Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle - Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY, 9-26-2014

I'm dealing with two "floods" right now - posting a flood of concerts from the Ebbets Field venue in the 1970s and posting a flood of recently leaked concerts from the Capitol Theatre venue in Port Chester in the 2010s. Here's another from that second flood. This one stars singer-songwriters Shawn Colvin and Steve Earle, with both of them in acoustic mode.

By the time of this concert, both Colvin and Earle had long music careers, with their first albums being released in the 1980s. They began performing together in 2014. At first, it seems they only did a handful of concerts in 2014 and 2015. But in 2016 they released an album together, "Colvin and Earle," and toured a lot more. Their collaboration petered out after that. 

I've posted a concert they did in 2016. Many of the songs are different, since this one is from two years earlier, well before their 2016 album was made. Here's the link to that one:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2024/02/shawn-colvin-steve-earle-hardly.html

As far as I know, that 2016 concert I posted was the only one featuring the two of them together with excellent sound quality, until this one recently was made public (as I write this in May 2026). This is a soundboard boot, like the others coming from the same Port Chester leak. 

A person named Frenfri made some improvements to this before I got my hands on it. That person broke the single file into songs, and make some sonic improvements as well. Also, the singers were identified for the songs as well as the banter. So I kept that information. But I believe both of them were on the stage the whole time. So even when only one of their names is mentioned, the other one could have been stumming along with guitar and/or doing some backing vocals.

The music is unreleased. The sound quality is excellent. 

This album is an hour and 54 minutes long. 

01 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
02 Wake Up, Little Susie (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
03 talk (Steve Earle)
04 Devil's Right Hand (Steve Earle)
05 talk (Shawn Colvin)
06 Another Long One (Shawn Colvin)
07 talk (Steve Earle)
08 Goodbye (Steve Earle)
09 talk (Shawn Colvin)
10 A Matter of Minutes (Shawn Colvin)
11 Crazy (Shawn Colvin)
12 talk (Steve Earle)
13 Pancho and Lefty (Steve Earle)
14 talk (Shawn Colvin)
15 That Don't Worry Me Now (Shawn Colvin)
16 talk (Steve Earle)
17 Someday (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
18 talk (Shawn Colvin)
19 Fearless Heart (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
20 Diamond in the Rough (Shawn Colvin)
21 talk (Steve Earle)
22 City of Immigrants (Steve Earle)
23 talk (Steve Earle)
24 Burnin' It Down (Steve Earle)
25 talk (Shawn Colvin)
26 Sunny Came Home (Shawn Colvin)
27 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
28 The Galway Girl (Steve Earle)
29 talk (Steve Earle)
30 You're Still Standin' There (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
31 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
32 Baby's in Black (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
33 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
34 Copperhead Road (Steve Earle)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/giAUUYZ5

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/77Fo4va1vBTzYPB/file

The cover image is from a concert at the Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder, Colorado on August 30, 2016.

Various Artists - MusiCares Tribute to Paul Simon, Century Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, CA, 2-15-2001

The good news is, I have another MusiCares tribute concert to post. The bad news is, this is the last one I can find. Hopefully, some others will show up eventually. But in the meantime, here's a tribute to Paul Simon, from 2001.

Before I say anything about this album, I want to mention the MusiCares tributes I still can't find (or don't exist). With this one included, I've posted nine of them. But there are 23 more that I would still love to hear. Here's the list of the missing ones:

2025: Grateful Dead    
2023: Berry Gordy & Smokey Robinson
2022: Joni Mitchell
2020: Aerosmith
2018: Fleetwood Mac    
2017: Tom Petty    
2015: Bob Dylan
2009: Neil Diamond    
2008: Aretha Franklin
2007: Don Henley    
2004: Sting    
2003: Bono
2002: Billy Joel    
2000: Elton John
1999: Stevie Wonder
1998: Luciano Pavarotti
1997: Phil Collins
1996: Quincy Jones    
1995: Tony Bennett
1994: Gloria Estefan
1993: Natalie Cole
1992: Bonnie Raitt
1991: David Crosby 

Getting back to this concert, this actually has an audience bootleg source. All the other MusiCares concerts I've posted come from DVDs or TV. But don't worry much about the source issue. This is an unusually good sounding audience boot. Plus, I made some big improvements. I used the MVSEP program to get rid of all the audience noise during songs while keeping the audience cheering at the ends of songs. Then I ran all the songs through MVSEP again, boosting the lead vocals relative to the instruments. In my opinion, the end result is this sounds nearly as good as the other MusiCares concerts.

