PETERBOROUGH EVENING TELEGRAPH
Date: October 2004
You may not have heard much from singer-songwriter Beverley Craven in the last five years - but it's not a case of her fading away like so many former pop stars.
Instead the mother of three deliberately stopped working to look after her growing family and elected to have nothing to do with music after the release of her last self-produced album Mixed Emotions in 1999.
But that has changed now, and a desire to return to the road has seen her pick up her old tunes and head to the South Holland Centre in Spalding as part of a new national tour.
The Guide spoke to the woman whose self-titled debut album sold 750,000 copies on the back of classic songs Promise Me and Holding On about her return to the musical stage.
Beverley Craven has to be the least rock-starry person The Guide has spoken to yet.
When she picked up the phone it was like talking to an old family friend you hadn't spoken to for some time - and that is just the sort of vibe she is looking to put across in her series of shows.
She said: "I was sitting around last Christmas twiddling my thumbs thinking the kids are grown up now - I should be out doing something."
She recruited her former bass player from a composting business in Folkestone, dragged her former guitarist back from Spain and hopes to pull her saxophonist from Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings to join the tour later on.
She said: "It's just going to be the four of us, with no drummer, playing songs from my three albums. It won't be a great big flashy thing."
She had tried juggling the mother and career woman thing before - especially with her last album which she had recorded in a studio she created in her attic at home.
She said: "I used to spend the whole time feeling guilty and not really able to do either job to the best of my ability - it was being a mum or being a career woman - I was completely split. I am the sort of person who can only do one thing at a time. I thought if I'm not around for the kids now I will regret it."
She had enjoyed having a grand piano craned into the studio and a 32-track digital recording studio which she could invite musicians to play in.
But she had found it difficult to be objective while producing her 1999 album herself.
She said: "It's hard when you have written it and performed it, both singing and playing it. It is difficult to take a big step back and know what it sounds like. I used to try and listen to it in the corridor outside the studio!"
The new mixing technology using the computer programme pro-tools had also taken a little bit of the music - deleting all the guitar scratches and glitches that made the music sound human.
She said: "A producer can put their foot down. I don't really know of many people who can produce themselves - I'm not sure I would do it again."
Since then she had pretty much stopped playing music or composing anything.
She said: "I figured going out and doing a few shows and seeing how it goes with any luck will inspire tunes.
"For the last few years I haven't even sat down at a piano. All the equipment has been packed away and I haven't been inspired to write anything or have the desire to go out and do some shows."
She partly blamed her long 11-year contract with Epic which she felt might have taken away some of the productivity and creativity.
She said: "You are far more creative when you are struggling. I want to do this for fun and get a buzz out of it.
"It had become a job, I had become like a record company rep instead of being a person creating music. I want to go out and enjoy it without being tied to a record release."
