ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF THE ROAD

Things are looking rosy for Mary Coughlan these days, even if this time last year they weren’t even a watery shade of pink. Muted blue was more the colour of the season. Not only had she been dropped by Warners, but, when she wanted to record a live album for the Demon label, she found that using any of her previously recorded songs would entail paying her former company substantial royalties.

She worked her way out of that particular difficulty by recording a batch of new songs, and since the release of Love For Sale last summer, has been gigging incessantly and becoming more and more optimistic, while cramming so much into her time that it makes someone like me, who can’t make the journey from the television to the fridge unless I have a nice lie down afterwards, exhausted just to listen to it.

“We’ve been to America, we toured for three weeks, gigging around everywhere from up near Niagara Falls all the way down to New Orleans. Neil Jordan was down there making Interview With a Vampire so we stayed with him. I lounged by the swimming pool and took three days off, then I went to Santa Barbara for my holidays with Frank (her partner) and Claire (her youngest daughter). Then I came back and was gigging up until Christmas. Just now I’ve come back from England and Scotland. And I was in Canada as well. I’ve just been working all the time really.

“I am more optimistic, I don’t know why,” she concedes. “It’s just that so much is happening. I’ve been asked to do the soundtrack for a movie as well, an adult cartoon. There seems to be kind of a new interest in me.

“Ireland was never that wild about me I don’t think, for some peculiar reason,” she laughs. “I think Irish people who buy records tend to be more middle of the road orientated. When you see what stays in the charts, Neil Diamond for twenty weeks, and A Woman’s Heart, I think it’s more tame than most of the stuff that I do. And years ago there was a lot more theatrics to the concerts, with mime, and dancers and clowns and things. There used to be a lot of antics, which they just love on the continent, but never got into here.”

Mary Coughlan will be playing a Midnight At The Olympia on February 4th, a venue she has played countless times over the years. She admits to having been disheartened by the place at one stage in her career, and by the ordeal of trying to captivate “1,200 sloshed people at 1 o’clock in the morning. . .”

“First I loved doing those shows and then I got really sick of them because some of the songs we were doing were the kind you needed to shut up and listen to,” she explains. “But the last time I was there was to see Jools Holland, and Jesus the crowd were great. I suppose people just can’t afford to get completely out of their ear and then go and fall down in the Olympia any more. They go to what they want to hear.

“The gig now is a bit of everything. A lot of the songs are from Love For Sale. We’re doing another Olympia gig on March 11th – we’re going into rehearsals for a week after the first Olympia – so for the second Olympia I should be bringing in a lot of the older stuff which is on the Best Of . . . like ‘The Ice Cream Man’ and ‘Ancient Rain’. We’re going to rework some of them and bring them back into the gigs, because people are always asking for them.”

Isn’t she secretly sick and tired of some of those songs?

“Jesus no!” she replies. “I sing songs I really like, that’s the only reason I sing them and I never get fed up of singing anything I’ve done. It’ll be nice to do some real old ones again like ‘Nobody’s Business’ from the first album.”

The Best Of referred to is a new compilation that Warners have now “taken it upon themselves,” as Mary puts it, to release. Entitled Love Me Or Leave Me, it will be released on Valentine’s Day, even though the singer herself had no part in the project.

“It was within their rights to do it, and they decided that now was the time,” she says simply. Meanwhile, a follow up to Love For Sale is likely to surface around the end of the year. “Demon was a one-album deal. They have an option to do another one but I can go elsewhere as well. I’ve had a bit of interest from a fairly large American label, and now I’m just taking my time to see what I want to do. I’ve been gathering songs from Johnny Mulhern, Jimmy McCarthy and all the regulars, and Mark Nevin (formerly of Fairground Attraction) might get involved.”

One of the tracks on Love For Sale was co-written by Mary, but it’s unlikely that any more original compositions will appear in the near future.

“I did the one song and I wrote a couple of songs after that, but I’ve no confidence in them,” she admits with a laugh. “I feel very embarrassed by them to be honest, but you never know, maybe something will find its way onto another album. When I’m away, sitting on my own in the room, I tend to write when I can’t sleep. I suppose it’s just something I have to learn how to do. People say it’s a craft, but it’s not my craft. I’m happy enough to sing other people’s songs. If I thought there was someting good enough I’d do it but not just for the sake of writing something and having it on album. It would have to be something very good to escape the cringe factor.”

Before the new album gets off the ground, there will of course be more touring. Lots of it.

“I’m doing loads of work around Europe for March and April and then we’re back to England for a fifteen date tour in May, and I’m doing a lot of festivals this summer, in Scandinavia and Europe. And I’ll be going back to Canada. And I want to spend time with the family . . .” she continues.

Oh, find me a comfy sofa, someone, and be quick about it.

• Mary Coughlan plays Midnight At The Olympia on February 4th