The song titles aren’t quite as suggestive as on past albums and the wild blonde streak in her trademark quiff is long gone, but Irish singer-songwriter Imelda May remains a true-blue crusader who’ll stand up for the things she loves.
If variations of a famous quote sometimes attributed to Satchel Paige and Mark Twain but widely credited to William Purkey became words to live by, May would definitely choose this one:
”You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching / Love like you'll never be hurt / Sing like there's nobody listening / And live like it's heaven on earth.”
“You just have to do that in life sometimes and not care what anyone thinks,” an animated May said after reciting part of Purkey’s passage during a phone interview on March 6 from New York. She was in the middle of a flurry of promotion for the April 7 release of Life. Love. Flesh. Blood, her fifth studio album but first since 2014.
The context of the conversation involved May’s keen ability to pump up music buffs who preferred to keep their fannies in the seats while the dynamic diva of Dublin candidly pointed out that she and her quartet were “rocking our asses off.”
Introduced by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper on a late afternoon at the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in August 2014, May asked the witness to refresh her memory about the series of events that followed, when she gently chided the audience.
Whatever her intention was at the time, it worked, May was told.
“Oh, good,” she replied. “I’d never scold an audience. I wouldn’t tell them off because I think people are allowed to feel what they want. You know sometimes from the stage, obviously, I have a different view and different perspective from people in the audience. And often I see people really wanting to move and are afraid to be the first one. They want to move and dance and you can see them wiggling around in their chairs. I can see lots of them looking behind and thinking, ‘Is anyone else gonna move?’ Sometimes you just have to say one word and it gives people almost the permission, if you like, to let themselves go.”
Fast-forward to 2017, just weeks ahead of another dare-to-be-different scenario, and the fighter in May sounds prepared to put up her dukes to win over other stuck-in-the-past diehards.
“I think as an artist you have to, for me anyway, I have to keep changing,” May said. “I keep learning and pushing myself in different ways. Otherwise, what’s the point? You have to follow your heart I think at all times. I did that when I was writing another album and even when people tell me this type of music or that type of music isn’t gonna do well, I’d always follow my heart. And here I go again.”
The fact that she’s so upfront about her feelings, and will freely speak her mind with no fear of the consequences, gives loyal fans another reason to love her.
“Oh, God. And thank you,” she said, fully aware it was meant to be a compliment. “My ability to not care what people think. (laughs) That’s the rebel in me. I am from the Liberties (in Dublin) after all. We’re known for our rebellions.” (laughs)
Life. Love. Flesh. Blood, her fifth full-length album, on April 7. (Photo by Roger Deckker)
Playing hurt
May’s vivacious spirit is as evident as those hearty howls of delight, despite the momentous life experiences of her recent past that included the 2015 divorce from Darrel Higham, her husband of 18 years.
Higham, an accomplished guitarist who on stage was the “Big Bad Handsome Man” she wrote about on Love Tattoo, one of May’s earliest albums in a career that dates to the 1990s, figures prominently again on Life. Love. Flesh. Blood.
“You fall apart and you pull yourself back together and hopefully you get stronger, hopefully you learn,” said May, who let out a tidal wave of emotions by penning 38 songs before deciding which ones would make the final cut.
“As a writer, then I’m just writing about everything,” she added. “I fell in love again and then I got my heart broken again and I just wrote about everything. … I believe in love and I’m open to it and if you’re open to it sometimes you just go with it. It might not go well but I’d rather that than close myself off and not believe in it anymore. I’m a romantic and hopefully that comes out in my songs.”
Under the influence of mega-producer T Bone Burnett, her music, once rocking and raw enough to unleash the “Wild Woman” within May, will still move you. Now, though, it’s much more emotional than physical, with stylish, polished and heartbreaking numbers such as “Call Me,” “Black Tears,” “Shoulda Been You” and “Leave Me Lonely.”
Aiming high, May said she wanted Burnett to produce, “not thinking that would happen ever,” after hearing fellow artists such as recent duet partner Robert Plant sing his praises.
“And we got on very well,” she said of recording with Burnett at the Village Studios in Los Angeles. “I love what he’s doing. … He’s got a gorgeous, classy velvet sound with a big chunk of kick-ass in there. And I love the strange side he puts to … the dark side of what he does. And that’s kind of how I write, too, with little twists that I thought would match. … He made the album sound exactly how I wanted it to sound and how I had it in my head.”
