Sheryl Crow Lists Her Cross Creek Farm

SELLER: Sheryl Crow
LOCATION: College Grove, TN
SIZE: 10,264 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms
PRICE: $7,500,000

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow seems like a nice lady, a real down to earth gal in a world of narcissistic celebrities and big headed bigwigs. But, like so many other famous folks, Miss Crow seems to have caught a serious case of the real estate fickle.

It was only in September of 2008 that Miss Crow told the people at People magazine that she moved to Nashville, or rather the Nashville area, in order to "be near my roots," her roots being her sister Kathy who lives nearby and her parents who live 3 hours away in her native Missouri. She also told the people at People magazine that she took the "ostentatious southern mansion" and made it cozy and kid friendly by adding dark-wood floors and repainting rooms in neutral shades and decorating with black and white photos of horses, vintage doll heads, oversize animal anatomy posters.

Apparently Miss Crow didn't care to stick by her roots for long because for two days now Your Mama has been receiving scads of kind communiques from some of the thoughtful children down in Nashville, TN letting us know that the nine time Grammy winning pop, rock, folk, and country singing chanteuse has heaved her 150-acre horse farm in the boonies outside of Nashville on the market with an asking price of $7,500,000.

Before we get to the real estate let's have a quick look at Miss Crow's life and career. Iffin Your Mama is telling the truth, and we always do, we'd confess that about the only thing we know about Miss Crow's musical life is that stupid but enormously popular and Grammy winning song of hers All I Wanna Do. No offense Miss Crow because we like you and we're happy that song made you boo-coo bucks, but that namby-pamby song is like nails on the damn chalkboard to Your Mama.

Anyhoo, as a young woman in Mizzuruh, Miss Crow taught music to elementary school children. She started writing ditties for commercials and wound up as a back up singer for Michael damn Jackson on his Bad World Tour in the late 1980s, which was pretty much the tail end of his relevance. Early on in her career she wrote songs that got sung by bigger than life songstresses such as that chest beater Celine Dion and the flame haired Wynonna Judd. Her first album, Tuesday Night Music Club, was released in the early 1990s and earned the kind of butch Miss Crow an impressive three Grammys in 1995, mostly for that song All I Wanna Do.

She made a bunch more records, wrote a lot more songs, collaborated with Stevie Nicks, Mick Jagger and a number of other icons of the music bizness, got engaged to Tour de France stud Lance Armstrong, got unengaged from Tour de France stud Lance Armstrong, was treated for breast cancer, adopted a baby boy named Wyatt, got in a public spat with Karl Rove about global warming, agitated for a lot of other lefty liberal type causes, started a clothing line and made a Christmas album. Have mercy Miss Crow, all that makes Your Mama feel wholly inadequate as we sit in our pajamas sipping on a gin & tonic at 10:30 in the morning trying to remember the damn password for our debit card.

Along the way Miss Crow dated a lot of high profile people including, it has been reported, Anne Heche, Owen Wilson, Kid Rock, Hank Azaria, Ryan Seacrest, John Stamos, John Cusack, Matthew Perry and some hunky restaurant guy from Alabama. Your Mama doesn't have any idea who the single mother gets bizzy with nowadays but we do know she hangs out and vacations with her gal pals Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox.

Listen poodles, the property records on Miss Crow's horse farm down in College Grove, TN are a mite confusing to Your Mama. As best as we can tell, it was shortly after Miss Crow busted up with water waster Lance Armstrong and not long after she finished up her boob cancer treatments that she purchased the first piece of her Tennessee horse farm puzzle paying $2,650,000 for about 50 of her (approximately) 150 acres in April of 2006. This portion of the property appears to be where the main house is situated. The following year, in June of 2007, she shelled out another $1,854,000 for 96 adjacent acres. It also looks like there may have been a couple of significantly smaller amounts paid for additional and small parcels, but don't nobody quote Your Mama on that because, in truth, we're not sure.

