Nightlife / Music

Sheryl Crow 'Detours' through Quad-Cities

By David Burke | Wednesday, June 25, 2008 | () comments

(Contributed Photo)

If you go

Who: Sheryl Crow with Brandi Carlile

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 3

Where: i wireless Center, Moline

How much: $52.50 and $37.50

Information: (309) 764-2001 or iwirelesscenter.com on the Web

Also on the Web: SherylCrow.com

Thirteen-month-old Wyatt Crow lets out a squawk that demands his mother’s attention.

“He’s like, ‘I’m over this whole Mom-being-on-the-phone thing,’ ” Wyatt’s mother, singer Sheryl Crow, said with a laugh last week while on a tour bus en route to Birmingham, Ala., from her home outside Nashville.

Wyatt, who was adopted a year ago this month by the 46-year-old, is one of several changes to the life of the nine-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter in the past several years, including a highly publicized romance and breakup with cycling great Lance Armstrong and a diagnosis of breast cancer in February 2006.

Several of those songs informed “Detours,” Crow’s sixth studio CD, which was released in February and debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s album charts.

Adding to the personal aspect of the album is the fact that she recorded it at her home.

“It made everything about the intimacy of being home, with the open heart,” she said. “It gave me an opportunity to be quiet and think about the things that matter to me. I’m at a point in my life where I feel like, unless we’re talking about the truth and the reality of what’s going on, that we’re distracting ourselves. It was my chance to get down to business.”

Crow said “Detours” comes the closest to the spirit of her 1993 debut album, “Tuesday Night Music Club.”

“It’s like a sister record to that record, musically and sonically. There are a lot of similarities,” she said. “I was isolated from thinking there were any critics in the room, that the world wasn’t waiting outside my door. It was really a sacred environment.”

About five or six songs from “Detours” are making their way onto the tour, which began last weekend, stops at the i wireless Center in Moline on Tuesday and continues through late August. A short spring jaunt of touring set up the shows for the summer, which is a “very beautiful production,” minus a load of special effects, she said.

“We’re kind of letting the music speak for itself,” she said.

Crow said “Detours” accomplished what she wanted it to do.

“Critically it did really well, although I only hear about bits and pieces of it when I do interviews. I haven’t really sat down and read reviews because that’s not my thing,” she said.

Commercially, “selling records is a thing of the past. Although I was glad when it came out No. 2 in Billboard, just like everyone else, it had a big first week and kept going down and down and down,” she said. “You find yourself touring to make money, which I don’t mind because I love touring and it’s the reason I make records — to go out and have that exchange, that connection.”

“Detours” features a variety of music styles, from down-home roots to fun-in-the-sun pop.

“I think every record has a wide variety of styles on it. This one was a little more focused than the other records because the spirit of the record is pretty committed from top to bottom. The vocal characters are pretty focused,” she said. “Stylistically, it’s pretty much consistent with the other records.”

One song, “Diamond Ring,” is presumably about her romance with Armstrong, while another song, “Make It Go Away (Radiation Song),” is about her cancer. The album’s closer, “Lullaby For Wyatt,” is dedicated to her son.

The Missouri native said she’s not worried about laying out her life, most notably the past few years, on a disc.

“You can’t worry about that stuff. It’s going to happen anyway. That’s the nature of our psyche now, where we’re really interested in tabloidism and that gets us distracted from the reality of life,” she said. “But it’s not my job to worry about it.”

There’s a fascination with celebrity culture and lifestyles that Crow says she doesn’t understand.

“I really don’t have to worry about it. There’s no tabloidism on the road and I don’t read the magazines. I’m pretty isolated from it — I live in a little bit of a cocoon,” she said. “I encourage people not to invest their time and their lives and their energy and their interests into that stuff because three-fourths of it is not true. It really is like fast food. We should care more about our lives than to worry about that stuff.”

Crow took a different forum last week, testifying before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee about breast cancer research.

“It’s always intimidating, but exhilarating, to enter into the political process, particularly on Capitol Hill, because you really get to see how the process works,” she said. “It’s a great American experience.”

After her diagnosis, Crow said she felt an obligation to be a crusader against breast cancer.

“I didn’t feel like I had to, but I felt an opportunity because of the population of women who make up my fan base to talk about prevention. That’s the best option that we have,” she said.

Crow said she is continually writing songs, but hasn’t even thought about a follow-up to “Detours.”

“As an artist, you feel like you’ve never written the perfect song yet,” she said. “That’s always the great challenge, to write what you feel like is your version of ‘Yesterday’ or ‘The Times They Are a-Changing,’ whatever you feel like is the ultimately crafted song.”

David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.