Midnight Pumpkin

Like a father nervously awaiting his daughter's return from her first date, the smitten, fiftysomething überfan paces around the Continental Club, leaning on a cane. Occasionally, he ventures onto the sidewalk on Main Street. She's running a bit late, and the concern is etched across his bearded face as he strides past a writer, who also waits.

He bears a special gift for the woman he adores. The small bronze dolphin is emblematic of her free spirit. It also represents Swim Away, the title of her debut CD.

His frustration is palpable when, shortly after she arrives a little less than two hours before her gig, he sees her walk away from the club with another man. She is barefoot, having left her shoes at home in Austin. So she concentrates on the sidewalk, picking her way slowly. He calls out, hoping he might join them. She turns her head, says she's sorry, and she'll speak to him later. Toni Price resumes walking, and looks up at me. "He's a nice man," she says. Judging by some of the other infatuated stares directed at her that night, dolphin dude better get in line.

Sipping on an iced tea in a nearby restaurant, the diminutive singer exudes a tangible charisma while she speaks about her art, which has reached a more proficient, personal and sensual level with the release of her fifth album, Midnight Pumpkin. Up close, those dreamy, bedroom eyes can have a riveting effect. It's easy to see why the women who crowd her show want to be her, and why the men -- and some women -- want to be with her. As one of her Nashville friends says of Price, "She's got more sex appeal per square inch than any woman I know."

Though in charge of her career -- she even books her own gigs -- Price seems genuinely immune to music business bullshit. Mention "making it big," and she taps into buried stores of anger, a reminder of a place she would rather forget. Nashville, where she grew up, was full of musicians, and yet music itself didn't seem to matter. Inspired by Bonnie Raitt, Price soldiered on, but she felt she was leading an army of one.

"For someone to say that they could make it in Nashville is nothing to envy," she says. "That means they either played the game or slept with so-and-so, and when they get there, they owe somebody something. On the other end of it, I couldn't even rent a house, because I was musician trash." While Austin has its own fractious musical hierarchy, Price felt comfortable with the city when she arrived there in 1989 during South by Southwest.

Some 12 years later, Price says her life is in balance. Her voice has improved; she has more control over her range and her breathing. Midnight Pumpkin bears the fruit of this maturity, showcasing her talents for tearing it up and dripping honey. Her uncanny ability to root out great, obscure songs has long since put to shame elitist notions that she couldn't make it as a mere interpreter. "I've got to experience a song in my heart and my mind at the same time for it to be right for me," she explains. "Nobody else really knows exactly what a Toni Price song is. If it makes me happy, I'll keep it around."

One fellow who keeps Price happy is Gwil Owen, whom she met in 1986. "Meeting him was a lightning-bolt connection," she says of the Nashville songwriter. Owen is Price's Bernie Taupin; he wrote the majority of songs for her first couple of albums, and contributed two of the best cuts to Midnight Pumpkin, the swampy rockers "Something in the Water" and the Dave Olney co-write "Measure for Measure."

Torch songs from the 1930s have been appearing more and more lately in her repertory. "The romantic singers of the early 1930s really fascinate me…It's like this whole new world," she says. The sweet simplicity of two songs on Midnight Pumpkin, "The Right Kind of Man" and "We Just Couldn't Say Goodbye," recorded by Annette Hanshaw some 70 years ago, fit not only Price's tender voice, but also her laid-back vibe. For Price, it's the chi of the song that matters, not the time signature.

"I'm certainly a romantic. I could live back [in the '30s] when singing music seemed so expressive. I don't know," she says, leaning across the table. "I just have a feeling that people were more sensitive, like me. People who could appreciate romance in its simplest state, without some wicked thing coming along to ruin [it]."

Price wants her audience to feel the love, so to speak. And there's certainly nothing really retro about a singer whose voice and stage presence push listeners' emotional buttons. Price's fans are generally so in tune with her music that the first guitar riff sets bodies swaying. It's like a scaled-down Phish concert, minus the body odor.

"I like to see people be free with their emotions at my show," Price says, as she sits straight-backed and extends her arms overhead, a movement that mimics the sultry pose on the cover of Hey, her second album. "In everyday life we just can't go like this," she says, a glistening smile on her face while her arms remain outstretched. "We have to be so hunched over, not allowed to look at other people's eyes. I want my music to fill people with movement."