Features

BY JONATHAN SOROFF

Photo Credit: Fabrizio Ferri

Grammy-winner and seven-time nominee Paula Cole, 44, was born and raised in Rockport. After attending Rockport High School, she studied jazz vocals and improvisation on a scholarship at Berklee College of Music. Her single “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone” was a Billboard Hot 100 hit in 1997, and in 1998, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences named her best new artist. Her single “I Don’t Want to Wait” became the theme song of the popular TV series Dawson’s Creek. In the past 18 years, she’s released six solo albums, selling approximately three million copies, and she’s collaborated with artists ranging from Peter Gabriel to Dolly Parton. She currently teaches, gives clinics and continues to perform extensively, as well as participate in projects like the student-penned Back to the Garden: The Artistry of Joni Mitchell at Berklee. She lives with her daughter in Rockport.

JONATHAN SOROFF: So where have all the cowboys gone?

PAULA COLE: You’ve got to be kidding me. I can’t believe I’m 44, and you’re asking me that question. I haven’t been asked that question since the late ’90s, and I went into hiding because I was traumatized. [Laughs.] It’s rhetorical! 

OK, YOU GREW UP IN A MUSICAL FAMILY. HOW MANY INSTRUMENTS DO YOU PLAY?
A few. I play piano, and I sing well, but the rest I play badly. I’m not a natural guitar player. My left hand just lacks the motor skill. I have rhythm and harmony, so I can make things work. I play clarinet, but it’s very rudimentary.

YOU STUDIED JAZZ SINGING AND IMPROVIZATION.
Yup. I started out as a jazz singer in Boston.

CAN YOU RAP?
[Laughs.] Not off the cuff. But I have rhythm, so I can speak in rhythm with a nice feel. I did a little bit on my Amen album.

YOUR DAD WAS A POLKA MUSICIAN?
My dad played bass in a polka band that was, ironically, successful, which is unheard of. It was called Johnny Prytko and the Connecticut Hi-Tones. They had albums, and I grew up seeing my dad on album covers, and they played gigs all over. He played every instrument. He’s way more musical than I am.

CAN YOU DO THE POLKA?
Yeah. I’d stand on my dad’s shoes as a kid, and he’d dance me around the kitchen, teaching me how to polka.

YOU TURNED DOWN A MUSIC CONTRACT FROM A JAZZ LABEL WHEN YOU WERE STARTING OUT. WHY?
Because I didn’t want to be singing other people’s songs. I was in my early 20s, at the beginning of my warrior path, and I needed to sing my truth. I didn’t want to sing about “a woman’s born to weep and fret and tend her oven.” I didn’t want to be pigeonholed. And maybe that was a mistake. But I do feel that I will make a jazz album someday. 

DID DAWSON’S CREEK HELP OR HARM YOUR CAREER?
Both. It helped because it’s a song for a generation, and it bumped it up to a level that I never imagined. Therefore, the song is what people know. They don’t know me. But I retreated from marketing and branding. That whole big shiny career was ill-fitting for an introvert like myself. 

FAVORITE LYRIC OR SONG YOU EVER WROTE?
In “I Don’t Want to Wait,” the lyric “seeing the love in every eye.” I was very influenced by Bob Marley in my writing, and I think that’s where that comes from. I love that phrase.

CURRENT FAVORITE SINGER/SONGWRITER?
I’m always late to the party in discovering new talent. I’m a mother, and I’m busy, and I’m a bit hermetic. But I love Amy Lee, and I think she’s going somewhere. There’s a very talented singer there. And I just recently discovered Lucy Kaplansky. She has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. She’s a mom, like me. She’s highly intelligent, and I think her writing is really special.

WHAT’S ON HEAVIEST ROTATION ON YOUR IPOD?
Joni Mitchell, Lucy Kaplansky, early Nat King Cole, a lot of jazz. It’s all over the place.

BILLIE HOLIDAY OR SARAH VAUGHAN?
Oh, brutal. I’ll have to say Billie, because she’s so inside the lyric it becomes poetic. I feel Sarah is thinking more about the notes, and Billie lives inside the sadness.

IF YOU COULD COLLABORATE WITH ANYONE, DEAD OR ALIVE, WHO WOULD IT BE?
One of those dreams came true. Dolly Parton and I were in the studio together. It would be really cool to write a song with Keith Richards.

WHAT WAS TOURING WITH THE LILITH FAIR LIKE?
That’s a can of worms. It was brilliant at first. Then it became Sarah [McLachlan]’s vehicle. I liked the audiences and the donations we made to women’s organizations. There was a very positive energy.

IS THE MUSIC BUSINESS SEXIST?
It’s easy to say yes, but you could also say it’s ageist. I think the fact is that it’s just really damn hard. It’s hard for men, too.

WHERE DO YOU KEEP YOUR GRAMMY?
It makes a good bookend, so it’s in the library, kind of out of the way. It’s not a big deal.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR VOICE?
Full of wisdom and sorrow and joy.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE COVER OF ONE OF YOUR SONGS?
It was pretty cool to have Annie Lennox and Herbie Hancock do “Hush, Hush, Hush.” They’re both idols of mine.

DO YOU PREFER RECORDING OR PERFORMING IN FRONT OF A LIVE AUDIENCE?
That’s yin and yang. I need both. Recording is very internal and private. Going out to perform is so electrifying. I can’t live without both.

LAST QUESTION: DO YOU STILL HAVE A NOSE RING?
I let it close. I was starting to lose the ability to scrunch my nose up and do the Bewitched thing, so the ring had
to go.