Couldn't handle just listening to her, decided to transcribe it. good thing our paths are highly unlikely in crossing. sheesh.

Hi, This is John Schaefer, WNYC Sound Check

Sheryl Crow

16 years ago we all got to know one back-up singer from Missouri very, very well.

This is Sound Check I am John Schaefer and today on this show the debut album that turned Sheryl Crow into a star and change things for women in rock.

But we begin in 1993 when it seemed possible that 31 year old Sheryl Crow might spend her career as an in demand back up singer for Michael Jackson, Sting, Don Henley and others. But in August of that year she released this album called Tuesday Night Music Club named for the late night recording sessions that helped Crow keep her day job. As it turned out she was able to quit that day job because Tuesday Night Music Club eventually sold 7 million copies and won 3 grammys. The album has just been reissued with a slew of extra songs and a DVD and Sheryl Crow joins me to talk about it. Welcome to Sound Check.

SC: Thank you

So this isn’t a like a nice round numbered 20 or 25th release. So why release this album now?

SC: Um, I think a couple of things, its, its, it’s a part of my career to be able to put out an album that uh my fans hold very dear. I got started before any of the big contest like American Idol, before the, the vehicle was created. We really scrapped around for a couple of years and created a really loyal fan base and um those fans are very dedicated to the early beginnings. Its so we wanted to give them something very special. There are songs from that period that didn’t make it onto the album. Um and it is and you know another thing it is a look back and I think it is probably a little more weighted than even a greatest hits because it does symbolize something in my career. The beginning I think of a of a sound that ah also the impact for women in general.

Mm it was something of a slow burner wasn’t it?

SC: It was, yeah and and its interesting I I feel really grateful that I got to get my start at a time when it wasn’t just about putting a single out and whether the single did well and if the single didn’t do well that the artist was given one more shot before they were dropped. My record label A&M which was a a a small label at the time a very well a respected label and had a history in artist development really gave me a longshot uh like you know I said we started out playing for 5 people and eventually played for 200 people and eventually played for 2000 people and these were people that were dedicated um fans because of the word of mouth aspect.

So was it that, I mean, uh that it sounds like it is two things you are talking about. One is this yeah you were out there doing it the old fashioned way just gigging constantly ah and word of mouth but the other is A&M first single doesn’t really do much but the second single eeuh, you know, and then finally (SC: yeah) All I Wanna Do is the third single, they’ve given you 3 shots, 3 shots at that, the brass ring there.

SC: Yeah, that is very not typical today. We’d already been out for, I guess we’d really been touring the album steady for a year, year and a half before All I Wanna Do came out and then we won the Grammys and we toured again so. Um and I loved that you know I loved the story. I love the fact that I probably got it in under the wire of the legacy and the history of being a troubador which doesn’t necessarily exist like that anymore or you know you start out in a van ah you you celebrate the day you get an RV (mutual laughter) then you’re in a bus.

These days you start out in a van and stay in a van.

Laughter

SC: Either that or you start out in a bus or a private airplane

Laughter

We are speaking with Sheryl Crow. This, this is the song that changed everything, All I Wanna Do was the third single from Tuesday Night Music Club. (the song is played) All I Wanna Do by itself won 2 grammys for Sheryl Crow my guest on Sound Check today. Tuesday Night Music Club was her debut album has been reissued with a CD of additional songs and a DVD as well. And you know Sheryl talking about what, how the story began for you, talking to you, uh the last couple of years have been a bit rough for you, you know your bout with breast cancer and the much ballyhooed break up with Lance Armstrong. Um, is, is this looking back to a simpler time for you is there a little nostalgia behind this reissue.

SC: Uh, I think what is going on now has nothing to do with anything that ever gone on before. I would actually say that what has been going on for the last couple of years are probably some of my best years. Um, necessary years in order to sort of redefine what the rest of my life is gonna look like and um, looking back on this CD and it was actually a really fun process putting this together and getting to revisit this in looking back does feel precious in that there is a real sense of innocence and a sense of a real sense of altruism about you know really working hard and, and the, the idea of making it because your hard work was based in performing and honing your craft and all that sort of thing and I do like looking back on it and I do think it was the beginning of a work ethic for me that is still, that I still adhere to. The idea that if I keep working at my craft that I’ll get better as a singer, as a song writer as a producer, artist, singer and um that process doesn’t stop . And that really is the process that motivates me to keep going. That my idea is that my best work is still ahead of me. And um, um I really love that. That is the motivating factor for me is that the greatest song that I will ever write hasn’t been written yet.

