FT: Hi Shawn, Thanks for taking the time to talk to Folk and Tumble.
SC: My Pleasure!
FT: It’s been a while since you played this side of the pond. What can the fans expect?
SC: Just misery and horror! (laughs) A smattering from all my albums and some covers. It’s just me, solo. A fair amount from ‘A Few Small Repairs’, which has its thirtieth anniversary; not the full record, I think there are other songs that need to be played as well.
FT: It’s been a while since your last album; are you working on new songs?
SC: Yeah, It’s been a long time. I am working on new material. I’m on the road a lot, and it’s become more difficult to write on the road. That said, I’m working on something conceptual, so it’s not just catch-as-catch-can, with whatever song occurs to me. I’m doing a whole conceptual idea for a record. So, yeah. I’m working!
FT: I’m currently reading your autobiography, ‘ Diamond in the rough’, which is a wonderful read. You’ve always been searingly honest about your issues with mental health and addiction. The book is shot through with humour and a gripping narrative, but it’s still a tough Read?
SC: Well, I think everybody’s got some dark stuff. Here’s the thing. It’s a cool idea, and someone wanted to publish it, and so I did it. But it’s not like I’m Obama, or something, you know. So I thought, I have all these stories to tell, and maybe I could help somebody? So I don’t mind being honest about it. Addiction is stigmatised, depression is stigmatised. A lot of these issues are, and people want to keep them a secret, and I think that’s not healthy.
FT: You’ve talked about how music has been cathartic for you, and many of your fans, myself included, have their own issues with mental health and addiction. Many of us have found solace in your songs. Do people talk to you about that, about their own experiences, how they have found help in your songs?
SC: I get a lot of feedback about songs that help people through rough times. ‘You got me through my divorce,’ ‘This song defined my college years’, and those are amazing compliments. We all have songs and artists like that. Songs that have healed us to a certain extent in different situations, changed our mood and outlook, and made us feel better when we felt bad, or made us feel understood. And that’s a healing thing, and music is a healing thing. So if I can be part of that for anyone, I understand what that feels like. And it means the world to me that they would feel that way about some song that I did. It meant the world to me, and still does, to be affected like that by a song from other artists that I love.
FT: There is something special about an artist who can write about something so personal that resonates and touches so many others, and people can feel the remedy and the medicine involved in the music. Not every artist can do that, but your music very much conveys that.
SC: My father taught me the acoustic guitar when I was 10 years old, and he listened to nothing but folk music- the Kingston Trio, Pete Seeger, and my father played the guitar, and so did a lot of his friends, so there would be a lot of hootenannies at our house. So that affected me deeply. It wasn’t until Dylan, and that sort of really honest, no-holds-barred, as far as what you can talk about and things you can say. I mean, he’s an anomaly in terms of genius, but then there was what I call the great singer/songwriter era in the late 60s and 70s. So I just hooked on to artists like Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Paul Simon, and Laura Nyro. Real confessional artists. It just resonated with me. I played acoustic guitar, I had a lot to say, and I was very moved by these artists, and it just became my thing.
FT: Talking of Dylan, people have drawn comparisons between his ‘Blood on the Tracks’ and ‘A Few Small Repairs’.
SC: Really? Oh, the divorce records? That’s what they say, which mine really isn’t. Like ‘Get out of this house ’ is just a mean song; it really had nothing to do with my husband, who’s now my ex-husband, and we’re very good friends, and good friends with his wife as well. Oh, I didn’t know there was that comparison; that’s pretty cool!
FT: I’ve heard the comparison from various camps. ‘Get Out of this house’ is a real stomp; it reminds me of Tom Petty.
SC: It’s funny you would say that because the only time I ever met Tom Petty was at a Musicares event, which is held the night before the Grammys, where they honour a particular music artist. I think it might have been for Neil Young. Anyway, I met Tom Petty backstage, and he commented on ‘Get Out of This House ’!
FT: That’s pretty cool! You’ve talked so openly about your struggles with depression and addiction, and your honesty and integrity in trying to break that stigma has helped so many people, myself included, so on behalf of fellow sufferers, thank you.
