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Ever Busy Raitt Ready For Next Stage
Hall of Fame inductee looking forward to taking time for herself after this tour.

on October 23, 2009 No comments
By Sean Piccoli spiccoli@sunsentinel.com | Entertainment Writer

Being immersed in blues music, Bonnie Raitt represents a segment of the culture that is rooted in slower, simpler times. But talk to this Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, who performs tonight at Pompano Beach Amphitheatre, and there’s a sense of things spinning rapidly.

Tours are tied in with albums, favored causes and fundraisers. The scheduling of anything more time-intensive than lunch — public appearances, interviews, recording sessions — can require a year’s advance notice.

Raitt also has suffered personal losses in this decade: the deaths of her parents, both musicians; and a brother, who succumbed to cancer in April. Her work life didn’t stop while she was tending to loved ones; it just became more complicated.

So it’s not a surprise to hear the Grammy-winning singer and guitarist, who turns 60 next month, say in a telephone interview that she’s looking forward to some time off. What’s more unexpected is how much time off: It could be a good long while.

“I’m going to be taking a break, an extended break, after basically 10 years of much illness and nonstop working,” she said. “So I’m looking forward to a hiatus where I get to do what I want to do, and not necessarily be obligated to … go on tour to raise … money and get people out for the elections or take care of anybody who’s very, very ill. So it’s just going to be a time when I get to really have my first hiatus in a long time.”

Raitt does not anticipate a total retreat from the world. “My day job running my political-activist life, that never goes away,” she said. But she is clearing sections of her calendar. “I’ve already had to turn down at least half a dozen things that I would have given my teeth to do if I wasn’t needing this break.”

“I’ll stay busy with my — the world isn’t going to lose all the different causes that I’m involved in,” she said. “But I don’t need to make another record. I don’t need to win any more awards. I don’t need to tour to make a living. After 40 years of always having another record in the back of my mind when I finished a tour, this is the first time I’m going to regroup.”

She called this “a good time … to be able to wait and plan my next move.”

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