Interview: Sheryl Crow
Award-Winning Singer and Songwriter

To start at the beginning, what was your childhood like in Missouri?

Sheryl Crow: I grew up in a really small town that is typical of towns in the South. Kennett, which is where I grew up, sits right on the Arkansas, Tennessee, and Missouri border in "the Bootheel." So typically, we are considered to be South, because we are south of the Mason-Dixon line. A very quiet town, kind of revolved around a town square with a courthouse. Very old-fashioned, right in the Bible Belt, mostly farmers, predominantly farm land, cotton, soybeans. God-fearing people, and it's remained pretty much intact, with the exception of Wal-Mart coming in and the downtown kind of falling apart. It's pretty much the same as it was when I was growing up. Everyone knew everyone. My parents knew all my friends. All my friends' parents kept an eye on me. It just was a very strong community and still pretty much is that way.

How did your folks happen to be there? What did they do?

Sheryl Crow: My parents grew up about 28 miles from there, on the Mississippi, in a town called Caruthersville. They both went away to school and came back. My father got a law degree and got a job in Kennett, which was very close. They still live there, after 51 years of marriage.

Was there a lot of music in your house?

Sheryl Crow: A lot of music.

My parents both studied music, and my dad, actually, I think his great, great love was really for music first, but it was just not a career that his parents wanted to see him go into. So he studied it for a year. I think he's kind of a savant, because he played concert pieces and had only ever taken one year. So he and my mother both really, still, have an incredible love and appreciation for all different kinds of music. They played everything from Ella Fitzgerald to James Taylor on the Magnavox, and they also played in a swing band when I was a kid.

What instruments did they play?

Sheryl Crow: My father played trumpet, and my mother played piano and sang. They played standards. On weekends, they would bring all their friends home after their gigs and stay up smoking and playing records, drinking. It was just what I thought every kid grew up with.

Were you a serious student in school?

Sheryl Crow: I was one of those kids that was able to do the minimum for the maximum. Grades came easily to me. Studying came easily to me, and I enjoyed school, but my forte really was the arts. Loved music, always found my identity in music. I realized about at age four, I could play by ear. So while I was studying music, I was also getting away with playing stuff off the radio, and I kind of knew what direction I was going in.

Did you find it hard to learn classical pieces from printed music when you could play by ear so well?

Sheryl Crow: Yeah. We joked about it in my family all the time. All four of us kids took piano lessons, and three of us actually went on to major in classical piano. I was one of them. I could listen to my mother or my piano teacher play the piece and then play it back. I really wasn't the best classical pianist in my family. I was definitely the least serious about it.

Isn't it hard to really work at something when it comes that easily?

Sheryl Crow: It is, especially if you can just hear it. So I came away from college having retained very little of my classical training. I made it all the way through school and made good grades and loved classical piano, I could figure it out and play it, but then it would go away.

Weren't you also a drum majorette?

Sheryl Crow: I was, yes. It was fun. I was never really cut out to be a cheerleader. I just was always in music, but it was fun. It felt like a leadership role to me, but at the same time, it was just all about flamboyance and also being in front of a large musical entity, and I really loved that.

Do you think that served you well in your future?

Sheryl Crow: I guess, in a certain way, it did.

I was not a person growing up that ever thought I was going to be well known or famous, and it was never really interesting to me. I always wanted to be great. I grew up listening to Bob Dylan and to country artists because of where I grew up -- it was all country on the radio -- and most of what I heard was Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams, and then later on, Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn. Then I got into these great songwriters, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, and really sort of made a study of it, and really wanted to make an impact, really wanted to be a great songwriter, wanted to write about important things. So the whole fame thing was not ever very interesting, but definitely wanting to matter was more interesting.

Did you read a lot as a kid?

Sheryl Crow: Read a ton. In fact, my dad loved books so much that he would act out Pudd'nhead Wilson at the dinner table, or he'd read from Ellery Queen mysteries. He was very animated, and he made it so much fun. He raised us really reading everything from Steinbeck to Mark Twain, who was big in our house. Great character writers, and I really wanted to do that more than anything else. I wanted to be a great writer and toyed with the whole idea of writing short stories and essays, but the music thing kept pulling me back in.

What was your college experience like?

Sheryl Crow: I went to the University of Missouri and studied music. I studied with this wonderful piano professor that I really wanted to study with, Raymond Herbert. I got my degree in classical piano, but played in rock bands the whole time I was there, and I really think that was where I honed my chops, learning different styles and learning a lot of different instruments. I loved college and didn't particularly want to leave. I moved to St. Louis and taught school for a couple of years before I went off to L.A.

