Her day has Come

Annmarie O’Grady, previously known as A.M. O’Grady, released her debut album, Precious Lines, in 2005. It received a highly favourable review in Hot Press and sporadic airplay for the tasty single ‘That’s Life’. Damien Dempsey, meanwhile, praised her “sweet singing, seductive melodies, chilled out playing,” and REM sidekick Ken Stringfellow said that she “makes soul music, deep, delicate and warm”. Frances Black would go on to cover the title-track from that debut, but sales of the record itself were less than spectacular and O'Grady's label, RMG, severed their alliance. Then along comes Malcolm Burn, who volunteered to produce her follow-up in his own studio in Kingstown in New York. How come?

“I’d heard so much stuff he’d worked on that I really liked, especially Oh Mercy by Bob Dylan, Sinéad Lohan’s second album No Mermaid and recordings he did with Emmylou Harris and Daniel Lanois,” O'Grady explains. “Through my solicitor I’d sent various demos for the first album to Malcolm’s management company in LA but they’d all come back with no’s. But after hearing the album he said ‘yes’. I went over to meet him in March 2006 and he invited me to make what became 24 Hours in his house and studio.”
O’Grady is particularly attracted to the musical atmospherics that are a Burn speciality, a skill he shares with his regular studio partner Lanois.
“I like that layering he does and the approach he takes to recording which is probably quite influenced by Lanois’ technique. He literally sits the band members around in a circle and gets them to play live. I had Wayne Sheehy the drummer and Paul Kelly on fiddle with me. Malcolm brought in Adam Snyder who plays keyboards and electric guitars, and we’d play for hours while Malcolm recorded it all and kept us playing until he felt we had a version of a track recorded that would stick. He then uses that version as the basis for the track. He doesn’t redo the vocal, which is really unusual in producers. His theory is that even if the listeners doesn’t quite know how or why, they can tell if a recording has that live feel or not, and it makes it a warmer listening experience to record this way. It’s not meant to be a technically perfect recording, which can be very soulless, but instead creates a real live musical experience for both the musicians and the listeners.”
The results on 24 Hours speak for themselves, with tracks like the single ‘Alice’, ‘The Beast In You’ and ‘Touching The Sun’ showcasing O'Grady's emotional range.
As for the change from AM to Annmarie – does this herald a trend to record each album under a slight variation of her name? She laughs: “I originally went with the name AM because my nickname is Amo, but I couldn’t use that because a guy who uses that name in New York threatened to sue me and accused me of trying to steal his audience. So I made the transition to AM. But I never got madly into being AM. Some suggested I should go with Grady. But after three years I decided to revert to Annmarie. That’s my name and that’s who I am.”
O’Grady is releasing 24 Hours on her own Nino Records label, with Beaumex taking care of Irish distribution.
“Cathal Tully at Beaumex has been brilliant and very supportive. It’s great to have someone with that much experience in the business putting their faith in you because it helps to realise you’re on the right track. It makes me feel very positive about the album,” she enthuses.
Was O’Grady surprised at how difficult it was to get exposure and build a profile in Ireland?
“I felt at the time of the first album that I was doing okay on the publicity front. However, it didn’t add up to much in terms of sales or income. It’s also possible that moving to New York so soon after the first album meant I wasn’t here to work on my publicity. But I could hardly pass up the chance to work with Malcolm either. But I’m back now, and while I have lots of material for a third album, I have to accept that making records and marketing them is expensive and I want to concentrate on this album and getting my songs out there and gigging as much as I can.”

Annmarie O’Grady’s 24 Hours album is out now on Nino Records