SC: That’s what I hoped would happen. I read William Styron’s “A Darkness Visible”. It’s a devastating account of his experience of suicidal depression. It just helps to know people can come through it, and you’re not alone. To hear someone say how you’re feeling when you don’t know how to describe it. And to hear the hopeful outcomes. In ‘A Darkness Visible’, for example, William Styron got better! There’s hope; people can get better.
FT: Talking of ‘dark matters’, I have to ask about “Sunny came home”. At times, a misunderstood song? Ultimately it’s a song of resilience, putting the past behind you and facing the future afresh. A song of hope?
SC: I’m glad you think that! It’s about somebody who certainly didn’t take it lying down (laughs), somebody who did something about the atrocities that had gone on.
FT: Having said it’s a song of hope, and maybe it depends on the mood I’m in when listening, there is a real ominous feel to it, almost a malevolence in the song. You look at the album cover painting by Julie Speed, the lyrics about ‘the list of names’, ‘Sunny came home with a vengeance’. A song of hope, but there is a real darkness to it?
SC: Of Yeah. But I think that in that, there’s humour. It was the Julie Speed painting that inspired that song; it wasn’t that song that made me find that painting. It just makes me laugh. Here’s this woman in the foreground with just one lit match, and in the background, what is obviously a huge fire. The painting is called “A Few Small Repairs”, and they are obviously not a few small repairs! (laughs). I always thought about Sunny. She went a little too far, possibly, but it’s satisfying on some level.
FT: 30 years on- Where do you think Sunny is now in her life?
SC: Well, I think she got in trouble, but I think she was acquitted. I think she made a good choice, and it was a matter of survival, and yes, there was vengeance in it, but I think there were some pretty dire circumstances going on. Yeah, I think she got into some trouble, but I do think she was acquitted and understood, and hopefully she healed up and didn’t make the same mistakes again.
FT: And hopefully in a better place now. You never thought of writing an update on Sunny, how she is today?
SC: Oh god, I never even thought of that! No. I do write songs of redemption, about myself and other characters. Signs of hope and wholeness, but I haven’t ever really thought of following up her story.
FT: There is a lot of humour involved as well, which helps lighten the tone, particularly live; the chat between the songs really lifts the audience, and it’s a wonderful experience.
SC: Well, thanks. I can’t really pull off the morose for too long! I got a good sense of humour. I think it’s a nice contrast to lighten things up a bit.
FT: The songs are very personal, as we have discussed. Issues of mental health, addiction, relationships. All quite political with a small ‘p’. I wonder, given what’s happening in the world at the moment, perhaps particularly in your own country, if you’ve ever been tempted to write about bigger political issues, with a capital ‘P’?
SC: Not really. I thought about that a lot, and why that doesn’t come out of me, I’ve always kinda dodged it by saying I write about personal politics, and there are similar themes. I feel I’m sorta abandoning a certain necessity, right now, especially right now. And I don’t know how to address that in my work. I have my ways of supporting a lot of issues in other ways, but writing about it has never really come to me very well; it’s always very personal.
FT: I suppose it’s not part of the art to write songs to order. Obviously it’s what comes out of the point of the pen. You can’t force an issue into songwriting, I would suggest.
SC: I mean, I’ve written angry songs; that could apply. ‘Sunny came home’ is one. ‘Get out of this house’ is one that applies pretty well to the leader of our country- ‘Get out of this house’, Please!
I saw the latest Springsteen tour. Now there’s a guy who preaches. He’s an evangelist! I admire that so much. That’s the guy to do it. And to write “The streets of Minneapolis”, that’s the guy who needed to do something like that; that’s the guy who had to document it, and he did. It’s all there!
Trump’s in there, the winner of 2026, the year is in there, the names are in there, the town is in there. It’s like Woody Guthrie, you know.
FT: Shawn, it’s been a blast talking to you. I wish you the very best for the tour, and I hope to see you in Belfast on the 19th October!
Shawn – Yeah, that would be fun, thank you!
Shawn Colin plays Belfast’s Mandela Hall on the 19th of October. Tickets available via Old Flattop.