On one late night in Manhattan, Joan Osborne visited the Abilene Cafe on Second Avenue and took a dare that changed her life.
She was a 20-something film student from Kentucky then, a green-eyed curvy girl who sang along with the radio and had a crush on a guy in her building. The crush took her to see a band at the Abilene, and though the last set had finished, the piano player was still banging out songs for a handful of people. That's when the crush leaned in and challenged her to get up and perform.
“I said, 'If you are buying the beers, I'll sing,' ” remembered Osborne, who will perform cuts from her new album, “Little Wild One,” tonight at Solana Beach's Belly Up Tavern.
“I sang, 'God Bless the Child,' and the piano player said, 'You are pretty good, you should come back on Tuesday when we have open-mike night.' The minute I got a taste for it, wow, I was hooked. I started going to clubs and meeting bands and spending all the money I should have been saving for classes on Etta James records. I realized I wasn't going back to school.”
Osborne's career skyrocketed in 1995 with the Grammy-nominated “Relish,” a collaboration between producer Rick Chertoff and Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman (The Hooters). The record included the Bazilian-penned “One of Us,” a controversial song that humanized God and lyrically posed the question What if God was one of us?
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Joan Osborne, with Matt Morris
When: Tonight, 9
Where: Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach
Tickets: $25 to $27
Phone: (858) 481-8140
Online: bellyup.com
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“Relish,” and the subsequent Lilith Tour, launched Osborne into the limelight. But instead of continuing in the vein that brought her fame, Osborne began experimenting, a move some would consider risky.
She joined the Funk Brothers as a guest artist on the 2001 album/documentary “Standing in the Shadows of Motown.” The Kentuckian also applied her big bluesy voice to “Pretty Little Stranger,” the “Nashville album” she released two years ago.
Her career includes tours with everyone from the Dixie Chicks to The Dead, and in the past decade, Osborne became outspoken about her bisexuality and the causes she supports, including Rock the Vote and Planned Parenthood.
Any regrets?
“Not yet,” said Osborne. “If someone decided they liked or didn't like me because of that, or if I second-guessed my audience, that would make me crazy. That's something I can't give a lot of time or energy to.”
Now a single parent with a 3-year-old daughter, all Osborne's energies are directed toward child-raising and her new album. Motherhood, she said, made her more time-efficient and intensified her ability to access deeper emotions.
She became involved with Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City because now that she's a mom, “you get a sense of how vulnerable children are.”
For her newest recording venture, Osborne returned to the creative mix that provided her highest charting record to date. Bazilian, Hyman and Chertoff joined her in producing “Little Wild One,” an album that pays tribute to themes of love, commitment and living in New York.
Two decades after that long-ago dare at the Abilene Cafe, Osborne is less about searching and more about making a statement that incorporates all that she has learned.
An earnestness in her voice gives “Little Wild One” a sense of poignancy and 11 well-crafted songs (she co-wrote nine of them) make the album worthy of the critical acclaim it has received since its release last month on Saguaro Records. When Osborne talks about the album, it's almost as if she is talking about her life. “It's really been wonderful to see how the songs have blossomed live; they grow and change in performance and for me, that's the excitement of having a new album,” Osborne said. “That's what people come to a live show to see, they want to hear something open up in a way that it can't on a record. They want to see the possibility that something can happen in a moment, and that they can witness something surprising.”
