The Great White Shank is a long-time fan of Shawn Colvin’s music. I remember falling in love with her voice when I was living back in Kentucky. There, while working as a IT consultant in the basement of some obscure state capital office in Frankfort, me and my old Keane buddy Jerome Pascua would call the college radio station in Georgetown and request cool music by all sorts of folks Jerome and I got a hankering for, at any given time. I remember fondly the day we had requested Blondie’s Happy Dog for, like, the twelfth day in a row and told the DJ we worked at the state’s payroll office and the checks wouldn’t get processed until we heard that song played.

Which she did, dedicating the tune to us by name. That got a laugh.

Soon we started requesting songs from everyone we could think of: The Band, Lucinda Williams, and Mary Chapin Carpenter (another fave of mine). So Jerome says to me, well, if you’re gonna listen to Mary Chapin Carpenter why don’t you get your ears into Shawn Colvin? Now I had heard Colvin’s “Back To Salome” played as the credits rolled at the end of “Tin Cup” and thought her voice cool – kinda like a more folksy, less bluesy version of Ricki Lee Jones (yet another fave), but the more I heard her songs, the more I liked. I think what has attracted me most to Colvin is the grittiness and inherent honesty she’s always brought to her music – not to mention the fact she’s one hell of a guitar player.

Here a few of my favorite songs over her career, hope you like them as well:

5. Sunny Came Home – this appears to be a fave of all her fans. One of her biggest cross-over hits.

4. Someone Like You – a pretty song, one without her unique guitar style. Proves she can sing almost anything.

3. Steady On – gotta love the poetic magic of “Hibernate through the fallout. The nuclear winter of another love affair.” Pretty cool.

2. All Fall Down – a great tune and a funky video. Sounds like a song that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Traveling Wilburys CD, doesn’t it?

1. Viva Las Vegas – Colvin has a way of making other folks’ songs her own, and this is as good as it gets. Moody and haunting, dontcha think?