Joan Osborne visits Rex for intimate, stripped-down show

Apr. 12—Joan Osborne hesitates to talk about the backstory for one of her best-known songs. (No, not the one about God, but we'll get to it.)

The Kentucky native's 1995 major label debut, "Relish," kicks off with "St. Teresa," a haunting tale about a drug dealer.

"It comes from a time when I was living on the Lower East Side of East Village in New York City," the singer-songwriter said in an interview with NH Weekend. "It was back when it was still a bit of a rough area, and there were some sketchy characters around."

Osborne, 60, who performs Thursday at the Rex Theatre, knows fans bring their own interpretations to the song so she wants to keep those channels open. Still, she recalled a drug-dealing mom she used to see with her child in a stroller right beside her.

"On the one hand, you could look at that and be very judgmental and say how shocking it is that you would expose a baby to this. But on the other hand I also sort of admired her," Osborne said. "This is a woman who is doing what she needs to do to feed that kid. She's out here working. Maybe it's not her first choice of the way to do that, but probably it's the best that she can do."

Osborne will share stories behind her songs during her intimate set at the Rex, during which she will be accompanied by guitarist and longtime collaborator Jack Petruzzelli and keyboard player Will Bryant.

"I feel like at this point, most of the audience has been with me for a long, long time," she said. "So I think it's interesting to them to hear the stories that go along with these songs they might be very familiar with and to talk about my experience having done this for 30-plus years now."

Along the way, Osborne has performed with the Grateful Dead — singing songs once performed by Jerry Garcia — and with the Funk Brothers, the Motown session musicians who finally got their due in the 2002 documentary "Standing in the Shadows of Motown."

Osborne appeared in "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" and briefly toured with the Funk Brothers, the architects behind practically every hit made by the Detroit record company.

"They played on more hit songs than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys combined," she said. "And they had that sound, which is so much a part of American music and American culture from that time."

On the radio

Osborne just recorded a new album of original material and plans to perform some of the songs from the upcoming release in New Hampshire. The project will be her second studio release in a row to consist of all original material, after 2020's "Trouble and Strife."

"There's something really satisfying about ... creating something that is unique to you," she said. "But just as a singer, there's also something really satisfying to be able to draw from these amazing songs that other people have written, and the possibilities are just endless of what you might do."

Her most recent release is "Radio Waves," a 2022 collection that features 13 performances recorded at radio stations throughout her career.

The album includes live versions of "St. Teresa" and "One of Us," the latter being her mega hit about God written by guitarist/producer Eric Bazilian.

The performance of "One of Us," recorded for a Dutch radio station, features Osborne accompanied only by an acoustic guitarist.

"You could hear a pin drop in the room because we were doing it in this very stripped down, intimate way," Osborne said. "It drew people in, and it was like the song cast a spell over all of us because it was quiet."

The original version about a "stranger on the bus trying to make his way home" became an international hit and still resonates with audiences.

"It reminds me of the story of the Good Samaritan, where the Lord is disguised as this beggar on the side of the road, and people who are wealthy and people who are supposedly spiritual pass him by. Yet there's one person who takes him in and recognizes, as Jesus said, 'As you treat the least of my children, that is how you treat me.'"

"Radio Waves" also features live versions of cover songs that first appeared on Osborne's studio albums — including Bob Dylan's "Make You Feel My Love" and Gary Wright's "Love is Alive" — as well as tracks that have never appeared on her records, such as the standard "Dream a Little Dream of Me."

"I used to sing that for my daughter when she was a baby," Osborne said. "At the time I thought, wouldn't it be nice if I recorded this? Maybe I'll end up doing a whole record of lullabies. That never materialized, but the song was still there."

She also does a rendition of "How Sweet It Is," the Motown song first recorded by Marvin Gaye and later by James Taylor and also the title track of Osborne's 2002 R&B covers album. Osborne's performance on "Radio Waves" is more torch ballad than pop song and tugs harder at the heartstrings.

mcote@unionleader.com