This followed the same formula as typical tribute concerts, with various guest stars singing cover versions, then an acceptance speech by Simon, and finally Simon played a couple of songs. But one thing that's a bit different is that Simon is friends with some professional comedians, so there was more comedy than normal for this kind of concert. In addition to Chevy Chase and Michael McKean acting as emcees, Steve Martin did about a five minute comedy routine while introducing Simon.

This unreleased album is an hour and 11 minutes long. 

01 talk (Chevy Chase)
02 You Can Call Me Al (Macy Gray)
03 talk (Chevy Chase)
04 Born in Puerto Rico (Ruben Blades & Danny Rivera)
05 talk (Chevy Chase & Gloria Estefan)
06 Bridge Over Troubled Water (Gloria Estefan)
07 talk (Chevy Chase)
08 Mother and Child Reunion (Ziggy Marley)
09 talk (Chevy Chase)
10 American Tune (Shawn Colvin)
11 talk (Chevy Chase & Stevie Wonder)
12 Loves Me like a Rock (Stevie Wonder & the Dixie Hummingbirds)
13 talk (Michael McKean)
14 Tenderness (Shelby Lynne)
15 talk (Michael McKean & Brian Wilson)
16 The Sound of Silence (Brian Wilson)
17 talk (Michael McKean)
18 Homeward Bound (Joan Osborne & the Chieftans)
19 talk (Steve Martin)
20 Graceland (Paul Simon)
21 Late in the Evening (Paul Simon)
22 talk (Paul Simon)
23 The Boxer (Paul Simon)
24 talk (Paul Simon)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/LydU3Q4g

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/EE3jBlACedR3V1o/file

The cover photo is from this exact event, though I think it was from backstage before or after the concert. There was some distracting stuff in the background, so I replaced that with blackness in Photoshop. From right to left: Tony Bennett, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson, and Shelby Lynne.

Various Artists- MusiCares Tribute to Neil Young, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, CA, 1-29-2010

So far, I've posted three MusiCares tribute concerts. I recently got a request to post this one honoring Neil Young sooner rather than later, so here it is. I still have five more to post after this, so look for those eventually as well.

Tons of talented stars showed up to sing their favorite Neil Young songs. There's a lot of great music here. Unfortunately, there's also some that's missing. This comes from a DVD of the event. Generally speaking, only a small crowd of the rich and famous attend these MusiCares concerts, so bootlegs of them are very rare. We know from media accounts that three songs were performed that weren't included on the DVD. Those are:

"Long May You Run" by Stephen Stills & Sheryl Crow 
"Comes a Time" by Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin & Lucinda Williams
"A Man Needs a Maid" by Red Hot Chili Peppers

If anyone has any of those so I can add them, please let me know. I found a video of the Red Hot Chili Peppers song recorded on a cell phone and posted on YouTube, but the sound quality is terrible. I'm guessing a lot of the banter between songs was cut out as well. Actor Jack Black was the emcee, but he's not really heard at all in the recording.

Typically, the person honored in these tributes performs a couple of songs at the end of the concert. But while Neil Young was there, and gave a short speech, it seems he didn't perform any songs. 

Here's a good account of the concert by someone who attended:

https://tinnitist.com/2023/08/11/back-stories-neil-youngs-musicares-tribute-jan-29-2010/

And Rolling Stone Magazine published a bunch of photos from it, here:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/musicares-person-of-the-year-tribute-to-neil-young-210831/red-hot-chili-peppers-2-19005/

This album is an hour and eight minutes long.

