“Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep,” Edie Brickell once sang. She should have been careful what she asked for.
The waters grew terrifyingly deep for Brickell shortly after the release of “Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars,” her 1989 debut album with New Bohemians. Constant radio play for the single “What I Am” propelled the disc past platinum status. The band, which started as a small Texas club act, began headlining huge venues to screaming fans.
But Brickell, only 23 at the time, felt she had not earned the throngs. She was in over her head and sinking fast, with intense pressures on all sides.
“The rush of fame didn’t feel legitimate,” Brickell said from her Connecticut home last week. “It didn’t feel like we had earned that measure of fanfare. The first time we went out on tour, when MTV started playing our video, it’s almost like people came to our shows because they had seen the video.
“It felt phony and embarrassing.”
That quickly led to a forced, mediocre second album (1990’s “Ghost of a Dog”) and subsequent burnout, forcing Brickell to take time off to recharge. When her band hits the Boulder Theater Saturday, it will be with a humble, renewed sense of purpose.
“The music never went away. I thought I could leave it, but I realized I love writing songs and I love being in a band,” said Brickell, who issued a pair of low-profile solo discs in the interim.
Armed with a fresh album, the New Bohemians are charging across the country on their own terms, playing appropriately sized venues and letting the music – instead of the hype – do the talking. The disc, “Stranger Things,” mashes the loose folk-rock of the Bohemians’ early work with impressive guitar interplay and musicianship.
“I wanted to make a record that represented the band’s character, because the band can get really weird, and I like that,” Brickell said. “Record companies never want to put that on a record, but when I hear a record like that, I’m always blown away.”
Producer Bryce Goggin (Evan Dando, Trey Anastasio) knew how to recast the group after its 15-year recording absence. He filled his Texas studio with vintage gear and let the Bohemians record tracks live in a couple of takes. Of course, they had been playing and practicing some songs since 1998.
“All of the songs came about through jamming,” Brickell admitted. “There’s an authenticity to the mood there, and the chemistry of people working together creates an electric feeling.”
The band never really stopped playing, hitting old Texas haunts like Club Dada over the years to test material. Brickell, a Dallas native, had spent her later teen years on the city’s club circuit with New Bohemians, earning a rabidly devoted fan base that never really left.
“When I would come home to visit my relatives and jam with the Bohemians, we’d often slip into a club and play,” she said. “That Dallas crowd knows that we like to improvise, and they’re really an accepting audience.”
What a contrast to the days when Brickell’s record label, Geffen, was ferrying her to photo shoots and pounding on the door for a follow-up to “Shooting Rubberbands.” During that hectic time Brickell attended a lot of industry events and met a lot of living legends, both male and female.
“I looked at them and noticed they were not happy people,” she said. “I thought, ‘If I stay on this conveyor belt I’ll end up like that. I don’t want to get addicted to fame.’ I’d also just met my future husband, and I wanted to have kids and withdraw for a while to experience real love.”
Her husband, folk icon Paul Simon, and their children helped her reconnect to the reasons she loved music: the mysteries of songwriting, the adrenaline of being on stage, the camaraderie of touring.
Sure, there are still practical concerns – like coordinating tours with her husband – but they’re the kind Brickell welcomes these days.
“In the middle of the school year, I don’t want to go out for a long period of time,” she said. “But it’s something I need to do for the band and the record.”
Staff writer John Wenzel can be reached at 303-954-1642 or jwenzel@denverpost.com.
Edie Brickell & New Bohemians
ROCK/FOLK|Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St. in Boulder; 8 p.m., Saturday|$24|303-786-7030 or www.bouldertheater.com.
7more
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– Ricardo Baca
