By Alexandra Pecci
Correspondent

Telling stories with music comes naturally to Shawn Colvin. But translating those stories into book form is another story.

“It’s a different process from making a record,” said the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter who has signed a deal with Harper Collins Publishers to write a memoir.

She recently handed in her first draft.

“I had all these stories that I always told and somebody suggested that it might be neat to write them down,” she said.

Colvin, 53, weaves many of these stories into her live shows, and area residents will have a chance to hear them firsthand when she plays at the Tupelo Music Hall’s newly opened Salisbury, Mass., location on Friday, Nov. 20. She’ll then head to Londonderry for two back-to-back shows at that Tupelo location on Saturday, Nov. 21.

Colvin’s contemporary folk music has garnered her fame and acclaim. She learned to play guitar at age 10 and first performed in concert at 15.

While her earlier albums didn’t sell huge numbers, she did win the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk album with “Steady On” in 1991.

But her break-out came in her hit single “Sunny Came Home,” from the album, “A Few Small Repairs,” which won Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the 1998 Grammy Awards.

Before that, and since, Colvin has toured and recorded steadily, releasing her latest album, “Shawn Colvin Live,” this year. It was recorded over the course of three nights during performances in San Francisco.

“So much of what I do is play live so it seemed like a good idea, something that should be represented on a record,” she said. “I knew I was recording it, so it made me fairly nervous.”

One fun track on the album is a cover of the Gnarls Barkley song “Crazy,” which she often plays during her shows. It’s the kind of cover that Colvin says she likes to do.

“People kind of don’t know what it is at first because it sounds like a folk song,” she says. “That’s just a song I really liked. I thought, ‘There’s no way this is gonna work.”

But her deconstructed, guitar-plucked version of the hip hop hit does work, and she says it’s because she puts her own spin on it.
“It’s got to be different enough from the original to be meaningful,” she says.
Colvin says she’ll sprinkle covers throughout her shows at the Tupelos. She said her live shows reflect her style of music, and her audiences appreciate that.

“I guess the kind of music that I do is fairly personal and intimate,” she said.

“They’re generally the type of audience that’s looking for that type of intimacy, so they’re generally very warm.”

Warm is also how she describes her past experiences at Tupelo Londonderry, where she’s played before.

“It’s just a really intimate place that sounds great,” she said, “The audience is great. They’re enthusiastic.”

Working on her memoir seems to have given her a new appreciation for songwriting. Writing prose is wide open creatively, whereas with writing songs there are creative parameters like rhythm, rhyme, and melody, she said.

“It’s like putting a puzzle together,” she said. “Songwriting is difficult sometimes but I think this experience will make is seem easier.”

If you go:
What: Shawn Colvin in concert.
Where: Tupelo Music Halls in Salisbury and Londonderry.
When: Salisbury on Friday, Nov. 20, at 8 p.m.; Londonderry on Saturday, Nov. 21 at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.
How: Tickets are $55 for Salisbury; $55 or $65 for Londonderry.
Learn more: www.tupelohall.com