an essential component of her live
shows, wryly noted that she got one of her few upbeat songs, “Fill Me Up,” out
of the way early in order to fool her fans into thinking she’s a “happy”
performer.
But her fans are as
savvy as she, and she knows it: in addition to her songwriting talent, Colvin
also is a terrific cover artist—it’s not for nothing that an early album of
hers, Cover Girl, comprised tunes of artists
like the Police, Talking Heads and Greg Brown, whose “One Cool Remove” was a
highlight of the evening. For this concert, Colvin balanced eight originals
with nine covers, beginning with her signature re-working of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.”
Colvin and Carpenter
were at their vocal best during the four-song covers-only encore, beginning
with a stark, emotional version of the Beatles’ “I’ll Be Back” and ending with,
according to Colvin, “the sweetest song we know”: Willie Nelson’s “That’s the
Way Love Goes.”
Shawn Colvin
October 25-28, 2012
City Winery, New York, NY
November 7-8, 2012
City Winery, Chicago, IL
http://citywinery.com
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