For decades, the statuesque voice of Mary Stokes, alongside her life/musical partner and harmonica player Brian Palm, has been a constant anchor on the blues front. As the title of her debut CD Ten Years On The Road in 1997 indicated, her presence has offered reassurance to blues fans and musicians alike.
“The blues scene here is as strong as it’s ever been, especially in Dublin,” she declares. “It’s heartening to see new developments like the Slattery’s venue in Rathmines doing really well, and there’s the new Café Bleu in Capel Street, and I think our own residency in Bruxelles off Grafton Street has been an important factor too.”
That Bruxelles gig is now in its 10th year, enabling Mary to perform to a constant stream of visitors to Ireland as well as the band’s regular Irish fans. How come it's been so successful?
“Having that regular gig enables us to develop musically,” she says. “We can write and rehearse original songs and we have an immediate forum to try them out alongside other great blues songs. But it's a special place to play. The staff and management are really committed. Dave Egan has been so supportive.”
Is there not a danger that playing the same venue every week can blunt the edge for even the sharpest musician? Not if you go about the task in the right way.
“We work really hard to make each gig fresh, doing a lot of preparation beforehand,” she explains. “We try to bring new energy and passion to each gig, so every week is an event and we get new people in all the time, especially from overseas. Recently we had two attractive women from Rhode Island who sat right up the front, so that kept the boys in the band happy! But they’d had a terrible time getting to Ireland and they told us afterwards that they found the gig really energising. But we’re constantly trying to be more creative with our blues, and to get that kind of reaction is hugely rewarding, particularly now that about half of the songs in our set are originals.”
With Dr Stokes having given the Irish blues scene a clean bill of health, what other acts on the local front does she herself enjoy listening to?
“Hot Chicken are really good. They’re Dublin-based guys and what they do reminds me of the kind of raw energy Dr Feelgood had. I also like The Mosquitos.”
I offer the observation that – a bit like the trad scene – the Irish blues community seems to be far more riven with dissent than Irish rock, with people in different factions griping about each other.
“It’s probably true,” she concedes. “I think some people here have a difficulty having any kind of vision that goes beyond the local. The problem might stem from the fact that a lot of attention focuses on a small number of venues and there’s intense rivalry for gigs in those venues. I think we need to be looking at the bigger picture, at the role of Irish blues musicians in the wider world, instead of squabbling over some trivial issue. It may actually be a bit of an Irish thing. But with The Mary Stokes Band, we’ve tried to see ourselves as part of a bigger stage. Ireland is important to me as the place I come from, but I want to take that uniqueness to the world out there.”
She's been doing that successfully over the past few years in particular, gigging regularly in Belgium, Germany, Spain, Holland and the USA.
"It's great to play in places where there are no preconceptions," she says. "You roll into town, deliver your music with every ounce of passion you have to draw on – because, more than anything else, that's what it's about for a working musician, especially playing the blues. Every performance is unique. And when the crowd goes wild, there's a kind of shared ecstasy. We were doing a gig in Girona recently and there was one of those moments – and you realise just how universal the language of the blues is and what a privilege it is to be in a position, as a singer, to stir these extraordinary emotions in people.
"For me, live performance is about communicating emotion and energy, empathising with people, and expressing the common sense of humanity and experience that runs through the blues. The aim is for both the audience and the musicians to leave the gigs energised and emotionally satisfied. But it's interesting, in that international audiences seem to take a particular interest in the high standard of the musicianship, along with the passion, vitality and humour that we bring to performances."
The blues on radio is another issue she feels strongly about. With the dumping of John Kelly’s Mystery Train as a regular outlet for the blues, does Irish radio offer anything to acts like Stokes in an age of websites and downloads. Her response is passionate.
“The removal of John Kelly is a real shame, but it’s all part of a generally negative attitude to the arts on radio anyway. In general, radio stations play what the big record companies churn out, and record companies are only interested in selling product to a mass market, so niche music like the blues gets squeezed out and everybody assumes that nobody’s interested. But that’s not true.”
In fact, she argues, the current system of tracking album sales for the charts also marginalises acts like The Mary Stokes Band and compounds the problem with radio.
“We sell lots of albums at gigs,” she points out. “If those sales were calculated into the system we’d have qualified for platinum discs by now. But sales at gigs and through websites don’t count, so the impression is given that nobody buys blues records. Well, they do.”
Stokes has written a new song, ‘Blues For New Orleans’, which she's itching to record.
“Touring the USA, we’ve been through New Orleans and popped into lots of places like Bruxelles there. I’ve been really touched by its music, and people like Louisiana Red and Byther Smith. We got to know Fats Domino very well too. So we wrote the song as a tribute to the city after the hurricane. A version of it went out on a Red Cross website and people picked up on it. When we’ve done it live, you get pin-drop silence.”
As a globe-trotting blues performer who’s just back from Spain and tours the US next month, Stokes has over the years shared stages with a veritable encyclopedia of blues legends, including John Lee Hooker, BB King, Bo Diddley, Buddy Guy, Taj Mahal, Canned Heat, Lowell Fulson and Carey Bell. Is there one who stands out as extra special?
“If somebody had told me 20 years ago that not only would I perform with a blues legend like Taj Mahal but actually become a close friend, I would not have believed them,” she says. “I’m also rather proud of the fact that I introduced Booker T of the MGs to him! They’d never met before. Apart from Taj, who’s a real genius of the blues and an incredibly nice man, I have very fond memories of working with John Lee Hooker and Carey Bell too.”
Is there anyone else out that she's hankering to play with? “I suppose I haven’t played with as many blues women as I’d have liked, so Bonnie Raitt is one. And I’d love to perform with Van Morrison. I know Van well. In fact himself, John Lee Hooker and myself were all born under the same star sign, Virgo.”