About a year after releasing her autobiography, Delta Lady, Rita Coolidge is back with a new album, Safe in the Arms of Time.
The album title is ironic since Coolidge doesn't seem overly concerned with time. Almost 50 years into her career, she's still singing, recording, touring and smiling all the while. Coolidge reveals to Q104.3 New York's "Out of the Box" with Jonathan Clarke that her secret to longevity is simple: "happiness," she says.
And that's about all she's worried about these days. Coolidge recently moved from her longtime home in California to her home state of Florida, in part so she could watch things grow again.
"I bought a lovely house down there in Tallahassee up on a lake and it's just absolutely beautiful," she says. "You know, it's alive. I lived in California for so long, and California...doesn't have a lot of water, so not a lot of things grow unless you spend a fortune watering them."
Growing is just what Coolidge herself has been doing all along. Part of growing is taking risks, after all. And one of the biggest risks for an artist of Coolidge's stature is touring on a new album. She knows most of her audience isn't looking for new music.
"It's been such a journey," she says. "And the years that we spent on this record to finally be able to be on the road with it. I know that people coming to the concerts probably have a little bit of anticipatory anxiety, 'Oh no, she's gonna come and play her new record and what if we don't like it? We want to hear the hits.'"
In April, Coolidge and her band did some shows to "test drive" the new songs. She says it couldn't have gone better.
"The audiences liked the new stuff better than the old stuff, which was fabulous because the record wasn't even out yet," she beams.
Watch the full interview above!
Get all Rita Coolidge's tour dates here.
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Here's the music video for Rita Coolidge's new song "Walking on Water," featuring Keb' Mo':