She Had Us at Hello

SHERYL CROW HAD US AT “HELLO.” A former elementary-school music teacher and onetime backup singer for Michael Jackson, Crow has consistently charmed and challenged us since her hugely successful 1993 debut record, Tuesday Night Music Club. Steeped in the ’70s California rock ethos—but just hip and edgy enough to appeal to the download generation—Crow has done it the hard way in the music biz.

With little more than ambition and an acoustic guitar, Crow moved 20 years ago from the relatively rural confines of St. Louis to Los Angeles, where she worked as a waitress while shopping her voice and songs around town. Eventually she landed a gig singing in TV commercials, including a memorable McDonald’s jingle, and her biggest break came when she was hired by Jackson to sing on his worldwide “Bad” tour.

Once you’ve been pegged as a backup, it’s virtually impossible to make the jump to lead singer, but Crow did it with perseverance and pure talent. While her voice isn’t particularly powerful, it does possess great warmth, beauty and understanding. And her songs are smart, well-crafted and impossibly catchy, equal parts dorm-room introspection (“Leaving Las Vegas”) and beach-party joie de vivre (“Soak Up the Sun”). If a nine-time Grammy winner can still be called an underrated songwriter, Crow is. Her records evoke everything from Joni Mitchell’s Blue to the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers. But she has the heart of an Eagle.

“The Eagles provided the soundtrack to so many of my summers,” Crow wrote in a Rolling Stone magazine tribute to her favorite band. “When I sang backup for Don Henley in the early ’90s, it was a surreal experience supplying vocals every night to Eagles songs that were such a part of my musical foundation. I remember on a long cross-country family trip as a kid, driving across the Texas desert at night, the haunting opening strains of ‘Hotel California’ came on the radio. I immediately assumed my father would shut the radio off. But he didn’t. He couldn’t resist it any more than I could.”

And we can’t resist Crow, whose current summer/fall tour is a triumphant return after a very rocky start to 2006. First came the emotional, highly publicized February breakup with bicycle legend Lance Armstrong, which she recently called “devastating.” Then, just a few weeks later, the stunning diagnosis of stage-one breast cancer, for which she received radiation treatments five days a week for six weeks.

Cancer-free now, and eager to get back on stage, Crow has apparently come to terms with her split from fellow cancer survivor Armstrong, with whom she’s remained friends and still speaks of in glowing terms. To no one’s surprise, Crow has become an outspoken advocate for cancer research. A portion of every ticket sold on the current tour benefits the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Co-headliner on the tour is John Mayer, whose first two records were introspective, slightly quirky Triple A (adult album alternative) fodder. Mayer, an occasionally pretentious but soulful singer and brilliant lead guitarist, recently formed the bluesy John Mayer Trio, a sort of latter-day Cream. On this tour, he’ll be mixing newer material with his pop-rock hits, which include “Daughters,” a starkly beautiful, moving song and the deserved Grammy winner as Song of the Year two years ago.

Between them, Crow and Mayer have sold 33 million albums and won 12 Grammys. But somehow, neither feels like a sellout. They both still sing and write with hearts on their sleeves, and both can almost simultaneously make you want to chug a beer and weep. It should be an amazing night of music from two artists who stand out brightly amid the dark wasteland of kitschy rockers, tuneless rappers and obnoxious American Idol poppers.

Crow and Mayer take the Embarcadero Marina stage on September 26. 619-220-TIXS; viejasentertainment.com.

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