News Archives
[Go to News page] | [Go to Archives page]
Songstress Satisfies Craving for Music / After a seven-year absence, Anita Baker returns to the stage.
by Rafer Guzmán, Dec. 15, 2002
Newsday
The voice of Anita Baker accompanied many a late-night cuddle during the 1980s. Her husky contralto is still synonymous with the "quiet storm," a genre of romantic R&B heard mostly on evening radio shows whose listeners called in to dedicate songs to lovers and potential mates. Disc jockeys had a nickname for especially effective tracks by crooners such as Baker, Luther Vandross and Peabo Bryson: "Babymakers."
Turns out Baker has been raising two babies of her own since bowing out of the music industry nearly a decade ago. "Basically," she says, "I've just been living the life of a mother and a wife."
That life is about to be disrupted. For the first time in seven years, Baker is going on tour. There's no new album - yet - so Baker is playing just a handful of dates at small clubs around the country. Her first stop is New York, but Manhattan isn't on the schedule: Instead, she'll play four dates, starting Wednesday, at the 2,700-seat Westbury Music Fair.
The 15-song set will be "comfy-cozy," Baker says, with a backup band prepared to handle plenty of requests. "There's a lot of off-the-cuff stuff. It's loose, it's easy."
That's how Baker likes things these days. Sipping from a bowl of lentil soup at a Manhattan restaurant on a recent gray day, Baker looks chic but comfortable in a black turtleneck and dark brown tights. She apologizes for wearing what she says is too much makeup: She just finished taping a performance for CBS' "The Early Show."
"I was scared," she admits. "You know the old adage about how it's just like riding a bike? It's not like riding a bike. There's so many other elements and variables involved."
Baker left the public eye shortly after releasing "Rhythm of Love," her last album, in 1994. The music business "will consume you," she says. Between self-produced albums and yearlong tour schedules, "there's really no time to enjoy anything." The other reasons for her absence: Her sons, now 8 and 9, and her husband, a Detroit real-estate developer.
"Had somebody said to me 10 years ago that there's going to be something that would take the place of music for you, I would have laughed at them. But when my kids were born, I just began another life."
So what brings Baker back to the stage? "Hunger pangs," she says. "I'd take an art class. I'd be doing chalk drawings of apples and oranges, and that didn't do it for me. Then, I started to putz around in the garden. And for a while, that was satisfying."
Eventually, she installed a recording studio in her house.
"Most people put it in the basement or in the back - I put it right in the middle." Soon, she learned how to dismantle and repair her own equipment.
"That started saying to me, 'Anita, you're sitting here with a soldering gun, soldering connections on this cable. Maybe you want to get back into music.'"
It would be a welcome return, says Lenny Green, host of the WRKS/98.7 FM evening show "Kissing After Dark." When Baker's debut album, "The Songstress," appeared in 1983, "I was playing song after song," Green says. At that time, radio was still recovering from the disco era, and Whitney Houston hadn't yet begun turning soulful ballads into profitable pop songs. "R&B was still just blossoming. She was really the foundation for the Toni Braxtons and the Deborah Coxes." Her 1986 album, "Rapture," went platinum and earned Baker a Grammy.
But Baker isn't another diva trying to make a comeback. In the first place, "I'm too short to be a diva," says the approximately 5-foot-2 singer. What's more, "The concert dates are baby steps," she says. "I'm in an environment where it doesn't feel like work just yet. It's still fun."
WHERE & WHEN Anita Baker, at 8 tonight, tomorrow, Friday and Saturday at Westbury Music Fair, 960 Brush Hollow Rd., Westbury. Tickets are $58. Call Ticketmaster at 631-888-9000 or go to www.ticketmaster.com.
Copyright 2002, Newsday Inc.