Listing information indicates the three-story main house measures in at a sizable 10,254 square feet with a total of 5 bedrooms and 7.5 poopers including Miss Crow's master suite. Miz Crow's bedroom has coffered ceilings, an oddly placed chandelier, a painting of a lonely road hung precariously over the head of the bed and far too close to the ceiling for decorative or slumbering comfort, a couple of seating areas and some kind of disturbing statue of a shirtless man-child wearing a ten gallon cowboy hat. Lo-ward butter sticks, not only would that man-child thing in the corner scare the bejeezis out of us as we rolled over and caught a glimpse of it in the dim and boozy light of the morning, but it's just, well, creepy. Miz Crow's private quarters also include a glammy pooper with a lot of dark wood and glass cabinets, a freestanding trough-like soaking tub, separate shower, double vanities with marble counter top and and a chandelier hung from an odd, square hole in the ceiling.

The hulking and architecturally insignificant mansion has a double height entry, a cozy den with a quartet of club chairs and a flat screen tee-vee mounted above the fireplace, a formal living room with a fireplace flanked by built in shelving for displaying objet d'art and other tchotchke, a formal dining room, and kitchen complex with white cabinetry, black granite counter tops, a couple of wine fridges, a giant work island, a glassy breakfast area, and an family room with vaulted ceilings, and an imposing stacked stone fireplace with book shelves and cabinets for the entertainment equipment on either side. The children will note with disdain and flabbergast the giant fish tank Miss Crow–or somebody–installed on the floor next to the kitchen's work island. With all due respect Miss Crow, but that is just a decorative and design tragedy of jaw dropping and punishable proportions.

There is, according to previous reports, an apartment above the garage and in the garage, instead of cars, there are body torture machines that include something called a StairMaster and a treadmill. Ten thousand square feet in the damn house, a big ol' barn, additional outbuildings, a cute manager's house, an apartment over the garage and Miss Crow's people cain't find a spot for a treadmill in the damn house? There's just something so ugly, undignified and low class about a woman of Miss Crow's stature and wealth working her body in the damn garage.

Anyhoo, Miss Crow installed an extensive recording studio on the lower level that includes a living room with fireplace, several sound studios and a mixing booth or whatever that stuff is called. According to previous reports–okay, we read it on Wikipedia which isn't always the most reliable source–that Miss Crow recorded her entire Detour album here as well as portions of her newest record, the wonderfully alliterative 100 Miles From Memphis.

The property also includes a large swimming pool and spa set away from the house and surrounded by flagstone terracing and vine wrapped pergolas. From here Miss Crow and her guests can contemplate the pastures and hills while sipping gin & tonics and sunning their buns. Since Miss Crow's Cross Creek Farm is, in fact, a horse facility, there are outdoor riding rings, an indoor riding arena, and 14-stall barn with attached office complex, living quarters for, we hope, a beefcake horse trainer in tight Wranglers, and an authentic saloon complete with brass rail and ass uglee bar stools that Miss Crow told the people at People she purchased off Craigslist or Ebay or some other online swap meet place like that.

Miss Crow seems to have a thing for the people at People. Here she allowed them to photograph her in her boo-teek sized closet with her 36 pairs of jeans and 80 pairs of boots and here she let them film her chit-chatting about her farm and her barn. She also allowed The Tenesseean, a local newspaper, to come in and take whole passel of photographs of Cross Creek Farm which y'all can see here.

Prior to moving to her horse farm near Nashville, Miss Crow called Los Angeles home for 20 years. Property records show that in 1998 Miss Crow paid $3,300,000 for a three parcel compound near Runyon Canyon that includes a 5,347 square foot main house with 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms, a second house with 3,335 square feet and a third house with 1,334 square feet. It's really a magnificent piece of property with a swimming pool complex connected to the main house by a bridge over the driveway and numerous paths that wind up, down and around the property that is dotted with palapa huts.

Records also show that in January of 2003 Miss Crow spent $1,000,000 for a 3,529 square foot house with 4 bedrooms and 3.5 poopers in Santa Rosa Beach, FL but we suspect this might actually be a little gulf front getaway for her parents. But then again, we don't know a butterfly chair from pine tree so really we have no idea who uses or does not use that house.

It'll be interesting to see where Miss Crow decamps. Will she head back to her west coast compound? Find something new in or near Nashville? Hide out in Santa Rosa, FL? Or does she have her eye on some new spot? Maybe Aspen? Or somewhere in Mizzuruh?

photos: Jeanne Reasonover / The Tennessean