Yes, I guess how do you measure that when you have all the grammys and all the multiplatinum records, you know it ..

SC: I don’t know that you can really, that those things don’t really correlate , they don’t correlate to self worth or to, I guess in some ways to achievement, its hard, ithard to put value on those things cuz they’re an acknowledgement for me of dedication more than anything else and those things for me don’t go un-appreciated but in many ways they don’t define what I’m doing.

What you were doing back in 93 with, with this group of guys Tuesday nights (mm hmm) in a recording studio in Pasadena, you know it all seems, it seem so kind of

SC: debauched (laughter)

Alright, debauched, (laughter) so the line in the song where you are drinking beer at noon on a Tuesday is that

SC: Its possible that is an actual depiction of what was going on at that time I, I would say that the feeling you know of the environment, the acoustic, the acoustics of this record are really accurate for what was going on not just for me but for a lot of people my age at the time and how we felt about ourselves in this country, in the social, the political social climate of that moment, It’s a, it’s a pretty fair depiction of that time for all of us people of my age. That sort of apathetic feeling that we are not being represented not being heard not being seen um its all captured I think sonically on this record.

So since no one is looking lets go drink.

SC: Kind of. You know that sort of that sort work hard play hard ethic the abject of depiction of vast wealth juxtaposed with you know people that are struggling that, that really was and it still is somewhat, but definitely at the time a was very real, real environment.

Speaking of which the story goes that even after you had won the grammys and the album had sold at this point something like 2 million copies that you were still tooling around in your old corvair, is that right?

SC: yeah. You know we had sold something I guess like 5 million records before we saw any money. It, it became, it became a little bit of a joke, but it also became somewhat of a hardship, my manager was still working in a closet across the hall from his apartment. You know it was a storage closet across from his apartment and I was driving around in an old Corvair getting fixed every couple of weeks and um we really had to take the label to task to get the money out of the so called pipeline. That is the age old story of the way the recording industry is set up. I think Karmically there is somewhat of a correlation to the way businesses have been run in the past is happening in the business now.

Hmm So it might be a special circle of hell reserved (SC laughter) for people in that pipeline?

SC: Well I have to say I have nothing but fond memories of being on A&M and it was a very very respected boutique label. Um, but you know business was business and business is still business and it is it is a it’s a difficult business to look at and uh feel justified in this is how it is done.

Well, and, and that is another question about this reissue now that you having to rehash and relive all the you know the guys that were in the band complaining that you were getting (mhmm SC) all the glory and they were (mhmm SC) being left behind and stuff um

SC: I think though and I don’t want to dwell on that too much is that the nature well everyone has their individual nature and who you come in as is pretty much who you go out as. I’d love to say that people change and that um circumstances always bring out the best in people but they don’t and um I think that alot of the grousing around was not fair and a lot of people got very rich for doing a lot less than what Bill and I did ultimately.

Bill being Bill Butrell the producer (SC saying it at same time)

SC: and continue to get rich. I mean this album coming out I mean the publishing was splits were evenly split across the board for people that weren’t even that involved because they were my friends.

And and in a funny way did this controversy also give you something I mean you, you alluded before to you know a, a women in the music world (mmhm SC) I mean did you have to work even harder to sort of prove yourself as not the girl in front of the real music? The musicians who do all the work?

SC: You know its funny. I never viewed myself as the woman in the band . I was always, uh, always an accomplished keyboard player and had been a keyboard player in many bands including Toy Matinee with Kevin Gilbert and considered myself a musician first and foremost. I considered myself to be one of the guys or one of the band and so I think more than anything the experience of having suffered uh having suffered the ill will of what were, what were my friends at the moment of making this record became impetus for the second record. It wasn’t about proving myself it was about separating myself. And protecting myself and um allowing myself to do what I already knew I could do as an artist.

So what did you learn from this whole thing?

SC: Um, well you know I think you learn about the nature of people I think you learn I think for me personally I had to really um toughen my skin and that was not my nature. And still I struggle with that. You know, I am a pretty open book. I trust people I allow people in and um I expect the best of people because I try to give my best and that is not always the way life is. So…

Sounds like a hard lesson to learn right at the beginning of your career.

SC: Yeah. But I was 31 already and you know um school of hard knocks for me happened fast at a later time and um I had a lot of catching up to do. You know most people who are in my business start out when they, well now they start out when they are 14. (laughter) When I was starting out you know 18 19 was your average rock star age and so I played catch-up pretty quick-like.

