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Date
of Season 3 Performance:
July 29, 1999
Televised
Set List
A Change Would Do You Good
My Favorite Mistake
It Don't Hurt
The Difficult Kind
There Goes The Neighborhood
Musicians
Sheryl Crow - Lead Vocals, Guitar, Bass & Accordian
Peter Stroud - Lead Guitar & Background Vocals
Tim Smith - Bass, Guitar & Background Vocals
Mike Rowe - Keyboards & Organ
Mary Rowell - Violin & Guitar
Lorenza Ponce - Violin & Guitar
Mike Brubeck - Cello
Jim Bogios - Drums
Interview
1
John Hiatt: You have a classical background, you studied
piano?
Sheryl Crow:
Yes, I did.
John Hiatt:
You know, I kind of hear that in the music, and not in any kind
of high falootin' way, but there's a sophistication, particularly
in your bridges. You write some very cool bridges.
Sheryl Crow:
It's all math John, it's all math.
John Hiatt:
You see, I flunked math and so...
Sheryl Crow:
I never feel like I use it. I studied piano from the time I
was six I guess, and got a degree in classical training and
I don't even know if I can sit down and read a piece of music
anymore. It really is like a muscle and you just get so that
you're not adept in thinking that way and operating on three
different levels. But I loved it. I was just one of those kids
that could play by ear, so I could fake my way through my lessons.
I could ask the teacher, I think I know how it goes, but why
don't you show me how it goes first and then she'd play it and
then I'd go, okay, well I think it goes like this and then play
it back to her. And she'd say, "you're so talented, you
practice so hard." But no, I took it more seriously than
that. It's funny, when you get into composition class in school,
all the rules of pop music are basically rules that are broken.
There are no parallel thirds, no parallel fifths, no parallel
fourths. I mean, all these things that pop music is based on
are composition faux pas you don't want to go near, which is
kind of funny and then here I am making my living breaking all
the rules.
John Hiatt:
Well maybe it's served you in that purpose.
Sheryl Crow:
It only just brings me joy when I go back to my university because
I was like snubbed. So, it's good to back back and, you
know...(Sheryl waves - John laughs).
Interview
2
John Hiatt: Let's talk a little bit about taking the
reigns production-wise and getting, as you said, pretty adventurous
in the studio and being willing to take those kinds of risks.
What kind of effect has that had on you playing live?
Sheryl Crow:
God, you know, it's really weird. I noticed on this album just
stepping into the first day of rehearsals that everything was
different and I don't know what it is. I do think, like you
said, I think part of it is where you are in your life and how
you feel about yourself and the amount of competence that you
have and the amount of surrender that you at least can try to
exercise. But I think part of going in and making this album
and playing as much as I did really enabled me to go out into
a live setting and just be sort of more of a leader, and on
this tour I literally sat down and decided exactly what I wanted
the whole thing to look and feel like. You know, I used to,
I'm sure you know, I mean I know a lot of people came and saw
me, we were just grassroots. We threw up a couple of velvet
curtains and put on some like retro clothes and that was about
it. This album I was much more, in the live environment, specific
about what I wanted to do and it was not just about music anymore.
John Hiatt:
A little more in terms of a show and the way it was presented?
Sheryl Crow:
Yeah. And so much anymore, you cannot abandon the fact that
so much of everything is visual. You know, the quickness of
images on TV, our attention span is so short and we are just
bombarded...
John Hiatt:
What did you say?
Sheryl Crow:
I know. It's terrible isn't it? But so much of our creative
lives now have to do with the visual part and that's why I thought,
you know, I'm going to really dictate what the music is going
to look like as opposed to people just being, okay, she's wearing
black boots and a red top and she has long blond hair or you
know, whatever which seemed to always be written about in all
the reviews and stuff. And I just decided on this tour that
we would bring our own images and we shot images on film, on
Bolex and just all kinds of different film stock and we brought
these projectors that had been devised for the kind of environment
that we were going to be. For me, that was great. It was really
fun because we were able to sort of create and sustain and also
manipulate the mood and the music and also, you know, when you're
playing a song like "All I Want To Do" and people
heard it a jillion times, for us it was just great freedom in
knowing that behind us was going this great film and that I
didn't have to even look like I was enjoying it.
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