Park West

Of all the duties I have as an XRT DJ, the one I cherish the most is the toy collection detail at the XRT Holiday Concerts For The Kids. I served as one of the toy collectors along with Terri Hemmert at Shawn Colvin’s show Sunday night at Park West. Toy duty serves as an annual reminder of the boundless generosity of the XRT listening audience. The request is simple; we ask that you bring a new, unwrapped toy or book for kids who have to spend the holidays in area hospitals. But year after year, XRT listeners bend the rules, so to speak, and bring bags upon bags of toys and books in remarkable numbers. Toy collecting also affords us the opportunity to meet and greet everyone who walks through the doors and thank them for their kindness and also to show our gratitude for listening to XRT. As always happens when I’m in public with Terri Hemmert at an XRT event, I’m reminded of just how beloved Terri is and that if anyone were ever to mount a serious challenge to Daley for the office of The Mayor of Chicago, Terri could.

Shawn Colvin has been a staple of XRT’s airwaves for two decades and was compelling at Park West Sunday night. In lesser hands, a solo acoustic performance can be dicey but in the skilled hands of a professional like Shawn, it was revelatory. Armed with only a stool, guitar and a microphone, Shawn set up nearly every song with an anecdote or remembrance. Perhaps most telling was a story she related about the genesis of a song. She spoke of being on tour in Europe as a background singer for Suzanne Vega during the height of Vega’s popularity. The tour was full of all the trappings of a successful artist, meet-and-greets with famous people and heads of state with the glitz and glamour and endless food and drink backstage. All good things come to an end so following the tour, Shawn soon found herself back at her ‘hovel’ (her word) on New York’s Lower East side, so poorly insulated the ice froze on the inside of the windows in the wintertime. Shawn’s gift for storytelling and honesty has given her a career arc similar to her old employer, Suzanne Vega.

While her records may not come out at the same pace they used to, Sunday night proved that Shawn’s talent hasn’t diminished a bit and the [near] capacity crowd demonstrated that her audience still flocks to her performances.