Kundalini yoga helps singer Paula Cole Make Comeback

[Guest guest]

Singer Paula Cole returns, after practicing kundalini yoga " with a

community of Sikhs " :

 

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2007/06/10/with_courage_cole_has_stopped\

_waiting/?page=1

 

Boston.com THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING

Singer Paula Cole

Singer Paula Cole returns to the music world after an eight-year

hiatus with a new album. (Photo by Scott Lewis)

The Boston Globe

POP MUSIC

With 'Courage,' Cole has stopped waiting

After eight years, the singer has a new CD and a new style

 

By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff | June 10, 2007

 

NEW YORK -- Paula Cole is sitting in a French bistro near her

Greenwich Village apartment in a brown coat, brown sweater, brown

boots, and jeans. She wears no makeup and eats soup for lunch. She is

nervous and says so. Ten years ago Paula Cole was a pop star. That was

lovely for a while, then ended badly. Today she is a 39-year-old

single mother , and nobody notices her walking down the street.

 

Cole is here at this table, gamely dredging up the past, because after

seven years off the entertainment grid she's made a new album. It's

called " Courage, " a word that Cole has made her life's mantra and

(just so she doesn't forget to say it every day) her e-mail password.

She wrote and recorded the new collection in close collaboration with

Bobby Colomby, the drummer for Blood, Sweat & Tears, who has produced

albums for Jaco Pastorius, the Jacksons, and Chris Botti. Cole calls

Colomby, who lured her from domestic solitude back into the music

business, her " steward. " The album, out Tuesday on Decca Records, is

smooth and sophisticated, very Adult, and sounds quite different from

Cole's prickly alt-pop hit " Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? " and " I

Don't Want to Wait, " the winsome anthem from " Dawson's Creek. " As it

should, considering the artist has announced on her MySpace page that

the old Paula Cole has died.

 

" I was pursuing this young dream , and it was very empty and began to

feel increasingly inauthentic, " Cole explains. " When I stopped, it was

like this murky voice from the depth s of one's soul had said 'You

must stop. You must get off the hamster wheel.' "

 

The other version of that story is that Cole was dropped by her record

label. Both stories are true. Cole, who grew up in Rockport and

attended the Berklee College of Music, hit big with her second album,

" This Fire, " which came out in 1996. She was among a wave of female

singer-songwriters that flourished in the mid-'90s and graced the

stages of Lilith Fair, and in 1997 Cole won the Grammy for Best New

Artist. " Amen " followed in 1999 -- a soul-inflected album that dealt

unabashedly with Cole's deepening spirituality.

 

" I was connecting to something profound when I made 'Amen,' and some

people understood and some people didn't, " says Cole. " I used the word

God loosely. But I had to sing about it because it was really

important to me. "

 

" Amen " was a commercial flop, and a bitter pill for Cole. " In my

naivete I thought that I would be understood or appreciated, " she

says. " It was a huge disappointment. Things were clearly going down ,

and I was playing the most horrible places for no money. I felt like I

was this dog being kicked around the corner. My manager told me, 'Now

you can go have babies.' Do you think I'm with that manager anymore?

 

She did go have a baby. In 2000, feeling like " a plant in shock that

couldn't bloom, " Cole left New York and retreated to a bungalow in

LA's Roscomare canyon. Her daughter Sky was born in 2001 with severe

asthma, and Cole stopped writing songs, devoting herself full-time to

caring for her child. She studied Kundalini yoga with a community of

Sikhs and considered enrolling in business school at UCLA. In 2002,

Cole married Sky's father, Moroccan musician Hassan Hakmoun. It was " a

poor choice, " she says. The pair split three-and-a-half years later

and are in the midst of antagonistic divorce proceedings.

 

Cole met Colomby briefly in 1994 at the Roxy nightclub after one of

her shows. A few years later, he hired her for a jazz session, and

then in 2005, Colomby was searching for the right vocalist to sing on

the title track of Botti's album " To Love Again: The Duets. "

 

Botti wanted Sting. Colomby thought of Cole.

 

" I wish I didn't have a vested interest because then what I'm saying

would have more meaning, " Colomby says by phone from LA. " The choices

she makes, the notes she picks, the unlimited well she has to choose

from, it's stunning to me. She just owns the songs. But she's the

opposite of show biz. She'd been through hell and was scared to death. "

 

Colomby took Cole under his wing and persuaded her to try co-writing

with A-list session players. Cole, who is forthcoming about her

struggles with anxiety and depression, says that Colomby's " homework

assignments " were like exercises that restored her health and helped

her tap back into her hunger to make music. They recorded 11 tracks ,

featuring such guests as Herbie Hancock and Brazilian vocalist Ivan

Lins. Cole signed a record deal with Columbia, where Colomby

previously worked as an executive, but after a corporate reshuffling

they took the album to Decca.

 

Chris Roberts, president of Universal Music Classics, Decca's parent

company, is clear-eyed about the challenges involved in re-launching

Cole's career in a depressed industry and a marketplace that's changed

dramatically since her first go-round.

 

" Having walked away and gotten her bearings again, Paula's much more

comfortable writing on her own terms, " Roberts says. " She's not

following up on 'Dawson's Creek,' and she's not a video and radio kind

of artist. " [WBOS music director Dana Marshall confirms that " 14, "

from " Courage, " " isn't the kind of song that's working for WBOS in 2007. " ]

 

" So we've got to try to do a lot of different things and be patient, "

Roberts explains. " There's NPR and other programs that have an active

adult audience, and she'll play live, and you hope for breaks. Luck

plays a huge part in this. "

 

Cole feels nothing but gratitude for the chance to share her music

again, but confesses to feeling ambivalent about stepping back into

the fire.

 

" I know the business a little more , and I know I won't always be able

to steer the ship , and I'll be disappointed again, I'm sure. But I

realize that music is this participatory process, " Cole says. " It

needs to be exchanged. I'm alone here in the dark if I don't have

someone to sing to. "

 

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman. For more on music

visit boston.com/ae/ music/blog.

© Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company