What did you teach?

Sheryl Crow: I taught music in the elementary school system in St. Louis. Sadly, the music department doesn't even exist in public schools in St. Louis anymore. I taught for two years, 1984 and 1985.

Did you enjoy it?

Sheryl Crow: I loved it. I really loved it, and I think I was a good teacher, but I was young and felt like if I was ever going to pursue the songwriting thing that I needed to do it well. I was still unattached, and I was doing a fair amount of studio work in St. Louis. So I used that as my jumping-off point.

What was your first professional gig as a singer?

Sheryl Crow: In Los Angeles, I started doing studio work fairly quickly when I got out there. I sang on a Johnny Mathis record and on Rod Stewart's record, and I did a few commercials.

Hadn't you done jingles in St. Louis?

Sheryl Crow: I had done jingles in St. Louis, and I came out to L.A., didn't know anyone, and I took my cassette tape -- at the time, we were using cassettes -- took it to every studio in L.A. and dropped it off and asked people to hire me, and eventually I started getting hired. And about seven months after moving here, I got the Michael Jackson tour, which really changed things for me.

Is it true that you crashed that audition for Michael Jackson?

Sheryl Crow: I did. Yeah.

My mother says I have a lot of chutzpah. I did. You know, I was really naive about my career. I just figured if I kept working hard, and if I just seized moments, that things would happen, and that is really the way it worked. I was doing a recording session for a jingle, I believe, and I overheard some singers talking about an audition that was closed, supposed to be on recommendation, and I found out where it was and I went, and that's how I got it.

That made a big difference in your career?

Sheryl Crow: Made a huge difference. I didn't even own a passport. I had never been out of the country, and the next thing I know, a month later, we were playing for 70,000 people in Japan. So it was very life-changing.

How many of there were you in the back-up vocal group?

Sheryl Crow: Four, myself and three guys. It was fun. It was long. It was a 19-month tour. So for me, it was very much a crash course in the music business, but favorable. It was a great learning experience.

That was right around Michael Jackson's heyday. What was it like to work with him?

Sheryl Crow: Actually, it was probably a little bit after his heyday. It was the Bad tour. By this time, he had already done quite a lot of touring and he was very reclusive. I didn't really have a lot of interaction with him, but every single night, he was unbelievable. You really got a sense of somebody whose creativity is just not definable. He was going out every night and doing dance moves that we had never seen before. He really changed things and came up with very original ideas. I give him a lot of credit for that.

How long after the Michael Jackson tour did you make your first album?

Sheryl Crow: I made my first album about three years later. There was a long period when females weren't getting record deals. So I kicked around for a while and got turned down by every record label. Eventually I slipped my demo to the right person and got a record deal. It was 1994 when the record came out.

What did you slip them? Was it your original songs?

Sheryl Crow: Original songs and a few demos that I had done in L.A. Jingles and things.

So you really have to hang in there, don't you?

Sheryl Crow: You do.

I really got my start much later than what rock and roll originally was designed for. You know, it used to be if you made it to age 30, then you were one of them instead of one of us. So it happened fairly quickly for me, I believe. I guess I was 24 when I moved out here, and my first record came out when I was 29. I feel like I really got in under the wire, because people were still touring, you were still really building a following. TV was not that big of a deal, and I had the opportunity to really hone my craft and to travel around the world and build a fan base that was based on word of mouth and people's emotional attachment. I think, for me that was a real gift, because I don't think that really exists anymore.

Didn't you record another album before you had the big hit with Tuesday Night Music Club?

Sheryl Crow: Actually, my first album never came out.

I made a record before the Tuesday Night Music Club record, and it was interesting, because the person that got me signed was a very powerful producer, and he was the producer on the record. And we just didn't have a vision that really melded. He loved the demos. I felt like I wanted to rock a little bit harder. So it was a bit of a predicament. What I wound up with was something I didn't feel like represented me, and luckily the record label allowed me to not put it out and make a new record.

That took guts. Weren't you afraid they would just drop you?

Sheryl Crow: It was the most terrifying experience because, for one thing, it's difficult to go in and say, "Look, I don't know what I'm doing, but I know what I don't want to be doing." So after much cajoling, A&M -- which doesn't exist anymore -- said, "Okay, we won't put it out," and then for about a year, nothing happened. I really thrashed around about whether I had made the wrong decision, but ultimately it did serve me well, because the record that I had made was just innocuous. It would have been lost in the bins. I kind of feel like I was looked after in some way, in that they didn't put the record out.