01 Down by the River (John Mellencamp & T-Bone Burnett)
02 Mr. Soul (Ozomatli)
03 Don't Let It Bring You Down (Jackson Browne)
04 Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Lady Antebellum)
05 Tell Me Why (Norah Jones)
06 Broken Arrow (Wilco)
07 Harvest Moon (Josh Groban)
08 Revolution Blues (Everest)
09 Cinnamon Girl (Dierks Bentley & Booker T. Jones)
10 Ohio (Ben Harper)
11 Rockin' in the Free World (Keith Urban, John Fogerty & Booker T. Jones)
12 The Losing End [When You're On] (Elvis Costello)
13 Lotta Love (Jason Mraz & Shawn Colvin)
14 The Needle and the Damage Done (Dave Matthews)
15 Heart of Gold (James Taylor)
16 Helpless (Elton John, Leon Russell, Neko Case & Sheryl Crow)
17 Human Highway (Crosby, Stills & Nash)
18 talk (Neil Young)
19 Rockin' in the Free World [Reprise] (Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/BNxSXgS9

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/UhnFSv0eArgOnvZ/file

The cover is from this exact concert. From left to right: Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz, Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, Shawn Colvin, and James Taylor.

Various Artists - An All-Star Tribute to Joni Mitchell, Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City, 4-6-2000

For a few years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the TNT TV network hosted a few annual "all-star tributes" to some music legends. I've already posted albums of such tribute shows to Johnny Cash, Brian Wilson, and Paul Simon. Here's another one, celebrating the music of Joni Mitchell.

This concert actually featured Joni Mitchell herself, but she had a relatively minor role. At the very end, she performed one song and gave a short speech. Instead, the bulk of the concert consisted of famous musical acts performing her songs. Just look at the cover or at the song list to see the names. There also were some famous non-musicians who talked a little bit between songs, such as actors Susan Sarandon and Laurence Fishburne, and the main host, Ashley Judd. Plus, I never thought my music blog would have a track by Hillary Clinton, but here we are.

If I recall correctly, there was some more stuff to this concert that I edited out, such as testimonials about Mitchell's life and career, narrated by the likes of Goldie Hawn and Rosie O'Donnell. I kept the focus on the songs, and introductions to the songs.

The Stone Temple Pilots were also due to perform at this concert. However, the band's lead singer, Scott Weiland, blew his voice out by performing three full concerts the day before. They were due to perform the song "Woodstock." At the last minute, Richard Thompson stepped up to perform that song instead. That's why he's the only performer here to do two songs, because he also had been scheduled to perform the song "Black Crow." 

Note that the final song, "The Circle Game," faded out before it ended. Probably that's when the TV broadcast came to an end. I extended it a bit by repeating a chorus from earlier in the song and then fading it out. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title.

There's an amazing official Joni Mitchell website, www.jonimitchell.com. It has a webpage just on this concert, with lots of pictures and dozens of newspaper articles about it. Here's a link:

Joni Mitchell - 2000.04.06 | An All-Star Tribute To Joni Mitchell Hammerstein Ballroom | New York 

This album remains officially unreleased as an audio album. However, a DVD of it has been released. But this is about ten minutes longer. The sound quality is excellent. 

This concert is an hour and 18 minutes long. 

01 Raised on Robbery (Wynonna Judd & Bryan Adams)
02 talk (Ashley Judd)
03 Carey (Cyndi Lauper)
04 talk (Ashley Judd)
05 Woodstock (Richard Thompson)
06 talk (Hillary Clinton)
07 Chelsea Morning (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Big Yellow Taxi (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter with James Taylor)
09 talk (James Taylor)
10 River (James Taylor)
11 talk (Ashley Judd)
12 You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio (Wynonna Judd)
13 talk (Susan Sarandon)
14 Help Me (k.d. Lang)
15 talk (Laurence Fishburne)
16 The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines (Cassandra Wilson)
17 talk (Ashley Judd)
18 The Circle Game (Sweet Honey in the Rock)
19 talk (Ashley Judd)
20 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
21 Amelia (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
22 talk (Ashley Judd)
23 Black Crow (Richard Thompson)
24 talk (Richard Thompson)
25 talk (Ashley Judd)
26 Free Man in Paris (Elton John)
27 talk (Elton John)
28 A Case of You (Diana Krall)
29 talk (Ashley Judd)
30 talk (Tony Bennett)
31 Both Sides Now (Joni Mitchell)
32 talk (Joni Mitchell)
33 The Circle Game [Reprise] [Edit] (Joni Mitchell & Everyone)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/acNAjTY6

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/GVHWLt1ZTKXHMpu/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. From left to right, that's Joni Mitchell, James Taylor (in back), Cassandra Wilson, Shawn Colvin, and Elton John.

Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller - PBS Soundstage, WTTW Studios, Chicago, IL, 10-29-2009

Here's an unusual episode of the "PBS Soundstage" TV show. It's the only episode I've found that follows the same format as the "Songwriters' Circle" BBC TV show episodes I've been posting: four singer-songwriters took turns presenting their songs. In this case: Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller.

However, the BBC TV show put together different artists for a single concert. In this case, the four singer-songwriters had joined forces on their own, calling themselves "Three Girls and Their Buddy." They never released any music that I know of, but they toured together for most of 2009.

The four of them had previous ties. Buddy Miller led the Buddy Miller Band back in the early 1980s. Shawn Colvin, just starting her music career, was a member of that band. Miller was the lead guitarist in Emmylou Harris's band in the late 1990s. Then, in 2004, a similar group to this one was formed, called the Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue. It starred Harris, Miller, Patty Griffin, and the duo of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. But that group, like this group, never officially released any music.

Generally speaking, each of the singer-songwriters performed acoustically on their own. But sometimes they were assisted by others, especially by Miller on guitar. They came together to sing on the last song.

I was very familiar with the careers of Harris and Colvin, but I'd missed Griffin and Miller. I was pleasantly surprised. I thought all four of them impressed with their singing and songwriting, and they worked well as a group. I liked them so much that I found another concert by the same foursome and I plan on posting that here eventually. It's too bad they only toured together in 2009.

This album is 52 minutes long.

01 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
02 Blackhawk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
03 Love Throws a Line (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
04 Poloroids (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
05 Shelter Me (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
06 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
07 Michelangelo (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
08 Heavenly Day (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
09 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
10 Summer Dress (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
11 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
12 Poison Love (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
13 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
14 Love and Happiness (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
15 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
16 Get Ready Marie (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
17 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
18 Hold On (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
19 talk (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)
20 Gasoline and Matches (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/M9ryEscs

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/AwB6wr9loL6ttAz/file

I found the cover photo by Googling the names of all four of these musicians together. I don't know exactly where or when it's from, but it must be from their 2009 tour. It was a small and low-res picture though, so I enlarged it then used the Krea AI program to improve the picture quality. It worked pretty well, but I thought Harris's face didn't look like her. So I found a different face at the same angle and pasted it in.

Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle - Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA, 9-30-2016

Recently, while preparing a Shawn Colvin live album to be posted at this blog, I noticed that she did a studio album with Steve Earle in 2016, called "Colvin & Earle." I'd never noticed that before, which surprised me, because I like the music from both of them, and I find collaborations like that particularly interesting. 

I then searched to see if they did any concerts as a duo that I could post here. It turns out that while they toured together for about two years, there are only a few audio bootlegs out there, and all are audience boots with disappointing sound quality. However, I did find this concert recording as a YouTube video. It was professionally recorded, so the sound quality is excellent, basically like a soundboard. I concerted it to audio, and broke it into mp3s.

The concert is a relatively short one, just under an hour, and the vast majority of the songs are from the album they did together. In fact, they played nine of the ten songs from the album. But they played a few others, including Colvin's big hit "Sunny Came Home" and the Everly Brothers classic "Wake Up Little Susie."

If you missed out on this interesting pairing, this is a good chance to catch up.

This album is 57 minutes long.

01 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
02 Wake Up Little Susie (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
03 Come What May (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
04 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
05 You Were on My Mind (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
06 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
07 Raise the Dead (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
08 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
09 Ruby Tuesday (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
10 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
11 Tobacco Road (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
12 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
13 The Way that We Do (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
14 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
15 You're Right [I'm Wrong] (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
16 Burnin' It Down (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
17 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
18 Sunny Came Home (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
19 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
20 Tell Moses (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
21 talk (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)
22 That Don't Worry Me Now (Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16291465/SHWNCLVNSTVERLE2016HrdlyStrctlyBlugrssFstivlGldnGtePrkSnFrncscoCA__9-30-2016_atse.zip.html 

The cover image is a screenshot I took from the YouTube video of this exact concert.

Shawn Colvin - Tramps, New York City, 10-17-1995

This is a bootleg Shawn Colvin concert recording from 1995. She played the whole thing in solo acoustic mode.

