FROM STAFF REPORTS
TRAVERSE CITY -- Singer-songwriter Shawn Colvin performs at the City Opera House tonight.
Colvin just released a live album, "Shawn Colvin Live," recorded in 2008 over three nights at Yoshi's, a San Francisco jazz club. The album has 12 songs written or cowritten by Colvin, plus covers of songs by Robbie Robertson, Gnarls Barkley and the Talking Heads.
Colvin might also be known to some as Rachel Jordan, a Christian rock singer on "The Simpsons."
May Erlewine and Paul Freeman will open for Colvin. Doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m. Tickets are $28 in advance and $33 at the door. Tickets are available at the opera house, 106 E. Front St., or online at www.cityoperahouse.org.
Colvin has won three Grammys, released eight albums and toured virtually nonstop in her 19 years of performing. She has toured with Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Brown, Bruce Hornsby, Emmylou Harris and Lyle Lovett. She performed, with David Broza and Browne, in a sunrise concert at a 2,000-year-old fortress in Israel -- a concert that was broadcast on PBS in 2007-08.
The South Dakota native learned to play guitar at age 10 and made her first public performance at 15. By the late 1970s, she was singing in a Western swing band in Austin, Texas, the city she now calls home.
Her breakthrough album, "A Few Small Repairs," was released in 1996. The single "Sunny Came Home" became a top 10 hit and won Grammys for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.
Colvin is currently at work on writing a memoir, an extension of the stories she weaves into her performances.
Opening for Colvin is another feather in Erlewine's already feather-bedecked cap. The singer-songwriter, also known for her collaborations with Seth Bernard, has been making music since she was a kid, touring when she was still a teen. She now has four CDs and continues to tour nationally as well as in support of environmental causes, including the recent Bioneers conference in Traverse City.
