This conversation took place on a sunny Saturday afternoon in one of the new artists' cabins built for this 2002 season at the Backyard in Bee Caves, Texas, just west of Austin. Backyard empressario Tim O'Connor had envisioned a woodsier, homier place for his musical pals to prepare for a show, and this setting seems nearly tailor-made for Bonnie. I had enjoyed some good conversations with her over the years at places like the Austin Opera House and Farm Aid II at Manor Downs, mostly at shows also presented by O'Connor, but I hadn't talked to Bonnie since before her breakthrough release, "Nick Of Time," in 1989. As a fan of thirty years, since I was a suburban Boston teen, catching her songs on a daytime-only, AM folk station out of Central Square in Cambridge, I looked forward to an opportunity to interview Bonnie Raitt.

Q I haven't seen you since the rest of the world caught on, so congratulations.
A Thank you, very much.

Q Nice to see you again.
A Nice to be back in one of my favorite places.

Q I read a description of your favorite kind of shows to do, and basically it described doing a show at the Backyard.
A This is one of my favorite places to play, period, because of this -- the view from the stage and the vibe, you can't get anything better than those oak trees. And the audience -- well, audiences in Austin, they get it, you know. By the time somebody comes to see me, they usually like what I do. But Austin is a puddle of what I do, you know. And I step in it.

Q You leave us in a puddle.
A I step in it.

Q You like a crowd that gets into the rowdy songs and knows enough to shut up for the ballads.
A That's putting it exactly right.

Q Sometimes at shows it seems, even out here at the Backyard, that in the past few years some audiences have become really inattentive. More and more, they're treating musicians like a cocktail party, like background music.
A I haven't noticed that. I mean, sometimes we'll do these industrials and then people are just there and they didn't pay to see us and they're just phased. You know, some guy jumped up on stage in Hawaii and put his arm around me and took a Polaroid of me and him. I said, "You might as well take a picture of your balls, because they're never going to be that big again!" Because, man, that was some nerve! But the other night, we were in a beautiful theater in San Antonio or Dallas and somebody -- it might have been Houston, too, I can't remember. But on George's side of the stage, a woman was talking on her cell phone from the front row during I Can't Make You Love Me. And finally -- he kept going like this (indicating) with his hand to shush her up. And he finally just flung a pick at her! Can you believe -- I mean, if you're going to talk, at least go to the back of the room.

Q Or, at the very least, during a loud one like Gnawing On It or something.
A But mostly, my audiences are pretty damn good, because they know I'm going to yell at them if they're not. I had a guy hold up a sign the other day that said "No pyrotechnics, no pyro, no background dancers, just good music." And that was a cool sign.

Q Well, since you mentioned I Can't Make You Love Me, has the song that ends the new album "Silver Lining ..."
AWounded Heart?

Q Is that too much like I Can't Make You Love Me to replace it in the show?
A Well, I Can't Make You Love Me was a big hit. I've only had two hits, really, Something to Talk About and I Can't Make You Love Me. I've got to assume that some people out there would like to hear those, who are not fans from 1975. You know, they probably only got me with those songs. And I'm already doing so many new songs. The way it is right now, Angel from Montgomery and I Can't Make You Love Me, if I didn't do those, people have written letters and they're usually pretty upset. And I'm working for them, you know. I mean, I'm playing songs for people who haven't seen me in four years. And among the nine or ten new songs, there's only room to go down three times in an hour and 45 minutes. You can't play too many ballads in a row. I've got African stuff to add in now and then there's R & B, there's funk and a lot of different types of music. And you've got to play some Blues. So just to get around to everything -- and mostly, I'm just trying to play for the fans. It's going to be hard to fit in Wounded Heart anyplace except at the end of the night. We'll put it in there. It's even sadder than I Can't Make You Love Me.

Q You think so?
A Yep. It's absolutely the saddest song I've ever sung. I only sang both of those tunes once each in the studio. We'd try to do it again and I just said, "You know, this ain't going to happen."