The sound quality is excellent, this being a soundboard recording. Also, the concert is unusually long. That's because I combined the early and late shows into one. The early show consists of tracks 1 through 21. The last show is everything else. This consists of the entire late show, with only songs from the early show that weren't played in the late show.

This concert took place after the release of her third album, "Cover Girl," which consisted entirely of cover versions. So naturally there are a lot of cover versions here, including almost every song from that album. But there are even more. For instance, she did no less than three covers of Crowded House songs, "Private Universe," "Four Seasons in One Day," and "Weather with You," none of which made the "Cover Girl" album.

When I originally posted this album, nearly all of the banter between songs was missing, since my bootleg source didn't have that. But then I was contacted by someone who had that. So it has been restored. It makes quite a difference, since that added material totaled about 24 minutes.

This album is two hours and 23 minutes long.

01 talk (Shawn Colvin)
02 Someday (Shawn Colvin)
03 Private Universe (Shawn Colvin)
04 talk (Shawn Colvin)
05 Another Long One (Shawn Colvin)
06 talk (Shawn Colvin)
07 Tennessee (Shawn Colvin)
08 talk (Shawn Colvin)
09 Every Little Thing He Does Is Magic [Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic] (Shawn Colvin)
10 talk (Shawn Colvin)
11 Cry Like an Angel (Shawn Colvin)
12 talk (Shawn Colvin)
13 Don't You Think I Feel It Too (Shawn Colvin)
14 Window to the World (Shawn Colvin)
15 New Thing Now (Shawn Colvin)
16 The Story (Shawn Colvin)
17 Killing the Blues (Shawn Colvin)
18 talk (Shawn Colvin)
19 Dead of the Night (Shawn Colvin)
20 talk (Shawn Colvin)
21 You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (Shawn Colvin)
22 talk (Shawn Colvin)
23 Kill the Messenger (Shawn Colvin)
24 talk (Shawn Colvin)
25 Four Seasons in One Day (Shawn Colvin)
26 talk (Shawn Colvin)
27 Fearless Heart (Shawn Colvin)
28 talk (Shawn Colvin)
29 Object of My Affection (Shawn Colvin)
30 talk (Shawn Colvin)
31 Satin Sheets (Shawn Colvin)
32 talk (Shawn Colvin)
33 Shotgun Down the Avalanche (Shawn Colvin)
34 talk (Shawn Colvin)
35 Fall of Rome (Shawn Colvin)
36 talk (Shawn Colvin)
37 [Looking For] The Heart of Saturday Night (Shawn Colvin)
38 Climb On [A Back That's Strong] (Shawn Colvin)
39 talk (Shawn Colvin)
40 Ricochet in Time (Shawn Colvin)
41 White Line Fever (Shawn Colvin)
42 Round of Blues (Shawn Colvin)
43 talk (Shawn Colvin)
44 Weather with You (Shawn Colvin)
45 I Don't Know Why (Shawn Colvin)
46 talk (Shawn Colvin)
47 Diamond in the Rough (Shawn Colvin)
48 Polaroids (Shawn Colvin)
49 This Must Be the Place [Naive Melody] (Shawn Colvin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/g3cCSewm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/cmnUAs6mSieCDpn/file

alternate:

https://www.imagenetz.de/k3caF

The cover photo is from a concert in Brussels, Belgium, in September 1994.

Shawn Colvin - Home Concerts 3, Austin, TX, 5-15-2020 to 12-25-2020

Phew. I'm glad to get this monkey off my back. I should have posted this two years ago, but at least it's done now.

This album is very much like the last one. It's a collection of home concert performances, typically just one or two songs at a time. I collected everything that fit that I could find from May to December 2020. I search for similar videos from 2021, but I didn't find a single one. So this is a good point to end the series.

A couple of the songs, "Everybody's Talkin'" and "I'm Gone," are only partial versions. She did them as teasers to promote a new album called "Live From These Four Walls - My Favorite Movie Songs." It's pretty obscure, but you can find it (and pay for it) on Bandcamp. I kept them because I don't have that one and wouldn't share it if I did, since it's an officially released album, but she put these versions out for anyone for free on YouTube. Plus, there's some interesting banter that goes with them.

This album is 38 minutes long.