Tell us about Tuesday Night Music Club. How did that record come about?

Sheryl Crow: The Tuesday Night Music Club actually was sort of the result of my kicking around for about a year, hearing that I was going to be dropped from the record label, and not having a record, and I fell in with a bunch of people that were just jamming on Tuesday nights. So that actually is how I came into contact with all these people, which was fun, because we were all kind of a close-knit group of misfits who felt we were intelligent and talented and we were being overlooked, and that was what our camaraderie was based on. Ultimately, the album came out, and it did really, really well, which is kind of funny, because it broke the mold of being one of those people that was being overlooked. So it was not without its trial and tribulation, but it was a really good experience.

"All I Wanna Do," wasn't released as a single until the record had been out for almost a year, and it was the biggest hit of all. Was it surprising to you what a big hit that was?

Sheryl Crow: Yeah. That was the last song to be put on the record. We went back and forth, we were going to put it on, we're not going to put it on. In my mind it captured a moment in time. I think it was pretty authentic to the attitude -- not only in L.A., but also in the country -- a feeling of apathy and of not having a say in what was going on, but I still felt like it was a bit of a throw-away. My little brother, who still lives in my hometown, he kept saying, "That's the hit, that's the hit," and I kept saying, "That's never going to be a hit," and literally it was the fourth single. We had already toured for about a year and a half, and I was already thinking of a new record, and then we had a hit.

And then you won all those Grammy Awards. What was that like?

Sheryl Crow: It was unbelievable. I've been lucky in being recognized for doing something that I really love and feel compelled to do. So it's really been icing on the cake, but at that moment it changed the course of my career. The Grammys are so high profile that your record sales immediately double or triple, and it really created a much bigger career for me. We went all over the world because of that, and it was an incredible opportunity.

You have been outspoken about a lot of issues as your career has gained momentum, including the war in Iraq. Where did you get the guts to do that? Like that t-shirt you wore on stage, what did it say?

Sheryl Crow: "I don't believe in your war, Mr. Bush."

I never thought about it as requiring guts to speak out about what I was feeling at the time. I think there were two things I was really amazed by, one of which was that we were buying into this idea that we were going into Iraq for any other reason but greed and oil. But the other thing that really made an impact on me, as well as dismayed me, was the fact that people weren't speaking out about it. People weren't demanding better. I'm seeing a big shift now, but at the time, it just seemed obvious and necessary.

I'd always been politically minded and would always post letters, articles, essays about what I felt was going on in the world. I would always back them up with great writers like Tom Friedman, people that I respected so that people could go and find out where these ideas came from. So I didn't really suffer the backlash that the Dixie Chicks did, just because I approached it in a different fashion. But yeah, I've always been outspoken, and luckily have not had my head chopped off.

Recently, you've also talked about your medical problems. You've shown a lot of courage in that too, and it has helped a lot of people. If you had a message for women who might be afraid to get a mammogram, what would you say?

Sheryl Crow: There's nothing scary about a mammogram. For me, I have no cancer in my family; I am a very unlikely candidate to have cancer. I'm fit. I take pretty good care of myself, and just the routineness of going and having a mammogram is what caught my cancer. I think you err on the side of safety when you go in and get a mammogram. It's not painful. It takes a half hour out of your day, and it definitely, in my mind, saved me from having a much worse situation on my hands than what I wound up having. Really, my message is just about early detection, because there are women, like myself, who wouldn't be able to detect anything with a self-examination. It's difficult to pinpoint the smallest of cancers, which is what I had, even with a mammogram. So in my mind, there's never any reason to not get a mammogram.

What does the American Dream mean to you?

Sheryl Crow: I think America is an amazing place to grow up, because you have so many possibilities.

I'm from a small town. I have small town ethics. I feel like a little kid still from Middle America, and nobody ever told me that I couldn't do something. I felt like I had the biggest safety net from people in my hometown who were constantly saying, "If you work hard, you can have what you want," and I think that's what America is founded on. It's founded on the right to observe whatever religious beliefs you have. It's based on the possibility of being great, of finding yourself, of making money, of making an impact. It's a pretty amazing idea that you can grow up in a place where you're being handed a ticket that you can write yourself, to take yourself anywhere in this country and to speak your mind and to educate people and to really just create your own dream and live it.

Thank you so much for talking with us today.

Sheryl Crow: You're welcome.