Pickle Barrel
SHERYL CROW WILL be taking a detour from her American tour to play her only Canadian show here in Toronto, May 26, at the Molson Amphitheatre, but she will be back.
“We’re touring in the States and also in Europe, but in September we’re also coming to Canada and doing a proper tour,” says Crow.
“The last time we properly toured across Canada we were opening up for Crowded House in 1996, I think.”
The 46-year-old Tennesseebased singer-songwriter looks stunning. She is sitting in a downtown hotel room where she has been doing interview after interview to promote her new album, Detours.
The mainstream roots-pop disc was written after she went through a break up with champion cyclist Lance Armstrong, was diagnosed and beat breast cancer in 2006 and adopted a two-weekold baby, and the songs are exceptionally personal.
On “Diamond Ring,” she playfully writes of a woman who “blew up our love nest by making one little request,” addresses life and mortality on “Make It Go Away (The Radiation Song)” and addresses her beautiful son on “Lullaby for Wyatt.” She also expresses her political (read anti- Bush) views on such songs as “God Bless This Mess,” “Peace Be Upon Us,” “Gasoline” and “Out of Our Heads.”
An outspoken environmentalist and political activist, Crow’s interest in what is right and good goes back, way back. She even sang about guns for sale at Wal- Mart on “Love Is a Good Thing” and abortion on “Hard to Make a Stand,” both from her 1996 selftitled release. But between then and now, she says she did alter her POV somewhat when it came to being so outspoken.
“Probably in the middle of all that, I started to become a little bit dulled out just like everyone else was,” Crow says.
“The experience I had being diagnosed and having my life screech to a sobering halt really put me back in my body and helped me to remember who I am.
“Part of that remembrance is allowing myself the vulnerability to experience an emotion, as opposed to being distracted. I think westerners in general have perfected the art of distraction. That idea of, when things are really bad, we’ll just try to stay busy, try to not think about it. We wind up just repeating the same old stuff over and over without ever really experiencing anything done with it.
“And when I completed my radiation, my treatment, and got through the end of a relationship, I really felt acutely aware and awake, and then compound that with having a three-month-old looking at me, while I was making this record, brought everything close to home.”
How does she feel about being asked to expand on those topics when the song should say it all?
“I don’t usually,” she says.
“In fact, I never make a tell-all out of an interview. To me, it’s not even interesting to talk about what the songs are about because the themes on the record are pretty universal. They’re all topics that I find I’m talking about on a daily basis with my friends and the people around me, so I know there is interest in those topics.
“Some of us are really concerned about them; some of us are not concerned about what is happening. We turn on the TV, and we’re desensitized, and there we are — we’re in a war now where nobody’s revolting, nobody’s emotionally invested in it because we just choose not to be awake. My experience really rendered me awake and dictated how this record was going to be, but, you know, the songs that people want to know about [are the relationship ones and] I find relationships are universal.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a
public figure or not, pain is pain,
disappointment is disappointment,
and so they are what they are.” 
Karen Bliss has interviewed everyone from Kurt Cobain to Britney Spears. Her work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Billboard and dozens of other publications.
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