01 talk (Shawn Colvin)
02 The Facts about Jimmy (Shawn Colvin)
03 talk (Shawn Colvin)
04 Summer Dress (Shawn Colvin)
05 American Tune (Shawn Colvin)
06 talk (Shawn Colvin)
07 The Phoenix (Shawn Colvin)
08 talk (Shawn Colvin)
09 There's a Rugged Road (Shawn Colvin)
10 Cry like an Angel (Shawn Colvin)
11 Everybody's Talkin' (Shawn Colvin)
12 talk (Shawn Colvin)
13 I'm Gone (Shawn Colvin)
14 talk (Shawn Colvin)
15 talk (Shawn Colvin)
16 In the Bleak Midwinter (Shawn Colvin)
17 talk (Shawn Colvin)
18 Little Road to Bethlehem (Shawn Colvin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15492164/ShawnC_2020_HomeConcrts3AustinTX__5-15-2020_to_12-25-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot from the YouTube video of the last song here.

Shawn Colvin - Home Concerts 2, Austin, TX, 3-22-2020 to 5-11-2020

I must admit that I feel embarrassed to post this album. It's Shawn Colvin home concert stuff recorded in 2020, at the height of the Covid pandemic. I duly collected it at the time, posted "Home Concerts 1," and then forget about the rest. Sigh! 

But in my defense, I think one reason I didn't post it then was because I thought the sound quality was a bit iffy. Her "Home Concerts 1" was recorded in a single setting, and generally sounded pretty good. But this is a collection of different sessions, some just a single song, and some sounded better than others. Luckily, since 2020 audio editing technology has advanced quite a lot. So I used the programs Audacity and UVR5 to make these sound better. They still don't sound fantastic, since it's obvious Colvin just turned on a microphone in her house and didn't have optional studio conditions, but it's very listenable now.

As you'd expect from home concert recordings from a pandemic, all of this is solo acoustic. And Colvin is quite talkative between songs, usually giving more insight into the songs and how they were created.

There's one more volume of her home concerts. If I don't post it in the next few days, someone please remind me so I don't wait another couple years before I remember!

This album is 51 minutes long.

01 talk (Shawn Colvin)
02 Tenderness on the Block (Shawn Colvin)
03 talk (Shawn Colvin)
04 Venetian Blue (Shawn Colvin)
05 talk (Shawn Colvin)
06 Matter of Minutes (Shawn Colvin)
07 Before the Deluge (Shawn Colvin)
08 Climb On [A Back That's Strong] (Shawn Colvin)
09 talk (Shawn Colvin)
10 Cinnamon Road (Shawn Colvin)
11 talk (Shawn Colvin)
12 Lovers in a Dangerous Time (Shawn Colvin)
13 talk (Shawn Colvin)
14 Kill the Messenger (Shawn Colvin)
15 talk (Shawn Colvin)
16 These Four Walls (Shawn Colvin)
17 talk (Shawn Colvin)
18 Ricochet in Time (Shawn Colvin)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15485042/ShawnC_2020_HomeConcrts2AustinTX__3-22-2020_to_5-11-2020_atse.zip.html

The cover is a screenshot I took of her YouTube video of the performance included here of "Lovers in a Dangerous Time."

Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter - Kate Wolf Memorial Festival, Black Oak Ranch, Laytonville, CA, 6-29-2003

For a long time, I'd had this bootleg concert sitting in my huge pile of albums I want to listen to. Then yesterday, I posted a concert of the Allman Brothers Band playing with Eric Clapton for well over an hour, and that got me to remember this, as another rare example of two headliners playing a full concert with each other. Boy, am I glad I found this. If you're a fan of Shawn Colvin and/or Mary Chapin Carpenter at all, you need this. The sound quality is amazing and the performance is great.

There seems to be a kind of loose association of female singer-songwriters from a certain era. For instance, Colin, Carpenter, and Rosanne Cash harmonized together on a song for a Bob Dylan tribute concert in 1992. But it's rare to have a genuine collaboration that lasts for a whole concert like this one. You'd think the two of them were long time musical partners, with the way they play and sing harmonies together on all but a few of the songs here. (There was a third person on stage, John Jennings, the long-time lead guitarist in Carpenter's band.)

But what I particularly like is how you can tell that they were having a ball, especially with all their joking. For instance, there was a running joke about one of them smoking crack backstage, and another running joke about the low voice of Greg Brown (who apparently was the opening act). Near the end, of them even danced with a hula hoop while the riff of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" was played on guitar! Too bad we can only hear that and imagine, instead of getting to see it.