Q One take each, that's amazing. I know you spend a lot of time choosing the songs, but then you get the musicians in there and you don't spend a whole lot of time working over the songs.
A You don't need to -- I mean, if somebody's good, they should just pick a key and then play it. And if you get the right combination of people, we already know how to play together and we respect what the other person's going to do. And the reason why I put them together is because I know they play well together. So there's a certain kind of a thing you've got to have to know what musicians are going to play. And then after a while, you know which guitar player fits in this pocket with this keyboard player. And this particular unit of people, when we lock in, it's just astounding. And I've had 30 years of great bands, but this one is really perfect for where I'm at right now.

Q The touring band is almost the same band as on the record, right?
A Exactly the same band, yeah.

Q And John Cleary is strong enough of a band member to be the opening act.
A Well, John has is own solo career. And I said, "Would you do this tour with me, since you're such a crucial part of the record?" And he said, "Well, I've got to make sure I don't abandon my guys. And I've got a new album coming out." So this was the perfect way to showcase and keep those guys working. And John's selling CDs right and left every night and he's getting standing ovations almost every night. The guy's just massive.

Q And ( bassist) Hutch (Hutchinson) and (drummer) Rickie (Fataar,) I know they've been with you for a long time.
A Hutch has been with me for over 20 years. And you know he spent a lot of time here in Austin. Every time we come here, all of us talk about getting a place here. So I completely understand why every band wants to move here.

Q I heard a long time ago that you and Joe Ely almost swapped houses for a while.
A No, I've never even seen his house. He's never seen mine.

Q Just the idea of living in a different place for a little while, but being able to go home.
A That would be a good idea. Maybe I'll call him up. Thanks for the suggestion.

Q You're welcome. Speaking of which, don't let me forget. I brought you this. (The Flatlanders's CD "Now Again.") That's Joe, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock.
A Oh, man, thank you! What a great photo!

Q Their second album. The first one came out about the same time as "Give it Up." ( Bonnie's second album in1972.)
A Thank you so much for this! Joe and I did some tours when I was playing acoustic, too. I think we played Park West in Chicago together. And I just -- man, I love him. I think he's the greatest.

Q He's just down the street.
A I'll call him up. Where is he right now? Ian MacLagan is going to come sit in with us tonight..

Q I know Mac toured with you before and I once heard him say he would sit in the Rolling Stones any time, because for that night you're onstage with them you are treated like part of the band. But then he played again with Rod Stewart, who treated him and all the other guys like hired hands. And it's his own bandmate from the 60's!
A That's too bad.

Q But you seem to honestly have a band thing going here.
A Well, I 'm a musician. I'm not just a singer. I know where 'the one' is, you know what I mean. I don't want to bad-rap anybody else, but if you can't work well and play with others, what's the point of being in a band?

Q You said at the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame, "I just don't hold a guitar, I can ride it." That was in your induction speech.
A We were talking about women guitar players. There are people that play to accompany themselves and -- it's not a competition here, it's just -- when you use it as an expressive instrument, it's like a voice. I don't know how to play like Hendrix or Clapton and sing -- I can do some solos, but they're basically Blues solos I've been doing since I was 16. Slide guitar is so open-ended that you can just throw it on top of any kind of music, because it's really like a voice.

Q And then when you and Roy Rogers get together -- I got to see that a couple of weeks ago, where you're both doing slide on Gnawing On It.
A Yeah, that's the first time a male and female have gone head-to-head on slide guitar, I think. That was really fun. He's a great, great player. I mean, his band understands that old-style Blues, the way the T-birds know how to do it, you know, and Jimmie's band. And Stevie Ray. Roy Rogers is just a really unique player. And he does a certain thing that is what I built the song around. And I told him, "There's a thing that you do, and I want to play it, too." I had an idea for a song and told him. And we agreed that we wanted to write a song about keeping a relationship hot down the line, much to the gag factor of your kids. "Oh-h-h, they're doing it!"

Q Don't want to think about mom and dad going off and having a good time.
A Yeah, get over it, kids.

Q You mentioned the African songs, Hear Me, Lord and Back Around, one of which, you co-wrote. I know you took time off after "Fundamental," because it's been what -- four years between records?
A Yeah, two years to tour, a year off for good behavior and then a year getting ready to make the next one.

Q And you went to Mali?
A Uh-huh.

Q Was that your first trip to Africa?
A Yes, it was.

