SOLID AS A ROCK

WAVELENGTHS. Different wavelengths. I'm talking serious cerebral collision here. After a rendezvous - in the bar of the Harcourt Hotel on the night of the launch of her latest album - that veered dangerously toward one too many hairpin bends we called it quits, for a while.

Dolores Keane didn't like my line of questioning. I'd come with all the answers she reckoned. I seemed to know more about her music than she did so why was I bothering to meet her?, she asked. We skulked off to our respective corners and let the temperatures cool.

It took a while, a long while, about two months in fact. And now after a daily routine of cold showers and counselling on everything from interpersonal relationships to ego massage I'm back in the lion's den, except this time a neutral venue replaces the scene of our initial contretemps.

I tiptoe across the lobby. Sharp intake of breath. Smile fixed. Hand outstretched in a conciliatory gesture that's do Slobadan Milosovic proud. Let the show begin . . .

A gentle comment on the album, Solid Ground seems opportune. Our own in-house guru on things native, Oliver Sweeney has christened it "a triumph," after the "overblown affair" that was Lion In A Cage.

Adorned with a plethora of gifted ball players (Davy Spillane, The Voice Squad, Emmylou Harris) and running the gamut of songwriting styles from the weeping nostalgia of Guy Clark's 'Emigrant Eyes' to the fragility of Stevie Winwood's 'The Finer Things' and the waltzing regret of John Faulkner's 'Tonight As We Dance' (with its wide-eyed, aghast declaration: "I can't get over you/getting over me"), it's certainly got something for nearly everyone. Is it as she wanted it to be? Is she content that the superb Keane voice is afforded a fair airing?

"Absolutely. I've been spoilt for choice really," she says. "Over the years, I've been singing Dougie MacLean songs and Kieran Halpin songs, Mick Hanley, Donagh Long - they would be the first ones that I would go for, but it doesn't really matter what writers, or where they're from as long as the song has a good content, as long as it's well-written and a nice tune. If I think I can make a good job of it then I'll sing it."

And what has she made of A Woman's Heart, both album and tour being an unexpected runaway success? Playing as part of a female quartet with Mary Black, Maura O'Connell and Eleanor McEvoy must've drawn on a different performance capacity within her. What was it like to experience the audience with such a blockbuster success behind them?

"Brilliant. Doing two shows in the one night. Packing out the houses. It's really nice being out with the girls. It's a lovely release. There's great rapport between everyone. The one question that men who've interviewed me during the Woman's Heart tour have asked me is 'Well, how do you all get on? Are you pulling one another's hair out?', which of course is not the case at all. We all get on really well."

The tour has also allowed Keane the opportunity to play venues which she couldn't countenance playing on her own.

"There'd be a few that I wouldn't have been able to do with my own band but hopefully I will, next year," she ventures. "That's for the future. Nevertheless, I'm delighted with the concerts that I have done with my own band. We've just completed a really good tour of England with great backup from the record company."

Emigration and its repercussions is a sub-ject to which Keane has been drawn again and again, with Clark's 'Emigrant Eyes' throwing a particularly transnational tinge on the phenomenon. Is this the result of the arrival of 1993? Is her gaze shifting towards the hordes in middle Europe now that we're under starter's orders to be one big happy family whether we like it or not?

"It's a topical thing," she admits, "and it's an ongoing thing when you're Irish. We had so many songs in the old tradition that were love songs and emigration songs. And I think that with so many people leaving over the last 10 years with the Morrison visas and the Donnelly visas, it's obvious that it's no different now for the young people, although the world has become a little bit smaller. People left one time, and that was it - they were gone and often they were never seen or heard of again.

"What I loved about the Guy Clark song was the way he talked about 'the colours of Europe', because I think that in Ireland when we talk about emigration, we tend to think that it's only Irish people who emigrate. People leave from so many other countries too, and you can see it in the States with all the different nationalities, and of course they bring all their culture and music with them as well."

Cultural and musical melting pots are not an alien notion to Keane, with even the instrumentation on Solid Ground whispering of a passport that's been more than just around the block. Dobro and cello make strange but comfortable bedfellows.

"The dobro is a beautiful sound," Keane nods. "I think that it's probably something that'll catch on the way the Greek bouzouki did."

And might any of this nudging of the outside of the musical envelope be due to a greater openness on the part of her audience, whose ears, let's face it, are probably more finely tuned than ever before?

She nods in agreement. "I think so, yeah, definitely. Music in Ireland and over the last 10 years has been so much part of everyday life, and as Frances Black said the other day, it's Irish music anyway, whether it be country or rock or jazz or traditional or folk. It's all Irish people who are playing so it's Irish music.

"It's our version of what rock or country or whatever, should be. It's what we produce. It's brilliant and thank God that other countries and other audiences feel the same way!

"People are more aware now, for sure, of the different music that's out there. I think it was never as healthy as it is now. Especially for traditional music, because ten or fifteen years ago people would've thought of it as being really old fashioned. It's really the in-thing now. It's cool man!"

Has travelling influenced Keane herself, apart from her choice and repertoire of music?

"I'm sure that it has," she says. "I know that it has broadened my outlook on life. You can't go to different countries and stand in front of audiences with your eyes closed. And I love meeting people (Well, some people! - S.L.), so that wide experience has to have an influence. Definitely."

Confidence, the ability to walk right up to Expectation and laugh in its face is something else that Dolores Keane reckons she's gained from spreading the net wide.

"I know now and I've proven to myself that I can sing different types of songs, but as well as that I know that I can sing them with conviction. If I wanted to sing a song like Winwood's 'The Finer Things' one time, I would've only done it in a session. I wouldn't ever have dreamt of doing it on stage or recording it - because I was basically known as a traditional singer and I was worried about what the 'traditionalists' would feel about me singing a song like that, but I just had to say to myself one day: 'look, I have to do this for me'.

"If I'm not happy with what I'm doing then I'm not going to produce anything that's worthwhile for anyone else to appreciate. And I'm very happy at the moment both with my personal life and my professional life.

The prominence of her ex-husband, John Faulkner, on Solid Ground attests to a sense of being calm and collected, emotionally. Given the musical couplings that've disintegrated bitterly in the past (Richard and Linda Thompson, Bjorn and Agnetha, Benny and Frida . . .) was she wary of carrying on professionally with John once their personal relationship had dissolved?

"No, it's fine," she insists. "We work together on stage, we play dice on the bus, we drink pints together, we make decisions on the band, this, that and the other. Thank God, we're grand. It's worked out really well but I think that has something to do with the music. The music link was there anyway, and was always very strong.

"I always respected John so much. He's a great writer and a very talented guy. It's just that we found it difficult to live together any more but that hasn't come between us at all."

Now that the album is finished and the touring is beginning all over again, does she have any desires to relocate to a more central base, London maybe?

"No," she says. "This is where I get my inspiration from. I think it'd be very silly for anyone to say to me to make a career decision to move out of the country. Obviously they don't know where I come from or who I am.

"I lived in London for seven years but that was when the place was booming and it was something I wanted to do. Now I don't think there's any other place I'd rather be."