Sheryl Crow Tuesday Night Music Club CD

Personnel: Sheryl Crow (vocals, guitar, piano, Hammond organ); Bill Bottrell, David Baerwald (guitar); Wendell Crow (trumpet); David Ricketts, Dan Schwartz (bass); Kevin Gilbert, Brian Macleod (drums).
Recorded at Toad Hall, Pasadena, California.
"All I Wanna Do" won 1995 Grammy Awards for Record Of The Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female; and Sheryl Crow won the Grammy for Best New Artist. "All I Wanna Do" was also nominated for Song Of The Year.
Personnel: Sheryl Crow (vocals, guitar, piano); Dan Schwartz, David Baerwald, Bill Bottrell (guitar); Kevin Gilbert (drums).
Liner Note Author: Sheryl Crow.
Photographers: Melodie McDaniel; Peggy Sirota.
Sheryl Crow earned her recording contract through hard work, gigging as a backing vocalist for everyone from Don Henley to Michael Jackson before entering the studio with Hugh Padgham to record her debut album. As it turned out, things didn't go entirely as planned. Instead of adhering to her rock & roll roots, the record was a slick set of contemporary pop, relying heavily on ballads. Upon hearing the completed album, Crow convinced A&M not to release the album, choosing to cut a new record with producer Bill Bottrell. Along with several Los Angeles-based songwriters and producers, including David Baerwald, David Ricketts, and Brian McLeod, Bottrell was part of a collective dubbed "the Tuesday Night Music Club." Every Tuesday, the group would get together, drink beer, jam, and write songs. Crow became part of the Club and, within a few months, she decided to craft her debut album around the songs and spirit of the collective. It was, for the most part, an inspired idea, since Tuesday Night Music Club has a loose, ramshackle charm that her unreleased debut lacked. At its best -- the opening quartet of "Run, Baby, Run," "Leaving Las Vegas," "Strong Enough," and "Can't Cry Anymore," plus the deceptively infectious "All I Wanna Do" -- are remarkable testaments to their collaboration, proving that roots rock can sound contemporary and have humor. That same spirit, however, also resulted in some half-finished songs, and the preponderance of those tracks make Tuesday Night Music Club better in memory than it is in practice. Still, even with the weaker moments, Crow manages to create an identity for herself -- a classic rocker at heart but with enough smarts to stay contemporary. And that's the lasting impression Tuesday Night Music Club leaves. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
With her gruff, edgy delivery and sweet, seductive timbre, singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow evokes comparisons to tough yet tender blues-rockers like Bonnie Raitt, Lou Ann Barton and Angela Strehli. But Sheryl Crow is too talented to be plugged into any one stylistic bag. TUESDAY NIGHT MUSIC CLUB is a striking debut recording, teeming with the kind of musical curiosity all too rare in contemporary pop--all animated by Crow's remarkable storytelling skills.
From the Beatles overtones of her freedom cry "Run Baby Run" to the sweet pedal-steel inflected gospel of "I Shall Believe," Sheryl Crow brings a post-modern country sensibility to bear on her material (as in the touching "No One Said It Would Be Easy"), more often as a flavor in the stew than as the primary ingredient (like her hit single "All I Wanna Do," which evokes the country cum blue strains of Maria "Midnight At The Oasis" Muldaur). As for her narrative stylings, on "Leaving Las Vegas" she mixes her metaphors to equate relationships to games of chance, tolling themes of duty and resignation that also resonate throughout the jazzy "We Do What We Can." Her characters are up and down, but as the surreal "The Na-Na Song" and the smarmy "What I Can Do For You" make clear, you can confront evil and walk away, to rise again another day.Q (1/94, p.84) - Included in Q's list of 'The 50 Best Albums Of 1993' - "...A startlingly assured debut..."
Q (11/93, p.116) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...[TUESDAY NIGHT MUSIC CLUB] is an instant and lasting joy...the music is stylish, but not slick, while [Sheryl Crow's] charged lyrics mix irony, imagination and observation..."
Musician (10/93, p.95) - "...TUESDAY NIGHT MUSIC CLUB presents a range and level of popcraft rarely on display these days..."