Irish singer Imelda May achieved stateside recognition with her stand-out performance at this year’s Grammy Awards. Photo courtesy of Verve Music Group.
Break out the pomade and get your cat clothes on because one of Ireland’s best-kept secrets is heading stateside…and her name is Imelda May. Up until last year, the 35-year-old, Dublin-born chanteuse spent most of her time wowing crowds in the UK and Irish undergrounds with her firebrand blend of soulful vocals and American rockabilly swagger. And while the sound has remained the same, her music scene stature surely has not.
After a chance encounter with British pianist and chat show host Jools Holland in 2008, her second self-released album, “Love Tattoo,” got picked up by prestigious label, Verve Records — only to promptly shoot to number one on the Irish charts and earn May supporting slots alongside the likes of Van Morrison, Chuck Berry and The Pogues’ Shane MacGowan.
Fresh off a knockout tribute to late guitar virtuoso Les Paul with Jeff Beck at the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, May and her four-piece backing band will undertake their first cross-country US tour this March as they open for multiplatinum jazz-pop pianist, Jamie Cullum.
Now in the midst of recording her follow-up to “Love Tattoo,” May spoke to On Tap the night before reteaming with Beck (and some other guy named Eric Clapton) for a sold-out show at London’s O2 Arena to talk about her uncompromising path to success and the raw, primal power of old fashioned rock ‘n roll.
On Tap: Your first major introduction to the American public was your performance with Jeff Beck at this year’s Grammy Awards — an auspicious debut to say the least. What was that experience like behind the scenes?
Imelda May: It was crazy, absolutely crazy. I really enjoyed myself, but it was definitely an experience. The performance was all of two and a half minutes, but the whole day was built around that…rehearsal with Jeff, then dress rehearsals and then they tell you you’ve got two minutes to get ready. I managed to swing my hair up and throw my make-up on as soon as I could. It was a mad, crazy day, but the actual highlight for me was performing because obviously that’s what I love doing most — but because it was so short, I was just getting into it when I had to leave.
OT: Playing the Grammys is a major achievement for any act, but you’ve had quite a few major achievements over the past year or so — signing with a major label, playing your first arena shows and winning a slew of awards along the way. Has your life changed dramatically in the last 12 months and how so?
IM: It has changed a lot, actually, in that I’m always out and about. It’s just gone crazy with gigs and I’m very, very busy. But this last year has been very exciting and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve played all kinds of gigs and got to travel more, but I’ve also been trying to record my next album as well in the middle of all that. Still, it’s fantastic. I’ve gotten to open for Chuck Berry in New York and play with Jeff at the Royal Albert Hall and then the Grammys. It’s just been wild.
May recently performed at a sold-out show at London’s O2 Arena featuring Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.
OT: You’ve talked about rockabilly, jazz and the blues being fixtures of your household growing up, but when did you first decide to start singing and playing out?
IM: I started very young…[but] it was my brother-in-law that got me singing. I’d been singing for a long time with local kids and drama groups in The Liberties [area of Dublin], but he got me to sing a blues song he’d written for an Irish singer named Mary Stokes. He seemed to love what I’d done, so he took me into an underground blues club when I was about 17. The guitarist called me up to sing and I never really left after that.
I went down regularly to these clubs and the owners would kind of turn a blind eye to let me in. I’d be singing with all these old blues guys and playing all night long. I learned a lot from some fantastic, fantastic musicians…One night, Ronnie Wood [of the Faces and Rolling Stones] jumped up on stage while we were playing and I got a great kick out of that. And [former Smiths’ guitarist] Johnny Marr too, who’s a brilliant blues harmonica player…I learned from some great musicians at a very early age. It was the best introduction to music that I ever could have gotten.
OT: “Love Tattoo” is a true rarity — a self-recorded, self-produced record that’s now managed to go double platinum in your native country. Were your expectations that lofty when you first put it out?
