The Crow flies under the radar

Sheryl Crow knew her new life in Tennessee would be very different from her days in Los Angeles when she spotted Faith Hill in a Nashville-area clothing boutique.

It’s not what happened, but what didn’t happen.

“Faith walked in, on her cell phone, nobody around,” Crow says. “There the two of us were, just shopping like normal people, and there’s just something really nice about that. …

“Since I’ve moved here, it’s a completely different picture,” says the 46-year-old singer, who arrived in 2006. “There’s no fascination with celebrity here like there is in Los Angeles. I can live a pretty normal life, and my son can have a pretty normal existence without any paparazzi. …

“In the lowest moment of my life – and I’ve probably not been on the A-list of celebrity, like some of the really big celebrity names in all of those magazines – I couldn’t leave my house in L.A. because of the paparazzi, I mean, everywhere.”

Crow’s move “makes our hip factor go up, our cool factor go up,” says country singer Vince Gill.

When Crow isn’t on the road, she’s usually at her 150-acre College Grove, Tenn., farm with good-natured and curious son Wyatt.

Although she recorded her latest album, “Detours,” in her basement studio, there’s little evidence in the main living areas of her career success – which includes 30 million albums sold and nine Grammys.

“I didn’t ever get into being a recording artist or songwriter because I wanted to be famous,” Crow says. “I wanted to be like what I saw in Rolling Stone magazine – the black-and-white pictures of Joni Mitchell and Linda Ronstadt and people I loved and really admired. It’s really changed since then.”

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, Crow felt a strong pull to live in a rural place, one that was closer to her family. Her sister, Kathy, lives in Nashville, and her parents remain in her hometown of Kennett, Mo.

It’s been two years since Crow underwent a lumpectomy and seven weeks of radiation therapy, and now she’s able to go a day or two without thinking about the cancer.

“I have never been able to even describe the crazy energy that I experienced while I was going through radiation, almost as if I had thousands of hands holding me up through all of that,” she says.

“I believe that those people were praying for me. I’d have people walk up to me wherever I was – people from foreign countries who could barely speak English.”

As she has returned to an environment that’s similar to the one in which she was raised, she hopes to instill the same values in Wyatt that her parents taught her.

“I’m just trying to lead by example, and that for me is the idea of respect; respecting nature and who you are and the people all around you,” she says.

“Hopefully I’m raising him with a sense of security and a strong sense of self. Other than that, (I’ll) just try to be his little protector.”

The birthday bunch

Actor Meinhardt Raabe (Munchkin coroner, “The Wizard of Oz”) is 93. Jazz pianist Horace Silver is 80. Sportscaster Terry Bradshaw is 60. Actor Mark Harmon is 57. Actress Linda Purl is 53. Actor Keanu Reeves is 44. Actress Salma Hayek is 42. Actress Cynthia Watros (“Lost”) is 40. Singer K-Ci (K-Ci and JoJo) is 39. Actor/comedian Katt Williams (“Norbit”) is 35.