Entertainment, Music - Marine Corps Times

Sheryl Crow finds serenity in Tennessee

Sheryl Crow knew her new life in Tennessee would be very different from her days in Los Angeles when she spotted Faith Hill in a Nashville-area clothing boutique.

It’s not what happened, but what didn’t happen.

“Faith walked in, on her cell phone, nobody around,” Crow says. “There the two of us were, just shopping like normal people, and there’s just something really nice about that. It makes us feel very much like being part of a community, and also like I’m at home.

“Since I’ve moved here, it’s a completely different picture,” says the 46-year-old singer, who moved to Tennessee in 2006. “There’s no fascination with celebrity here like there is in Los Angeles. I can live a pretty normal life, and my son can have a pretty normal existence without any paparazzi.”

However, Crow has set aside that low-key lifestyle for a little while as she tours both nationally and overseas.

Crow’s move “makes our hip factor go up, our cool factor go up,” says country singer Vince Gill.

“She strikes me as a musician first, and there’s just a common bond that I think musicians share that transcend whether they are an artist or songwriter or anything else as well,” he says. “She has that great spirit about her that she’s one of the guys, but she’s beautiful.”

Life is serene

When Crow isn’t on the road, she’s usually at her 150-acre College Grove, Tenn., farm with good-natured and curious son Wyatt. The home is unpretentious, tasteful and comfortable. Although she recorded her current album, “Detours,” in her basement studio, there’s little evidence in the main living areas of the success of her international career (which includes 30 million albums sold and nine Grammys).

“(My life) is probably as crazy as it once was, although I feel so much more serene living here,” she says. “Also, I have a son now, so life feels very full and peaceful.”

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, Crow felt a strong pull to live in a rural place, one that was closer to her family. Her sister, Kathy, lives in Nashville, and her parents remain in her hometown of Kennett, Mo.

While she’s delving into her truths musically — her latest album addresses the Iraq war (“Peace Be Upon Us”), Hurricane Katrina (“Love Is Free”) and the environment (“Gasoline”) — she’s also devoting her time to environmental and political causes. In 2007, she and Oscar-winning producer Laurie David embarked on a Stop Global Warming Tour on college campuses. Crow has endorsed Barack Obama for president and offered him her help in any way he sees fit.

“I’m disappointed that there aren’t more artists out there who are writing the strong political commentary, who are writing protest songs,” she says. “Where are our artists to give voice to what it is that we are all experiencing, this kind of chaotic uncertainty? I just have to believe that at a certain point ... people will start desiring to have music and art to help to understand what it is they’re feeling, much like what it was in the ’60s.”

Privacy valued

“I do not enjoy the public scrutiny that goes along with being a successful recording artist,” Crow says. “I didn’t ever get into being a recording artist or songwriter because I wanted to be famous. I wanted to be like what I saw in Rolling Stone magazine — the black-and-white pictures of Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt and people I loved and really admired. It’s really changed since then.”

She doesn’t read most magazines, so she happily lives “in a fog” about what other entertainers are doing.

“In the lowest moment of my life — and I’ve probably not been on the A-list of celebrity like some of the really big celebrity names in all of those magazines — I couldn’t leave my house in L.A. because of the paparazzi, I mean, everywhere,” she recalls.

Although some of her boyfriends have been famous, Crow says she experiences the same ups and downs as anyone else in a relationship.

Prayers felt

Crow stresses that she believes most people want others, including her, to do well.

“I have never been able to even describe the crazy energy that I experienced while I was going through radiation, almost as if I had thousands of hands holding me up through all of that,” she says. “I believe that those people were praying for me. I’d have people walk up to me wherever I was — people from foreign countries who could barely speak English.”

It’s been two years since Crow underwent a lumpectomy and seven weeks of radiation therapy, and now she’s able to go a day or two without thinking about the cancer.

As she has returned to an environment that’s similar to the one in which she was raised, she hopes to instill the same values in her son that her parents taught her.

“I’m just trying to lead by example, and that for me is the idea of respect, respecting nature and who you are and the people all around you,” she says. “Hopefully I’m raising him with a sense of security and a strong sense of self. Other than that, (I’ll) just try to be his little protector.”

This means that she’s cautious about the people she brings into his life. “I am dating,” she says, “and it’s fun, (but) it’s also nerve-wracking. As you get to know people, you have to delineate whether they are great for you, but also great for your son. It’s definitely a natural weeding-out process when you have a kid.”