IM: I didn’t have expectations for at it all, by which I mean I wasn’t making it to get a record deal. I already talked to a couple of record companies before…and was turned down by them all. It didn’t bother me too much because I’d been in the music business for a long time without any backers, so it was nothing new for me. I just carried on and did what I’d always done.
The only thing was I didn’t have any money to make “Love Tattoo,” but I had been recording with other people for a long time…and was really itching to get my own stuff out. Around that time, Darrel [Higham, Imelda’s husband, bandmate and a prolific rockabilly artist in his own right] and his friend had built a studio, literally with their own hands. I was delighted to have a studio at hand and just got in there. I couldn’t afford a sound engineer, so we did it ourselves. I begged and borrowed a lot of money to be able to pay the musicians, so it was that kind of album…and basically just sold it at gigs.
On the back of that, I got some support gigs and more people heard it. Then, I was asked to support Jools Holland — a fantastic musician over here in England and a very knowledgeable man about music who, of course, also has his own TV show. Once we opened for him, he invited us onto his show…and we’d never had that kind of support from someone with so much clout. The record companies came back, asked us if we wanted to sign…and it just took off from there. “Love Tattoo” kind of started all this off in its own small way…[although the record label] thought it might be a better to sell it in shops rather out of a suitcase. [Laughs]
OT: Even with the endorsement of British media icons, like Holland, and later Beck, was there ever any skepticism from corporate that a rockabilly and vocal jazz-based record could move units?
IM: When I first talked to record companies, they told me you can’t mix music like this. You have to pick one or the other. I was also told by many people to get rid of the rockabilly because it was the kiss of death. I’m really, really glad that I’m stubborn and ignored everybody and carried on. It meant that I got to write and perform music that I loved…on my own terms. If I had changed, I might have done well but I would be bloody miserable. I’m glad that I stuck to my guns.
I don’t think they ever expected [“Love Tattoo”] to do as well as it did because, obviously, we’d just recorded it in a converted shed and I’d produced it myself…It’s a given a lot of hope to normal bands that are just gigging away and recording their own stuff.
OT: While your music is certainly rockabilly derived, it doesn’t rely on the genre’s usual tropes. How’d you manage to cultivate a sound that honors that tradition without sounding dated?
IM: I absolutely love rockabilly and it is a predominantly male-oriented type of music. I suppose I love the aggressiveness of it, the excitement of it. It was the punk rock of its day. When you listen to Gene Vincent & The Blue Caps, you can hear The Blue Caps screaming in the background. When I first heard that as a kid, I found that hugely exciting.
But, since I was born in the mid-’70s, I’m going to have all sorts of other influences as well. My parents would play Elvis and Dean Martin…but then I’d hear The Clash, The Pretenders, Blondie and all those really cool bands I listened to growing up. Funny enough, most of the ones I was drawn to – like The Cramps and The Ramones – were influenced by the music of the 1950s anyway…It’s almost as if it gets mixed into your blood and has to come out of you somewhere. That might have given me a different slant and a contemporary twist, I suppose, because I’m living in 2010.
OT: That being said, there’s still a real cross-generational appeal to your music. What do the crowds that turn up to see you look like these days?
IM: We get such a wide mixture of people and I can’t tell you how much I love that. We’ve often commented about it backstage after gigs, especially in the early days. Now it’s more normal — I had one guy in Ireland come up and say it was the first time he’d gone to a gig with his mother. She’s was jumping around, screaming and remembering the old rock and roll days, while he was just getting introduced to it. It was great that they both got the same energy from it…To me, music is music. Whether you’re 18 or 78-years-old, you either like it or you don’t.
Imelda May performs in advance of Jamie Cullum on Sun. March 7 at The 9:30 Club. Tickets are $35. Doors at 8 p.m. WIN TICKETS at ontaponline.com/pages/contest.
The 9:30 Club: 815 V St. NW, DC; 202-265-0930; www.930.com
[googleMap name="9:30 Club" width="770" height="235" mousewheel="false"] 815 V St. NW, DC[/googleMap]