Listening to this, I got the sense that the two of them are good friends. I was pleased to see that they've occasionally played concerts together since this one. For instance, they did a tour in 2019 with both of them and Marc Cohn on stage for all of the concerts.

I also have the feeling that the set list was quite different than what they usually played in their solo concerts at the time. There was an emphasis on cover songs, including Donovan (two, actually), the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Simon and Garfunkel, the Flying Burrito Bros, John Gorka, and even the Backstreet Boys! Another female singer-songwriter, Tracy Grammer, also briefly joined them on stage to sing one of her songs, "Gentle Soldier of My Soul."

The concert is in acoustic format, but the were assisted by a lead guitarist. And damn, the sound quality is impressive, especially for a bootleg. One could practically hear a pin drop at times. I searched the Internet for mentions of this concert before posting it today, and I could find almost nothing. So I'm really glad that I saved it when I did, which probably was a bunch of years ago.

This album is two hours and three minutes long.

01 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
02 Catch the Wind (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
03 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
04 Someday (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
05 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
06 One Cool Remove (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
07 Dancing in the Dark (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
08 Shotgun Down the Avalanche (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
09 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
10 Keeping the Faith (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
11 Wichita Skyline (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
12 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
13 A Matter of Minutes (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
14 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
15 Good Night America (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
16 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
17 Grand Central Station (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
18 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
19 Gentle Soldier of My Soul (Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter & Tracy Grammer)
20 Colours (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
21 Even Here We Are (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
22 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
23 This Shirt (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
24 I'll Be Back (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
25 That's the Way Love Goes (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
26 Safe at Harbour (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
27 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
28 I Want It That Way (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
29 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
30 The Only Living Boy in New York (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
31 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
32 Smoke on the Water (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
33 talk (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
34 Sin City (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)
35 Quittin' Time (Shawn Colvin & Mary Chapin Carpenter)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Jg2aGU6X

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/t3embemgaqyziYZ/file

I believe the photo is from this exact concert. I edited it in Photoshop to bring the two of them closer together.

Shawn Colvin - Live for Fast Folk, The SpeakEasy, New York City, 1984

Here's an album that I'm especially happy to have made. I mentioned the other day that I really like it when I can find early material from famous musicians in great sound quality that stands up to their later work. That's a rare find, but here's another ideal case. 

American singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin put out her first album in 1989. But it turns out she was singing in public since at least the mid-1970s. I don't know why it took her so long to get a record contract, because it's clear she was a fine singer and songwriter long before then. From at least the early 1980s, there was a publication first briefly called "The CooP" and then "Fast Folk Musical Magazine" that put out obscure records promoting emerging singer-songwriters in New York City. Between 1982 and 1989, Colvin had individual songs on Fast Folk records at least nine times, generally taken from concerts in New York City.

Yesterday, I stumbled across a bootleg of a complete concert Colvin did at some unknown point for "The CooP" in 1984. There was no location given, but all of her songs released for The Coop/Fast Folk in 1984 were recorded in a club called the SpeakEasy, so I'm guessing that's where this is from. What struck me immediately is the sound quality. This recording sounds fantastic! One couldn't ask for better sound, which is shocking considering she was five years away from her first album.

I could have posted this entire concert, but it's available elsewhere. Instead, I decided to do something else with it. About half of the songs are ones she would put on record years later, and about half are ones that she's never officially released. I realized there are enough of the latter for a nice album. I believe all the songs are covers, with the exceptions of "No Friends to Me" and "I'm Talking to You." I was familiar with "I'm Talking to You" already because singer-songwriter Mary Lou Lord has released a version of it, but strangely Colvin herself never has, even though it's a strong song.

All of these songs have been edited by me using the X-Minus audio editing program. But I haven't added the usual "[Edit]" in the titles since I edited all of them in the same way. I thought this bootleg sounded so great that it could easily pass for studio sessions, with the exception of clapping and cheering at the end of each song. I used X-Minus to split the songs into different instruments, and found that all of the applause was put on the drums track. Since there were no drums, I just deleted the end bit of that track, and basically all of the applause was gone. I got lucky - I've never been able to remove applause so effectively, since the applause usually gets spread out to different tracks. Now, all of these sound exactly as good as studio versions, even though they actually were performed in concert.

