Sheryl Crow Announces Early Spring Release Of Be Myself

Artist: Sheryl Crow
Album: Be Myself
Label: Warner Brothers
Release date: late March or Early April

Be Myself, has been cut with her Nineties collaborators Jeff Trott and Tchad Blake, the team responsible for hits like "My Favorite Mistake" and "Everyday Is a Winding Road." In an interview with Rolling Stone, Crow talked about the upcoming project, a bit of a departure from her pure country record.

"I really wanted to get back to how I got started on my second record and third record," Crow says. "I wanted to revisit that sound and that feeling. It was a complete blast and the most effortless thing I've ever done."

"It began with Jeff and I saying, 'What would complete this?'" she says. "We both said, 'Tchad Blake!' I thought in a million years he wouldn't come over because he lives in Wales and I haven't seen him in 15 years. But I emailed him and he said, 'When do you want me there?' He flew over and stayed with me in an apartment over my garage. Every day at 5 p.m. we'd drink a Guinness. He went through cancer treatment a year ago, and so we both had that in common. It felt profoundly sweet having him and Jeff here."

 "As you get older you start making records that are more calculated and you're trying to compete with what you've done and not repeat yourself," she says. "You get more methodical and more analytical about the music and that doesn't necessarily make it better. I wanted to have the feeling I had when I made my first two records, which was like being a kid playing with my friends and writing about whatever came to mind."

What might be even more exciting, however, is the nugget in the interview that Crow has a second album that she's hoping to have out by the end of the year that includes some legends in it.  She has a project in the works collaborating with the likes of Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, Willie Nelson, Vince Gill, Kris Kristofferson and many others. Johnny Cash's estate has allowed her to cut a virtual duet with the Man in Black on "Redemption Day," a songs of hers he covered toward the end of his life. She hopes to get the album into stores near the end of the year.