Shawn Colvin tells all, with new album a...

Shawn Colvin tells all, with new album a...

Shawn Colvin

Confessional singer-songwriters love to spill their guts. After all, its part of their job description. But normally they confine their revelations to the music.

Shawn Colvin went the extra mile on that one.

On Tuesday, shell issue both a new album, All Fall Down, which chronicles a particularly rotten breakup, and a memoir (Diamond in the Rough) which reveals the alcoholism she experienced in her 20s, her many bouts with depression and the romantic disasters that have given her enough writing material to last several lifetimes.

On that last issue, Colvin admits, Im a loving person, but Im a lousy girlfriend. Obviously, its not my forte.

Luckily, she relates her romantic travails as well as her anxiety attacks with high humor throughout the book. The light tone comes as something a surprise, considering her songs tend to be more understated and serious.

I think Im kind of a funny person, actually, says Colvin. Also, it was important to me that the humor cut into the darker stuff. Otherwise, it comes off as self-pitying. One of my inspirations was Spalding Grey. He didnt hold back, but he was hysterical, and that made him lovable.

Colvin may have felt an extra need to rally readers on her side since, by her own admission, shes not the publishing worlds most obvious choice for a celebrity author. I dont consider myself particularly iconic, she says. I was really dubious about it.

In fact, she backed into the whole process. According to Colvin, she was approached by her managers with the idea. They thought I had a story to tell. But they were very sneaky. They said, Just write two chapters and see.

Then I got a book deal on account of it. So I thought, well somebody thinks you can write this book, so maybe I do have a story to tell.

Shell tell part of it at a reading this Tuesday at Barnes & Noble Tribeca, following a concert Monday at City Winery.

The aftermath of the relationship, which occupies much of the new album, gets angrier play at the end of the book. I did not take the high road on that one, Colvin admits. I did not paint a flattering picture of this man. (Unlike other lovers in the book, this one remains unnamed).

The new music honors Colvins usual mix of measured frustration and wise revelations, delivered with agile vocals and finely woven folk-rock melodies. Surprisingly its Colvins first work produced by Buddy Miller, who encouraged her as a struggling musician back in the New York clubs of the 80s.