"I ended up doing a lot of cleaning and found some big boxes in the back of the closet that I probably haven't opened since moving two apartments ago," Osborne says. "I found all these recordings that were everything from set recordings from the late 1980s to some more recent stuff, and a lot of it was recorded at radio stations."
Osborne already had her 10th album out, the politically fueled Trouble and Strife, but she didn't want some of her old recorded tracks from live sessions and radio station performances to get lost. So she put together some of her favorite and most personal choices for her 11th album, Radio Tracks.
They may not all be originals, but some of them are just as personal and meaningful to her. Take, for instance, a demo of Doris Day's "Dream a Little Dream" that she recorded in 2005.
"That was something I used to sing to my daughter when she was a baby," Osborne says. "I'd sing that when I put her to sleep at night."
It's a testament to just how connected Osborne can be to her music and across a variety of genres. She'll perform songs from a number of them on Tuesday at The Kessler."Music is a tool to help us connect to that joyful energy and positive energy, and that's our birthright and we should claim that." - Joan Osborne
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Osborne may be best known for her 1995 chart topper "What if God Was One of Us," off of her hit album Relish, but her contributions to and influence on music go back much further. In 1991 she founded and still runs her own independent label, Womanly Hips Records. She's performed with Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder and Isaac Hayes and toured with Jerry Garcia and the Funk Brothers. She's done shows at the Nobel Peace Prize concert in Norway and for the Dalai Lama in his monastery.
Even with that long, impressive list of accomplishments, Osborne realizes she still has more she wants to do with her music for her fans and her children.
"My mother is in her 90s now, and her siblings are passing away," Osborne says. "It's been making me think a lot about her time on the Earth. My family has a history of dementia, and she's starting to show signs of that. It's not going to be very much longer until she doesn't know who I am. That's what I'm wrestling with in these songs."
Her latest original album, Trouble and Strife, takes a turn toward political anger, immigration and social acceptance. She calls it "a more political record than any that I've done."
"It's really a response to the political climate in America in 2016 and seeing for myself as a citizen all of this corruption was surfacing and people abusing their power, and it made me mad as a citizen ... I certainly engaged in that way by becoming more active by calling my representatives and circulating petitions, but I also thought [that] here I have this platform for creating music and expressing my dismay."
Osborne says she felt it was her responsibility to use her music for more than just setting toes tapping.
"I have to say, the thing I really began to realize is that music has a very important job to do right now because we do live in this world so polarized and we do live in a time where we've cordoned ourselves off in our respective tribes and very much alienated ourselves from each other," Osborne says. "I feel like music is one of the few arenas where people can come together not as political party members but just as fellow human beings. For me, that's the real power of it."
The songs on Trouble and Strife aren't about preaching views to her listeners, she says.
"It's just about reaching out to the people in my life and letting them know no matter what happens in the world, we're gonna be there for them, and the songs are about retaining that sense of joy of being alive because we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by all the negativity in the world, and that's no good to anybody," Osborne says. "Music is a tool to help us connect to that joyful energy and positive energy, and that's our birthright and we should claim that."
Osborne says she'll perform a mix of songs from both albums with a few surprises at her Kessler show.
"A lot of the show becomes about, for me, the sound and feeling that's part of the room, and at The Kessler, it always feel like this is a very comfortable space," she says. "The audience and the way everybody is spread around, it's a comfortable space and an intimate thing, particularly if I'm playing brand new songs. I want them to feel the impact these songs are having on human beings I feel in front of me, and at The Kessler you get the feeling in a very real and visceral way."
Joan Osborne, with special guest Remy Reilly takes the stage at 8 p.m. Tuesday at The Kessler Theater. Tickets start at $38.
