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"The unreleased stuff came about because of fan demand," Cole says.
"With e-mail, I get a lot of comment from fans.... A lot of them are die-hard fans who just want their hands on more stuff from that period."
That was the 1989-93 period in which Holly Cole and her bandmates, pianist Aaron Davis and bassist David Piltch, released five top-selling albums of subtle and soulful jazzy pop.
Cole branched out on her own in 1997 into more mainstream pop with Dark Dear Heart.
But because of fan demand and a desire by Cole to close the trio chapter of her career, the band released Treasure, a collection of hits and previously unreleased tracks.
"I went back and there was all this stuff," the pleasantly chatty Cole says on the phone from her home in Toronto.
"There's way more stuff than there's on Treasure that I had completely forgotten about. Some of it sounded really great and I thought it would be really interesting to put this together with some other stuff."
Cole's interpretation of I Can See Clearly Now, Trust in Me, and Cry (If You Want To) are included, along with great unreleased versions of Elvis Costello's Alison, the Gershwin tune The Man I Love and the showstopper Tea for Two.
Cole says Tea for Two, which has become live show fave, is one of the two new songs recorded for the album.
"I'm very much a live artist and people know when they come to my concerts that I enjoy saving things for live shows and they know they're not gonna hear stuff that's on record or they're not gonna hear it the same way."
The collection is available in record stores only until Jan. 31, Cole says, making it a truly limited edition disc.
"Some of the music has already been released so I don't want to trick people into thinking it's a brand new record or something, because it isn't," she says.
Most of Cole's Canadian fans will have a chance to see her live again this month as she begins her Holly Cole Holiday Celebration tour, playing with each city's symphony.
The Canadian portion of the tour begins tonight at Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall.
There's no Halifax date scheduled.
The idea began with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra asking Cole to do a few holiday shows with them, she says.
Then Edmonton found out and asked her to go there, as well as Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Montreal.
"And Halifax didn't say, 'Can you come?'" Cole says.
It was disappointing for a Maritime girl like Cole, who was raised in Halifax and whose father and grandparents still live here.
"It's a shame about Symphony Nova Scotia. I wish we could have come."
Symphony Nova Scotia's managing director says they did discuss a Christmas show with Cole's people, but the timing wasn't right.
"There was a problem with dates for us," Barbara Richman said Wednesday.
But both the symphony and Cole are interested in getting together in the next year or so.
"We have great interest in doing a show with Holly and we're exploring that," Richman said.
That's a good thing, because Cole is not an artist who shrinks from the stage.
"It's why I do what I do," she says.
"It's how I grew up as a musician really was playing live and how I learned to do what I do."
Sharing a stage occasionally with Sarah McLachlan and Bonnie Raitt doesn't hurt either.
That happened this past summer when Cole, who is "such a huge fan" of Raitt's, was playing the second stage for a few weeks of McLachlan's Lilith Fair.
She found out Raitt was on the roster and hoped she'd be on the same tour.
"I passed her in the hall and I was thinking I should go talk to her and then I thought, 'No, don't go talk to her, she's probably being bugged by everybody.' She stopped and she goes, 'Holly.' And I go, 'Yes.'
"And she says, 'Oh I'm so glad you're here. I heard you might be on this tour and I'm one of your biggest fans.'"
So Raitt asked her to sing John Prine's Angel from Montgomery with her and McLachlan that night during Raitt's set.
"And she asked me to come sing it with her and Sarah every night," Cole says.
"It was so fantastic. It was really exciting. And (Raitt) played Skydome a couple of weeks ago and she called me up and asked me if I could come down and sing Angel from Montgomery. So that was very cool."
She's hoping to do a Raitt/Cole collaboration in the next year or so, though nothing's been decided.
As for another Holly Cole Trio collaboration, Cole says that's pretty much out of the question.
"I'm not interested at this point in my life in going back to the trio format," she says.
"Certainly the next record is going to be an offshoot of the direction of Dark Dear Heart. I still love (the trio format). But you move on and you grow and you evolve."