For Twain
Shania calling the shots on intimate tour
By Glenn Gamboa
Newsday
Shania Twain offers a certain warning a lot, in a variety of forms. “She’s Not Just a Pretty Face.” “In My Car (I’ll Be the Driver).” “That Don’t Impress Me Much.”
The bottom line? She’s nobody’s fool.
In a music industry where female singers are generally as manufactured as cars on an assembly line, Twain and husband-collaborator Robert John “Mutt” Lange are definitely in control of Shania Inc. On her current tour, Twain not only worked on the set list and the arrangements, but the merchandising and the stage design as well.
“I got this time what I wanted the last time,” said Twain, calling from a tour stop in Pittsburgh. “I wanted something much more intimate. I wanted to be able to touch the people. I wanted to be very accessible to them and have them very accessible to me. That’s why we’re doing it in the round. It’s a unique feature – a way to have a theater setting in these large arenas.”
Interaction with the audience, Twain said, is what she was craving in her three years out of the spotlight. During that time, Twain and Lange moved to Switzerland to regain a sense of a private life and they had their son, Eja, now 2 years old.
During that time, Twain and Lange also wrote “Up!,” the long-awaited follow-up to her 19-times-platinum “Come On Over,” the biggest-ever album for a female solo artist and the fifth biggest-selling album of all time, which followed hot on the heels of the 12-times-platinum “The Woman in Me.”
“It went by fast,” said Twain, laughing. “I wrote it quickly. I didn’t think about following ‘Come On Over’ with another big record because I felt I did that already when I followed ‘The Woman in Me.’ I was ready at that time to just consider that I had peaked and then ‘Come On Over’ did so much more than any of us expected. This time, it was more just thinking about the fans.”
Twain said that’s what makes the tour so fulfilling. She gets to see how people are reacting to the songs from “Up!”
“That’s the most rewarding part of doing this,” she said. “That’s the only gauge of how it’s going, the only true reaction. When I look out there, my audience is the same as it was before. You can see people of every age, every type of person. It’s nice to see people move with you, that you become part of their memories, that your songs become benchmarks in their lives.”
For Twain, it is the stories she hears from fans – how someone’s wedding song was “From This Moment On,” how “You’re Still the One” got a couple through a tough time, how “That Don’t Impress Me Much” was a single woman’s dating anthem – that means more to her than her five Grammy Awards and her Entertainer of the Year awards from both the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music.
“I don’t take awards very seriously,” Twain said. “It doesn’t mean much to me. The person who’s supposed to win never really does, even when the person who wins is me. I just don’t think about it.
“There are people who have said I’ve never been country,” she said. “Nothing has really changed.” Twain hasn’t received a lot of support from the Nashville country establishment for her latest “Up!” CD, even after she took the extraordinary step of releasing two versions of the album simultaneously, one with a pop-leaning accompaniment and one with a more traditional country sound.
The chief knock on Twain is that her music is soulless, that true emotion is sacrificed in the effort to be popular. In other words, her songs are fast-food hamburgers instead of steakhouse filets.
Twain’s not buying it.
“What is too commercial?” the Canadian songstress asked. “If you look at the Beatles, it doesn’t get any more commercial than that. They were as commercial as anybody gets, but they had the writing ability to back it up.”
The Southern-fried version of “Up!” is more overtly country than anything she’s done recently.
“You’ve got a pop disc and an even more pop disc,” said country music writer Robert Oermann. “It’s good value for the money.” International buyers get the pop-rock disc and another, recorded in India, that’s a combination of world and dance music. Twain thought of the Gipsy Kings when making that disc.
“Whatever your persuasion, she’ll give you something you like,” Oermann said.
Contrast that approach with Faith Hill, who has tried to expand her audience with a disc that strays from the country path. Twain simply takes every path.
“I like that she does that unapologetically,” said Beverly Keel, a music professor at Middle Tennessee State University. “A lot of artists try to act like it’s not what they’re doing or they make excuses for it. She says, ‘I’m going to make it as accessible as possible.’ ”
Twain said she’s pleased by the reception for “Up!,” but she aspires to sell more copies with each tour stop.
“In a way, it’s like what happened last time with ‘Come On Over,’ ” she said. “That album took a long time to play out. Hopefully, it will be the same this time. … It’s very satisfying to see people singing the songs, knowing the words because they’ve had time with the record.”
For the tour, Twain said she’s picked elements of both the pop and country versions of the songs from “Up!” to create the best live version possible.
“Some songs are truer to the record than others,” she said. “There was no formula. It was just what worked best in rehearsal. All the songs get revamped, though, even the ones from ‘The Woman in Me.’ You should hear what we’ve done to ‘Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?’ ”
Twain said that unlike the tours supporting “Come On Over,” which were filled with flames and explosions, the “Up!” tour is a little more low-key.
“This one is not about big bells and whistles,” she said. “It’s not so much about me flying over the audience.
“There are no dancers. It’s more about an intimate connection with the audience.”
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