Sheryl Crow is my guest on Sound Check. She has reissued her debut album the huge hit Tuesday Night Music Club which includes this tune Leaving Las Vegas. (Song)

Leaving Las Vegas from the first album by Sheryl Crow the just reissued Tuesday Night Music Club in a deluxe edition with extra songs and a DVD and you and the band and you know there is some pretty goofy stuff on the DVD you know those early days on the tour bus. I mean it seems like it went sour pretty quickly once the big money came in but while you guys were literally kinda makin it work. What was I mean what was that like.

SC: You mean the recording sessions? Well um

You know those early days touring around

SC: Oh the early days of touring. I, I don’t remember it being sour except but I will say as I’ve gotten older I’ve become a kinder gentler person for sure to quote the first George Bush. Um, in that I was so over worked. You know back in the early, early days of doing this record we would, we would play a gig and drive all night long in the van sitting up and then I would do you know 6 8 hours of interviews radio visits and sound check and play and do the same thing all over again and um. There was a period in there unlike how it is today there was no same note because I was trying still trying to build the story. So much quicker now with the incredible vehicles you now have with the internet and tv and the opportunities there and in the old days the old days (yeah) things changed in (16 years in the industry) a lot has changed. Um that, that being overworked and exhausted and you know a fair amount of drinking

(laughter)

SC: Um being hung over, it, it was definitely a more rugged period of my life than its been since say for instance now as I’ve become a meditator and a yoga and all that stuff. Clean (mhm) living adult.

Boring.

SC: Boring.

(laughter) Uh, Ken from Brooklyn asks: Can Sheryl Crow go back and clear up the song writing credit controversy concerning David Baerwald and Kevin Gilbert once and for all. I think he has one of those names there wrong but uh

SC: Kevin Gilbert, yes, uh is correct and David Baerwald. Um yeah absolutely. I’ll tell you the way that it worked because I was new to that game and Bill Bottrell handled all of the publishing splits and also these guys became friends of mine through Bill and Bill just divided up the publishing between everybody and whether you were the bass player and you were just playing your part or you were the drummer and you were just playing along everybody got the same split. And um

So with this reissue they’re still getting

SC: Its all still the same thing yeah and with David and um I say you know I say this carefully um David has through the years has taken credit for many, many things not just on my album that um he was much less a part of or maybe not even a part of. So, you just have to weigh who people are when they, you know, when they come in.

Hmm. Uh, The album is Tuesday Night Music Club. It was the first we had heard of you, Sheryl Crow and the first line of the first song on the first record talks about she was born in November 1963 on the day that Aldous Huxley died. Now that was also the day that JFK died.

SC: Yeah yeah

Why, why go for the distant second on the hit parade? So to speak.

SC: (talking over) I think that was the point of it was that he was really he was sort of like Farah Fawcett you know the day that she died was the same day that Michael Jackson died and um although somewhat different Aldous Huxley was a pretty important figure in that

Author of Brave New World

SC: yeah yes yeah and a literary fixture of that time and um and I think he really just had a blurb on the back pages of the paper and um and Kennedy took the big headlines. So you know in some ways it represents that’s who that character is right off the bat. You know she’s somebody she is not seen and as always seemed somewhat like my own story. I came into my own feeling that I was never seen, never appreciated, never, you know and that was really the feeling of the whole album. And our camaraderie our group’s camaraderie was based on that kindred feeling amongst all of us that we were misfits in the commercial world.

So that, that idea of the underdog we can a little bit more about this as we continue with Sheryl Crow in a moment but here it is the first line of the first song in her first record. (and it is played)

Up next more with our guest Sheryl Crow and then coming up later Tango gets a twist as Pablo Ziegler the tango master piazo quartet plays live in our studio still ahead on Sound Check.

SC singing: staring into some great abyss calculate the things I’d missed…

This is John with Sound Check now more with Sheryl Crow 9 time grammy winner is revisiting her debut album Tuesday Night Music Club in a reissue CD and DVD box set. Her most recent album is called Detours and it includes this song Make it Go Away about undergoing treatment for breast cancer in 2006. Sheryl Crow joining me again in the studio. Uh, you said early on that uh these last few years difficult as they may have been have been like really some of the best years for you.

SC: Yeah, absolutely

What, what, that’s a really positive spin to put on what’s happened. I mean how

SC: Yeah I I

How has that whole experience with cancer done for you?

