The sound and the Fure.

Tret Fure talks about how her personal life--including her breakup with Cris Williamson--colors Back Home, her first new solo album in a decade

It's common for singers to point to real-life trials as the inspiration for their songs, but Tret Fure might have wished for a little less grist for the mill. The death of her mother, her own health problems, and the end of her relationship with singer Cris Williamson have forced her to reexamine her life from the ground up, resulting in a new love and her first solo album in 10 years, Back Home.

"Really, a lot of this started for me when my mother died," Fure says. "That was a big transition for me--major--because I was very close to my mother. And around the same time that happened, I was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease. So that was a really heavy year. I started doing a lot of work on myself and who I am and trying to find my own center, my own power."

For those who think of Fure primarily in terms of her relationship with Williamson, her partner of 19 years, the pair's separation may be the most striking result of Fure's soul-searching. Founders of the women's music movement in the 1970's, Williamson and Fure were nominally a duo, but Williamson's greater fame and diva tendencies kept her the focus of their concerts. There never seemed to be quite enough room in the spotlight for Fure to shine.

"In the past two years I just felt I needed to do my music, my work, and a lot of my energy was spent managing Cris's and my work," Fure says. "It just got hard to keep so much of the focus on Cris, who's a very powerful person and brilliant, but I was starting to feel a little lost in her brilliance and needed to find my own."

That process is the inspiration for Back Home. Two of its songs were written by Fure and Williamson together, but Fure wrote the rest during the past year and a half, in the wake of the breakup. Many of them, such as "Willing" and "Coming Home," reflect Fure's straggle to find her center.

"Everything that's mine on there has come out of my heart and out of this change, this transition," Fure says. "When I left [Williamson] in January of last year, I just had an emotional outpouring."

The separation has brought Fure financial stresses as well as emotional ones. Suddenly she needed to line up concerts without Williamson's better-known name as a draw. She also gambled on what became a profitable side venture--a clothing line called Tomboy Girl. Fortunately, she's reduced her medical bills: The combination of alternative and mainstream treatments she's tried for her eye problems has stabilized her vision.

Fure's new strength comes through in her singing, which is deeper and more resonant than it used to be. She credits Williamson with helping her build her voice, enabling her to stand up to the demands of performing solo.

"I'm having to carry the whole show and sing a lot more, which is hard on your voice," she says. "But Cris, being a great teacher, taught me a lot about singing properly. I have an elasticity I never had before that's really sweet to have."

Today, Fure, who just turned 50, surveys her life with a sense of satisfaction. She's become romantically involved with a friend of several years' standing and has a full roster of concerts lined up for the coming months. A longtime West Coast dweller, she recently moved to Madison, Wis., to be closer to her family.

"You go along in your life sometimes and you think you're perfectly happy. And something will happen to make you realize that there is a hitch somewhere--there is something that's not quite set," she says. "Now I really feel like I'm coming into my own and being seen for myself--not as `Cris and Tret' but as myself."

Get more information on Tret Fure and the Butchies at www.advocate.com

Lehoczky writes regularly for the Chicago Tribune and Newsday.