Q But you've been studying about Africa since college?
A Well, I was into the political situation in Africa. I wasn't studying the music part. In that part of the world the lovely European nations that thought they could take over and teach Christianity and the way to behave. In the '60s of a lot of those African nations started over, basically. They didn't have to undo 200 years of messed up capitalism in the inner cities. What you've got is countries that are still able to stop that process and go back and protect the part of their culture that makes it so special, makes them different. So I just was always fascinated with East and West Africa and was planning to go over there and work with the American Friends Service Committee. And then I just played music as a hobby on the side. So the African thing didn't really pick up until I heard a bunch of African guitar music. King Sunny Ade someone turned me on to in the '70s. And then I played with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan at the Winnipeg Folk Festival in a Blues workshop and he just blew me away. And of course, our drummer Rickie's from South Africa. So between Hutch and Rickie -- and Ian McLagan actually turned me on to Ladysmith Black Mambaso back in the early '80s, when he was in my band. And I just fell in love with all that music, especially, Sowetto Township Jive from the '70s.
Like everyone else, I'm really excited that Peter Gabriel and Johnny Klegg and Sting and especially Paul Simon and Ry Cooder have made available all these records to just about every nook and cranny of the world. And now you've got the Internet. And I just had always been touring too much to be able to get over there. And then through a radio interview, I met the guys that do the AfroPop Worldwide show (on NPR.) And they were going to Mali. And the guy who does a lot of their reporting had just spent seven months learning to play guitar over there. And he said, "Why don't you come a week early from the group and I'll introduce you to all my buddies?"

Q And so on that song, Back Around, you're doing kind of a Delta Blues thing and they're doing an African thing.
A It's incredible because they're younger than me. Habib (Koite) is in his early 40s. He's from the soil where the Blues was from. But in fact, he doesn't play Blues, has no roots in it, isn't particularly a fan of it one way or the other. So when I'm playing this groove, it wasn't like all of a sudden they go, "Oh, yeah, that's right. That's a groove we call…" They didn't really feel it the way I was feeling it, even though John Lee (Hooker) is from that part of Africa -- his ancestors.
So you got this little redheaded girl from LA teaching a Blues feel to the guys younger than me from the country that the Blues came from. Actually, not speaking English, they didn't know what I was singing about, either. So they were just playing their own -- they were playing completely innocently -- a beginner's mind kind of, without any preconceived notion of how to play on this. They just heard what I was doing on the guitar and picked it up.

Q They responded.
A Yeah.

Q And wasn't there some place that you thought was like a Texas roadhouse or something? Some little club where there was a band?
A Oh, yeah. God, you've done your homework. Yeah, there's a place outside of Bamaco in Mali, the capital city, and it's exactly like Texas weather. The whole country in January really feels like it. A lot of the nightclubs are outdoors on dirt. And it feels just like you're out at some roadhouse. And they've got a slab of cement with kind of Christmas lights over a pole. And that's the dance floor. A bar with a thatched roof. And in this particular place, there were wild boar roaming around, which also happened to be on the menu. So when you ordered pig, that's what you got. That's all they had. And then at the end of the night, when everybody leaves, they let the -- whoever is still alive -- out to clean up. Now, that's funky. And I hate to say it, but they were eating the scraps, too.

Q I was going to ask about another song.
A Did I throw you off your feed there, Kevin?

Q No, I got thrown off long ago. (Laughter.) No Gettin' Over You, it's got a real Give It Up feel.
A Yeah, it does remind me of that.

Q Right down to Freebo's tuba. Were you going for that?
A No, no. There's a certain kind of country Blues that I like, so when I wrote the tune, that's the way you play that song. But I never pick up songs and try to imitate something I already did. There's just -- that style of music is one of the many that I like. And one day, I just started to play that lick on the guitar and the next thing you know, Freebo was on the tuba. He sat in with us the other night in San Antonio. He's up at the Kerrville Folk Festival. And he showed up. He's got a new album out of all dog songs. It's really wild.

Q Boy, that's devotion. Kinky Friedman has a dog ranch out that way.
A Does he really?

