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://www.upload.ee/files/15107948/ShawnC_1984_LiveforFastFlkTheSpeakEasyNewYorkCity__1984_atse.zip.html
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.
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