After back-to-back tours and albums, Bonnie Raitt says that finally finding the time to deal with the deaths of her father, mother and brother helped to break her writer’s block and craft the songs for her latest album and tour.
“I don’t write often and easily,” she says. “This particular time, after a period of about 10 years when my family – my parents and my older brother – were all ill and passed away in a short period of time ... I was pretty fried, and I took 2010 as a complete break from thinking about what I wanted to do next.
“[I did] some grief work with a support person, and I just really felt all the things that had been pushed aside by all that loss and trauma – and I came out of it really grateful.”
Dig in Deep, which released last month, features several personal songs that Raitt co-wrote, as well as her signature guitar sound. She also said she got a boost from her last album, 2012's Slipstream, which won the Grammy for Best Americana Album.
"I was rejuvenated by Slipstream and I co-wrote a song on that one with my guitarist," she says. "The words didn't go, so it forced me to write some songs that went with what my experience was, and that kind of got the wheels greased.
“I kind of wrote on assignment. After all that loss, to finally have the time and freedom and not have to be worrying about family members, I had more opportunity to write.”
On the new album, 66-year-old Raitt co-wrote five of the 12 tracks, including upbeat album opener Unintended Consequence of Love, and the political The Comin' Round is Going Through. The album also includes cover versions of INXS' Need You Tonight and the Los Lobos song Shakin' Shakin' Shakes.
Raitt admits there was some anxiety when she began writing for her new album.
“It made me nervous knowing I was going to be writing more of the songs, and I was saying: ‘Oh my God, I know so many people out there, they’re gonna say this one unfortunately is not as good,’” she says.
“I don’t like to be compared [to myself], I just wish everybody would say: ‘She’s doing the best she can’ – especially because it was more of a risk with my own tunes. But so far everyone’s relating to them, so I’m really smiling a lot these days.”
Raitt says a few of the songs were written about subjects close to heart. The second verse of the piano ballad, The Ones We Couldn't Be, for example, is "really about members of my family".
“I know they were sorry they couldn’t be what I needed and I was sorry I couldn’t live up to the expectations,” she says. “And at the time when the relationship’s not working or you’re under stress, you tend to put blame not necessarily where it’s really accurate – it’s all about them, if only they acted different – so the reckoning that happens years later is your realisation you both just did the best you could.”
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member, whose hits include I Can't Make You Love Me, Something to Talk About and Love Sneakin' Up on You, says she is thrilled to be touring the world with the new songs.
She also hopes more people outside of her fan base will be attracted to the new music: “I hope people can relate to it, no matter what age they are.”
Though it’s hard to tell, Raitt says she started to play guitar and write songs as a “hobby”. She tells of getting her first guitar for Christmas and playing so much her fingers started bleeding.
“I just played till I had callouses and my fingers bled, and I just learnt every Joan Baez song I could learn, and I became the campfire counsellor who sang the songs at my camp,” she says. “And I just thought, music can change the world – and I still feel that way.”
