Back in Black

There's a confident earthiness to Mary Black that's entirely disarming. One of Ireland's most acclaimed performers of the past 25 years, with a string of top-selling albums to her name, she has somehow managed to stay rooted in the real world.

“I've probably always been fairly disciplined,” she explains. “I love touring and playing. I also love to get back to [husband] Joe and the kids at the end of it all. In fact, there was one occasion when I was outside cleaning the windows and this car stopped and the driver looked at me in amazement. He then told me he'd been to a gig of mine at the Albert Hall in London two nights before – and now here I was in a pair of dirty jeans doing the domestic chores!”
Black emerged from the fertile soil of the Irish folk scene, enjoying spells with General Humbert and De Danann before her solo career. Unlike many fast-living folk artists, however, she has never fallen prey to the temptations of alcohol.
“I could party like the best of them and often did,” she says with a laugh, “but it would reach a point where I'd had enough and I'd get up and leave. I had no difficulty with that. It wasn't like I had to battle to tear myself away every time. Besides, if you're the singer fronting a band, you have a certain responsibility to those musicians, as well as the fans who've paid to see you. If you're under the influence, it can be far more obvious out front than if you're just one of the band and the others can cover for you.”
She isn't one for regrets. But she wouldn't have minded a little more international recognition. “I suppose I'd have loved to have been nominated for a Grammy. I've been on albums that have won Grammies. I would have loved one in my own right. Then again, I have to remember that when I started out singing in the mid-'70s, it was for the love of the music and the joy of singing. I never imagined I'd get such a rewarding career out of it. To have lived the kind of life I've had is a real privilege, awards or no awards.”
In the past she's collaborated musically with a galaxy of top names, from Irish acts of the vintage of Maura O'Connell, Dolores Keane and Eleanor McEvoy, to Joan Baez and Emmylou Harris.
“I got a surprise phone call in 1995 from Joan Baez who was putting together a show at the Bottom Line in New York featuring women singers she admired. She wanted me to take part. Having started my career singing songs I'd learned from her, like ‘Donna Donna', this was really exciting. I didn't need much persuading, so myself and my pianist Pat Crowley headed off to New York. When I got to meet her she asked me to sing ‘Carrickfergus', which she loved, or something Irish. I sang ‘Song For Ireland'. I also cheekily asked her if we could do ‘Ring Them Bells' together, which I think is one of Bob Dylan's best songs. We sang it together and it came out on her live album of the same name from those concerts. To be invited personally by Joan to take part was brilliant.”
Speaking of Dylan, her last studio album Full Tide contained two Dylan songs, ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune' and ‘To Make You Feel My Love'. What other international songwriters does she admire? “I tend to focus less on the songwriter than on individual songs. Some songs have a quality that appeals to me and I feel I have to sing then. I've always been an admirer of James Taylor. He's one artist I haven't worked with whom I would like to some day.”
Of course, Black has earned endless kudos for what some might call her maverick stubbornness in singing new songs by relatively-unknown Irish artists.
“I didn't see it that way at all,” she says, “I heard what I thought were great songs by people like the late Noel Brazil, Mick Hanly, Jimmy MacCarthy and so on. I sang them and recorded them because they are beautiful songs and the public obviously agreed. Back then, I was working with Declan Synott. He was very supportive of me singing songs which were fresh and new. Lyrics are important to me, and I found songs that I felt I had an empathy with. We have this great tradition as writers anyway. Even today, the songs I'm often most asked to sing are those written by our own writers. In fact, at The Olympia I'll be singing all the big hits because if I go to a concert myself and the artist leaves out the big ones I always feel disappointed.”
Her last studio album came out in 2005, a lifetime ago given the pace at which the music industry moves nowadays. What are her current recording plans?
“One of the things I loved about Full Tide was that we recorded it mostly live with the engineer Billy Robinson in our house in Kerry. There was no pressure time-wise. We'd work every day until about half five and then go down to our local pub, An Bóthar, for dinner and a few glasses of wine and then back and work for a while, looking out the window at Mount Brandon or the sea. It was so relaxed and un-regimented.”
And now? “Now, I don't feel any driving force pushing me to make new recordings. Before that, I'd always found the process quite pressurized. Then you have to promote the album and worry if it sells and if the record company gets their money back. I'll record when I feel the desire to rather than thinking I have to do a new album because the time has come. What I love most is singing live. I've got a full band lined up for The Olympia gigs, with musicians of the calibre of Richie Buckley on sax, Bill Shanley on guitar, the bassist Nicky Scott, Pat Crowley on keyboards and Liam Bradley on drums. These guys are all experienced heavyweights. They inspire me and bring out the best in me.”
She has written plenty of her own songs. So can we expect an album of Black originals anytime soon?
“I doubt it. There are far too many great songs out there already. I'd really have to achieve a standard that was above that to make an album of originals make sense.”
Mary's daughter, Rose, has already embarked on a solo career and will support the Ma on her Olympia gigs in June. And of course, her son Danny is prominent on the Irish rock scene with The Coronas, with whom he's shortly due to depart for an Australian tour.
Given the enormous changes and difficulties facing the music business at the moment (to which her husband Joe, owner of Dara Records, can attest), did Mary feel in any way inclined to talk them out of the business?
“I know things have changed dramatically since I started out, what with downloads, the fall in record sales and so on. I told both of them what while it can be a really exciting career it's more to do with hard work, talent and maybe a bit of luck. You can't do more than that. They have to follow their own instincts. All I can do is be as supportive as I can.”
You might imagine that, after all these decades in the profession, Black might be a little jaundiced. But no – she still keeps her ears tuned for what's happening.
“I'm not somebody who feels compelled to chase up the latest new releases. Danny often plays me new stuff that he finds, and people send me things too.” She then proceeds to enthuse about the CD Can't Stand Falling Down by Cork singer/songwriter Ricky Lynch. “He's brilliant, and has a similar style to Dylan.”