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Bonnie Raitt still giving them ‘Something To Talk About’
Bonnie Raitt will perform in Hamilton June 6.

on May 27, 2017 No comments
By Graham Rockingham

Back during the height of her career — shortly after she swept the 1990 Grammys with her breakthrough album “Nick of Time” — Bonnie Raitt found herself inundated with demo tapes from aspiring songwriters.

So much so, that Raitt used to position boxes of tapes throughout various places in her house, always near a portable cassette deck.

She had a box in her kitchen, another in her bathroom, each one containing dozens of tapes. Perhaps one would be her next hit.

One day she picked up a cassette from a Canadian singer-songwriter by the name of Shirley Eikhard. Raitt had never heard the name before. She thinks it could have been sitting in the box for a couple of years.

Nonetheless, Raitt plugged the tape into the player.

tip: most convenient way to listen while browsing along is to use the popup button of the player.

There were four songs on it. One of them was called “Something to Talk About.” It would not only be Raitt’s next hit. It would be her biggest, winning her another Grammy for best female vocal performance in 1992.

“All four of the songs just knocked me out,” Raitt says on the phone from her northern California home. “I loved her voice and I thought it was so far and above anybody else’s tape.”

There was no Internet back then, so Raitt had to start making inquiries about this Eikhard person through her record label. Coincidently, Eikhard was signed to the same label as Raitt, Capitol. Eikhard had had some success in Canada, but was an unknown in the United States.

Eikhard had written her phone number on the tape. Raitt decided to call her up and give her a surprise.

“I waited until I recorded the song, to call up the number on the cassette,” Raitt recalls. ‘I said ‘Hey, Shirley, it’s Bonnie Raitt, listen to this.’ I pushed play and played her own song back and hung up the phone. It went over to voice messaging.

“She called us back and couldn’t have been more delighted. The rest is history. That song is the gift that keeps on giving.”

Not long after, Eikhard and Raitt met face to face at a concert. The two have maintained ties since. She would love to see Eikhard at one of her shows on her upcoming cross-Canada tour, which stops at Hamilton’s FirstOntario Concert Hall on Tuesday, June 6.

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