Shawn Colvin

One of the dumber things my manager said was, Stick to the melody. But I can’t.

There were bars that began to have acoustic musicians play, it was 1970: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, America, The Eagles, all that kind of stuff was popular. It was very easy for me to just kind of move in and be noticed.

I consider myself as a singer first, but something that really helped me come into my own is that there’s not a separation between me singing and me playing the guitar. The two fed off the other.

I have yet to have a successful outcome of sitting in a room with someone and trying to write a song. The way that I generally co-write is that someone else writes the music or part of the music.

Cynicism is tough. A cynic’s point of view is really pitiful. I derive pleasure out of a lot of things in life. As long as I’m fairly healthy, it’s hard to stay dismal for very long.

I think the thing that has made it possible for me to write personal songs and sing them year after year is the sensibility for good writing. Just opening your veins all over the paper is not necessarily going to be interesting. I wanted to speak to people.