WANT TO GO?

"Mountain Stage" 25th Anniversary Show

FEATURING: Joan Osborne, Kathy Mattea, Rachel Yamagata, The Low Anthem, Johnny Staats with Robert Shaffer

Gallery

[+] Enlarge

"It would have been my first winter in New York City," she said. "I was probably freezing. I was very poor when I first moved to the city. I didn't have a proper coat or mittens or a hat."

Osborne, who appears Sunday on "Mountain Stage's" 25th Anniversary Show, wasn't singing back then. She was 21, a recent émigré from Louisville, Ky., and studying film at New York University. Her breakthrough hit, "One Of Us," wouldn't happen for another 12 years.

At the time, she remembered, "I was only singing in the shower, but I stumbled upon this great music scene that was happening in New York and just got involved with it."

More or less, she's been there ever since.

Over the phone from her home in Brooklyn, Osborne spoke about her new album "Little Wild One." It's a reunion with her creative partners, Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman (The Hooters) and Rick Chertoff, the team who helped create Osborne's Grammy-nominated and triple-platinum record, "Relish."

With more than 3 million copies sold and a slew of Grammy nominations, putting the same people back together for another album would have seemed like a safe bet, but Osborne says it took years to make it really happen.  

"It was one of those things," she said. "We kept saying we had to work together again, then years would go by. Everybody was busy. Everybody had projects they were doing. Finally, Eric said to come down to Philly."

While the two of them were working on songs, Rob Hyman dropped by to borrow something and was pressed into service. With the three of them there, they called Chertoff and told him, "It looks like we're getting the old group back together."

"Mountain Stage" 25th Anniversary Show

FEATURING: Joan Osborne, Kathy Mattea, Rachel Yamagata, The Low Anthem, Johnny Staats with Robert Shaffer

INFO: This show is sold out.

"It would have been my first winter in New York City," she said. "I was probably freezing. I was very poor when I first moved to the city. I didn't have a proper coat or mittens or a hat."

Osborne, who appears Sunday on "Mountain Stage's" 25th Anniversary Show, wasn't singing back then. She was 21, a recent émigré from Louisville, Ky., and studying film at New York University. Her breakthrough hit, "One Of Us," wouldn't happen for another 12 years.

At the time, she remembered, "I was only singing in the shower, but I stumbled upon this great music scene that was happening in New York and just got involved with it."

More or less, she's been there ever since.

Over the phone from her home in Brooklyn, Osborne spoke about her new album "Little Wild One." It's a reunion with her creative partners, Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman (The Hooters) and Rick Chertoff, the team who helped create Osborne's Grammy-nominated and triple-platinum record, "Relish."

With more than 3 million copies sold and a slew of Grammy nominations, putting the same people back together for another album would have seemed like a safe bet, but Osborne says it took years to make it really happen.  

"It was one of those things," she said. "We kept saying we had to work together again, then years would go by. Everybody was busy. Everybody had projects they were doing. Finally, Eric said to come down to Philly."

While the two of them were working on songs, Rob Hyman dropped by to borrow something and was pressed into service. With the three of them there, they called Chertoff and told him, "It looks like we're getting the old group back together."

Everything just fell into place.

Osborne says the album is a bit of a love letter to her adoptive city.

"I think the genesis for all of that writing was my sort of post-9/11 appreciation for the city. It's an amazing place to live."

Before "Little Wild One," she said, she'd gone through a period where she revisited and rediscovered New York.

"I started doing the things I used to do when I first moved here. I took long walks and observed the life of the city and the life of the streets. I soaked up the ambiance. New York has a street life and a street culture. A lot of cities, you just get in your car and go, but New York is best experienced by foot."

She still has roots in Kentucky. She says she gets back to where she grew up a couple of times a year: during Christmas, in the summer and often in April, when the trees are in bloom.

"It's really wonderful," she says. "We don't really have a springtime like that in New York."

Osborne says she's been asked about why she ever left Kentucky. Others have pointed out that she could have had a music career in Louisville, and she doesn't disagree, but she might not have.

"The amount of music that happens here on a nightly basis is staggering," she said. "If you could afford it, you could go out every night and see something different. I guess the downside is, it's so expensive to live here. That's the cloud that goes with the silver lining."

She wouldn't trade it, though. Leaving Kentucky was the catalyst that put her on the road she's been on for the past 20 years.

Reach Bill Lynch at ly...@wvgazette.com or 348-5195.