By the way, it sounds at first as if it's just Colvin and her acoustic guitar. But she's actually accompanied by Mark Dann on bass on all the songs. But it's subtle bass that just fills out the sound a little bit.

All but the last three songs are from the undated bootleg I mentioned above. The last three are quasi-bonus tracks taken from those CooP/ Fast Folk records I mentioned. "I'm Talking to You" is from 1982, "Heart on Ice" is from 1986, and "Talk Around Town" is from 1988. She did some others, as I also mentioned above, but those are songs she put on later albums. I wanted to keep everything here to songs she never officially released otherwise.

The end result of all this is that this is basically a lost acoustic covers album that's 53 minutes long. In my opinion, it's a very strong album, with excellent song selection and solid performances. In retrospect, Colvin should have had a record contract long before she did.

01 No Friends to Me (Shawn Colvin)
02 Romeo and Juliet (Shawn Colvin)
03 Ready or Not [So Ripe] (Shawn Colvin)
04 The Vigilante (Shawn Colvin)
05 When I Get to the Border (Shawn Colvin)
06 Washable Ink (Shawn Colvin)
07 American Jerusalem (Shawn Colvin)
08 Ballad of Spider John (Shawn Colvin)
09 On the Avenue (Shawn Colvin)
10 Baby, Now that I've Found You (Shawn Colvin)
11 Sin City (Shawn Colvin)
12 Heart on Ice (Lucy Kaplansky & Shawn Colvin)
13 I'm Talking to You (Shawn Colvin)
14 Talk Around Town (Shawn Colvin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/vFKGHBky

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/fNjDiUQqdq5bZBx/file

I got lucky with the album cover photo. I didn't expect to find any photos of Colvin from around 1984, since she was still years from starting to get famous. But she put on her own Facebook page a publicity photo that she says dates to circa 1985, so I've used that one. It was in black and white, but I colorized it using the Palatte program. In January 2025, I improved it some more with the Krea AI program.

Shawn Colvin - Home Concerts 1, Austin, TX, 4-11-2020

Here's someone else to add to those doing nice home concerts. As I keep saying, if you know of others I've missed that you think are worthy, please let me know. It's hard to find all these, since they're happening on different social media platforms.

I'm not a huge Shawn Colvin fan like I am for, say, Rosanne Cash, but I like her well enough. This concert actually serves as good introduction for her, if you aren't that familiar with her stuff. She plays her one big hit - "Sunny Came Home" - as well as some of her other best originals. She also does a few covers, namely: "Summer's End" by John Prine, in honor of his recent passing, "For the Roses," by Joni Mitchell, and "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" by the Talking Heads. The whole concert is 45 minutes long.

I'm optimistically calling this "Home Concerts 1" with the assumption that there will be a "2" and others to follow. Actually, I'm most of the way to a "2" already, because she's been posting individual songs every now and then since the coronavirus lockdown began. So I plan on posting those once I have enough for an album.

Note that Colvin has a reputation for being very talkative during her concerts. That was somewhat true in this case, though she seems to have edited herself for a more streamlined show. I've included her between song banter and raised the volume on it to make it easier to hear. But I think I might have edited a few parts down to make the whole thing more listenable. (I forget since I did that a week or two ago.)

01 talk (Shawn Colvin)
02 Even Here We Are (Shawn Colvin)
03 talk (Shawn Colvin)
04 Trouble (Shawn Colvin)
05 talk (Shawn Colvin)
06 Summer's End (Shawn Colvin)
07 talk (Shawn Colvin)
08 For the Roses (Shawn Colvin)
09 talk (Shawn Colvin)
10 Steady On (Shawn Colvin)
11 talk (Shawn Colvin)
12 That Don't Worry Me Now (Shawn Colvin)
13 talk (Shawn Colvin)
14 I Don't Know Why (Shawn Colvin)
15 talk (Shawn Colvin)
16 Sunny Came Home (Shawn Colvin)
17 talk (Shawn Colvin)
18 This Must Be the Place [Naive Melody] (Shawn Colvin)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/2jAXPcuM

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/4G7KN0Kp3riupgH/file

For the album cover, I used a screenshot from the YouTube video of this very concert.