SC: I think it wasn’t even just the cancer I think everything that happened at the moment. There was a real peeling away of everything that I had counted on that I had believed what my life was about,

The breakup with Lance Armstrong which was throughout the tabloids

SC: Yeah actually it was less about him and more about growing up and believeing that life was supposed to be a certain way and a relationship was supposed to be. Um, a marriage and kids and family and ah everything sort of in order. I think we sometimes we do ourselves a disservice by painting a picture and sticking to that picture it somewhat limits possibility and um from that experience I adopted my little boy and I had to let go of what the picture looked like and even the picture of my own health that feeling of always being in control. And um I was a fairly fit person and took good care of myself, and then I got breast cancer. So you know there are some things that we just can’t control and the idea that ah, life is just a constant reminder that… a constant remembering of who we are becoming and trying to always get back to it what we are, who, who are truth is. That’s really what that experience was for me and continues to humble me and continues to remind me that um that emotion is the only way we will ever really experience life and living and emotion is the gateway to awakening.

So, when you moved uh, eventually from LA to the farm near Nashville, was that a way of kind of creating a new picture?

SC: Well that you know there that’s gotta a couple of layers all of its own. I had spent so much time in Austin. I had built a real life there. When that all fell apart and I was diagnosed with a life threatening illness the first thing I thought of was I need to get back home and home for me was the mid-west. Home for me was where my family was and um home for me too is my music and I guess it really comes from that part of the world. It comes from G__-fearing people who are very connected to the earth and not necessarily being where a lot very rich well known people live like California although I have great friends there and I have a love for my life there my real life is where my essence is I think.

And that is

SC: And that really is the mid-west and uh

Its not Kennet Missouri anymore but uh

SC: Kennet Missouri is tricky I love Kennet and that is my home but it is two hours from an airport so uh (laughing)

So you’ve got the farm and uh, uh, and its got uh, you know horses and the bio-diesel tractor and the organic gardens

SC: solar panels and we try to be and you know that is for me a very important expression of how I feel about this planet and that is to try to live as much of a self-sustaining existence as possible.

And one of those horses is a mustang that you’ve adopted named

SC: Colorado he is an adopted mustang from the Cloud herd and you can go (http://www.thecloudfoundation.org/) to learn about him and his lineage. I think that the Cloud herd is probably the most visible herd of wild horses the herd that most people have heard of that have heard about wild horses that is the herd that people have heard of.

So, uh, uh, there are so many things going on and you have leant your name to numerous causes. Why now the wild horses, what’s happening

SC: well there has always been a struggle with what to do with these animals that are a direct link to our lineage to our legacy here in America. These horses belong to the tribes, the native American tribes who were here before we were, um, they were very connected to those people, those people, um, honored their horses like members of their families and um its our last link really to our, to our heritage. And in 1971 the wild horse and burro act was put into place to preserve these animals existence on the open range and I think it something like 93 million acres have been preserved as American owned, public owned lands. And these horses have been given the right to exist on these plains and where the Bureau of Land Management is concerned and where a lot of these lands are rented to livestock owners these animals become a nuisance so the question has always been what to do with the animals and um so we are looking at a round-up that is scheduled to take place December 23 which is obviously in the mountain ranges a very cold time of year and the animals have developed their winter coats and these helicopters come and they run these animals 10 to 15 miles in a very inhuman action. These animals sweat and stand there in the freezing cold and that’s just one of the things that happens and we are just asking for a moratorium on the issue of what to do with the wild horses until we feel that the advisory, the advisors to Secretary Lazar is more fairly represented and um that the animals are on his list of advisors because he has inherited advisors who have been in place since, ah, first Bush and really under Obama there has been more damage to wild horses than even when Bush was in office. And I think part of it is there

Well no one is looking, right?

SC: Yeah, it is a point of no one is looking there are much bigger issues on the table so

Yeah

SC: So that is what we are asking for.

Sheryl Crow is keeping an eye on this issues looking out for the plight of the Mustangs in the American West. And when you look back home into the studio what’s the plan now? Will there be another record of new material?

SC: Yeah. I’m recording in January and February and hopefully it will be out late spring and we’re going to be doing some Lilith tour dates which is very exciting for those who did not know the Lilith tours were coming back one more time.

I didn’t know they were coming back. Ok the Lilith

SC: I hope I am not announcing something that I shouldn’t be announcing and also we’re going to be doing a tour this summer with Colby Cray which we are very, very excited about. She is a great young artist. I am a big fan of her work. So we are going to be out doing what we know how to do and that is making music.

Alright, Sheryl Crow, the album Tuesday Night Music Club, her hit debut is out in a deluxe edition, uh two cds and a dvd and Sheryl a real pleasure to have you on Sound Check.

SC: Thank you. Thanks for having me.