Q Yeah, he takes rescued dogs. The Utopia Rescue Ranch.
A You know what, Kinky had one of the greatest things I've ever read -- in Rolling Stone -- there was a big piece on Willie Nelson, which he wrote. And the last question in the last part of the paragraph was, "Why do you think these people come back and see you year after year after year?" And Willie just said, "Take a look out there. Take a look at those people in the front row." And he was about ready to go onstage. He said, "Ninety percent of those people aren't here with their first choice." How's that for deep? Talk about songs that hit home. No explanation needed on that one. And Kinky was cool enough to let that be the end of the article.

Q There seems to be a formula with the Bonnie Raitt record, because, as you say, you have so many different kinds of music that you like. You do the bawdy, Gnawing On It kind of song and then go into a beautiful ballad, get a little kind of second line thing going on in one of them. Have you ever thought about picking a genre and just doing an album in that style? Like Bonnie Does Broadway or…
A Or all Blues? I get asked if I'm going to make a Blues record. I just don't see the reason for it, because in a whole evening I would be really bored if I had to play only Blues. And I would be likewise really bored only playing pop ballads or --

Q So you think about what you're going to tour with.
A Honestly, what I start with is, " What do I want to play in an evening?" And then I make the record around the songs that are missing or something that I've heard, like Hear Me, Lord. I just wanted to play that every night. But in terms of finding an album's worth of material, it's just pulling teeth. It's really hard to get good ones. And I rarely think by the time it's been through four years that I'm going to have enough. I stay up at night worrying about it, but when I found those two Tommy Sims songs there, I knew we had a record.

Q Well, when you say you "found," I can only imagine that there's a whole lot of people trying to get you their songs.
A Well, there's people that mail them to me, but I'm the only one that can listen to them. I mean, nobody's going to know what I hear in a song. Maybe the demo's really terrible or someone does it in a reggae feel that I can extrapolate to something that I might like out of it and do it a different way.

Q Let's say I'm a guy who does Wednesday nights at the Saxon Pub and people love this particular song. Five people a night come up and say, "You know, Bonnie Raitt should sing that song."
A Well, chances are, you probably would have sent it to me already.

Q Would you get it, though?
A Of course, I get it. That's why I get hundreds and hundreds of them. I can't listen to all of them. In 30 years I've never found a tape or a CD of a song that I could do, unfortunately.

Q So do you have other people that --
A Now, they're just sitting in a box. What I do periodically is just drive and take them and listen to two or three songs. And I know right away whether there's anything in there. Just because something might seem like it's right for me, doesn't mean I can do it. I appreciate why they're sending it to me and that becomes interesting in itself.

Q Your other job, serving the world --
A A tuna sandwich?

Q It's the same kind of thing. As so many people are sending you songs, other people are sending you problems. How do you filter that out? I looked at your website and after almost every show there's some kind of charitable aspect, whether it's preferred seating --
A For a social cause, yeah.

Q How do you keep from getting totally inundated by that?
A Well, I have issues that are the most important to me. And I tend to do ones that other people won't do. The underdog is the one that gets my vote and the organization that's using their finances the most wisely. I have an excellent two-person staff who's job it is, among other things, is to go through -- when I express an interest in doing something for a particular group --they'll go back and find out if, in fact, the money's going to where it's supposed to go, or if somebody's just living off of 30,000 bucks that they raised from some guy with a good heart and they're just going to Hawaii on it and doing "research."
Environment is a really important part of what I do. And the nuclear issue is really -- as you can imagine with Bush in, there's a lot of rollbacks on environmental protections that took years to get. And the Clinton Administration wasn't any help either. So we're trying to hold the line on what air and water protection we have. And certainly stop Yucca Mountain from being passed and built. And there's so many corporations with so much invested in these projects that I've got my work cut out for me trying to keep all the environmental groups afloat.

Q Do you find it fatiguing, sometimes?
A Not that part, no. I mean, it's daunting to figure out who's going to get help, but I just try to be fair. Maybe we do, say, the redwoods this time, then the next time we might do something else. One thing I'm really touting is alternative power, the incredible opportunity that solar energy and wind power has to get us off of fossil fuels and solve two problems or three -- economic, environmental and foreign policy. In San Francisco, we passed a Vote Solar initiative where the City is now going to be going solar on their buildings and selling the energy back to the City. So we're taking that model across the country this summer when I'm on tour with Lyle.

Q Lyle Lovett is joining the tour at the end of July?
A Yeah, we're on tour for a couple of months together, which we did before, actually.

Q Have you talked to him since his run in with the bull?
A I sent a goodie basket to him. His road manager, James, came and saw our show in Houston the other night. And I guess he's feeling better and ready to go. I don't know if he's going to be dancing.

Q He saved his uncle's life, though, which is very cool.
A I know, isn't that great? I love Lyle.

Q Now, I know you have to get ready, but I just wanted to know why your big brother, Steve, is your hero. (The album "Silver Lining" includes that dedication.)
A Well, a lot of my R&B tastes are shared with my brother, Steve. And a lot of the time as a younger sister, two years younger, a lot of the records that really made me the person I am were coming from his tastes. So the way he lives his life, the way he's dealt with some difficult things in the last few years and his perseverance and his incredibly positive attitude, that's why he's my hero, because he's not a whiner. And, you know, if I don't watch it, I'll whine.

Q You dedicated the record to him and he sings on the record.
A He's the first voice on the record. He's a great singer. Both of my brothers are great musicians.

Q And what do they do for jobs?
A Steve designs state-of-the-art home theater systems. After 20 years of being a road guy, mixing sound and driving and fixing the bus and booking the band and producing the records, he finally was married to a woman who said, "If you don't come off the road, I'm out of here." And so he developed Pro Line Integrated Systems. And he designs incredibly beautiful systems.

Q So when he finishes the system and the customers come in to hear it, what's the first record that he puts on?
A An R&B record, not mine. He's a complete R&B hound. And my other brother builds yurts for a living. And he's also a musician. So Steve sings and mixes sound for bands one night a week in Minneapolis where he lives and my brother, David, lives in Ukiah, two hours north of San Francisco. And he builds yurts. He's been doing it since '71. And if you can believe it, he does more benefits that I do.

Q Bonnie, thank you.
A Thank you for asking me all these cool questions. It's nice to have somebody that's been around me for a long time.

Q Yeah, I guess I'm part of the old guard of Bonnie fans, the pre-"Nick Of Time" crowd, who had to learn to share you with a couple of million new fans after that.
A You know why I'm playing here? Because the old-time fans can come and see me not looking like a postage stamp. I know who stays with me. And, you know, I haven't had a hit record since '93, so it's not like the last few years we've been banging down the stadium doors, but I'm not complaining. I don't think anybody will begrudge that I got to pay my band better after "Nick of Time." I'll show you pictures of their kids and you'll see them getting to enjoy a lifestyle that's more of a normal one.

Q On the "Nick of Time" tour you were doing a show in Red Rocks and KGSR was pretty new at the time. I was not only the morning guy then, but the promotion director as well. And somehow I talked them into a promotion where my girlfriend -- who is now my wife -- and I got to accompany the contest winners to your show at Red Rocks.
A Good for you.

Q And it was just a magical night. This big, giant full moon came up on the eastern horizon behind you. And everybody was freaking out. And you're like, "What's going on?" And then there was this falling star. It was one of those kind of nights.
A Oh, man, that gig is such an incredible -- well, this is the other one. Red Rocks and the Backyard are the two most beautiful gigs in the country. I'm glad you got to see that.

Q Nine months later, our son was born.
A So, it was a good night!

Q Uh, you could say that. (laughter) And he gets two songs every night. He's got to have his song from his mom and he's got to have his song from me. My song I learned from you, Baby Mine.
A Oh, I love that. How sweet!

Q He's ten years old, and I know some day soon he's going to get to the point where he says, "Thanks, Dad, I don't need the song tonight," but we're not there yet.
A That's a wonderful story.

Q So, thank you for the song, Bonnie. I learned it from you. I hadn't even seen "Dumbo" at that point.
A And in some ways, that was a pivotal song because that's when I met (producer) Don Was. I was a fan of Was Not Was, but Hal Wilmer put us together for that song (on "Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Disney Classics") and it was the friendship out of that project that "Nick of Time" was born in. So there you go!

Q Thank you, Bonnie.
A Thank you! What a great way to end it!

(end of interview)