The elegant “Black Tears,” which includes a pretty Jeff Beck guitar solo that nearly matches the beauty in May’s voice, fulfilled her cathartic urges probably more than any of the album’s other 10 tracks. She said Beck told her the melancholy aspects of the song, cowritten with Angelo Petraglia, “nearly killed him.” Just imagine how it made May feel.
“I wrote that song after a really difficult goodbye and standing on my doorstep and then coming in and I turned and I just saw myself, my face was just streaming with black tears from my mascara running,” she said, pleased to report the lyrics flowed just as easily.
Excited about unleashing these numbers on a live audience when her U.K./Ireland tour begins in May, there’s also some apprehension.
“I have no idea how I’m gonna perform these. … I obviously didn’t think that one through, did I?” May joked. “So I have to talk about these songs and perform them. I’m probably gonna be an absolute emotional wreck by the end of it. You’ll see me in a straightjacket being wheeled off the stage.”
If her sneak preview during “Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny” on New Year’s Eve (shown below) is any indication, there’s no cause for concern.
Regarding Holland, the former Squeeze musician who played piano on “When It’s My Time,” May said, “I hadn’t really performed any of the album live. I was very glad that he asked me. I just went in and sang it with all my heart.”
Despite its heavy dose of sadness, May assures would-be listeners that “it’s not a heartbreak album.” Proof emerges on “When It’s My Time,” the glorious gospel tune this “fallen angel” belts out that deserves to be on every funeral playlist; “Levitate,” written while May was walking her dog and feeling like “I had a new chance at love and life”; and the bouncy “Bad Habit,” where she pokes fun at her expensive tastes.
Mini-May arrives
Still wild at heart, May reveals that she’s finally met her match in the embodiment of a 3-foot, 4 1/2-year-old mini-May.
Calling her daughter “the boss who rules everything you do,” May said Violet Kathleen “looks like her dad but she’s like me. My parents laugh and she’s very strong-willed and she has strong opinions on things. She does her own thing. My parents are laughing, saying, ‘Payback time. Now you know how we felt.’ ”
Violet, who likes all kinds of music from the Specials, Big Boy Bloater and Elvis Costello to Maria Callas and Glenn Miller, not only listens to her mommy’s songs — including “The Girl I Used to Be” — but already is writing her own every night during bath time at their home on the southern coast of England.
“And she tells me to be quiet,” May said with a laugh. “She composes her own and then she tells me that I have to copy her. And I do very obediently.”
One song that May still sings to her daughter was delivered about eight months before Violet arrived. Called “Make a Wish,” proceeds of which May donated to the Make-a-Wish Foundation in Ireland after its November 2011 release, the lullaby often took Violet to dreamland. Her mother’s solitary soothing voice always did the trick — for a while, anyway.
Now that the singer is working on an orchestral arrangement, May offered, “She just turns to me and say, ‘No, Mommy. I don’t just want your voice. I want all of it.’ And so I have to play her the whole orchestra.”
More family ties
Using songwriting like a personal diary, May saved the most intimate account of her life for last on the album. “The Girl I Used to Be,” cowritten with Paul Moak, initially reflects on Imelda May Clabby’s formative years with her “phenomenal” Irish-Catholic family in Dublin.
In the interview, May discussed her “strong-willed” mother who “left school at 12 and went straight to work,” then raised her five children to “pray constantly for everything.”
The Clabby matriarch recently celebrated a big birthday, but won’t divulge her age, according to May, who was born in July 1974 near the Guinness factory in Dublin.
“She says when she dies, on her headstone it’s either going to have her birthday or her death date but not both,” May said with a laugh, adding that her mother was nearly 50 when she delivered Baby Imelda, “So you can do the math.”
In “The Girl I Used to Be,” May wistfully reminisces about “those simple things” she misses. Living in a two-bedroom house with her parents and four older siblings, they still were able to see the world, even if it meant camping out in a tent.
“Dublin really had hard times,” May said. “But sometimes they were the good times, too, funny enough. When you look back, sometimes you don’t realize it at the time.”
May cites an example from her youth, when a U.S. naval ship arrived, and an American gospel choir performed at the local church hall. A woman from the Bronx gave a speech, saying, “We’re really happy to come sing for the underprivileged children of Dublin.”
Among the group looking around, May wondered, “Where are these kids?”
Laughing now at the thought, she added, “And then we realized it was us she was talking to. And we didn’t realize it. It was tough times but I had a really good community and great characters and great neighbors and we didn’t know we were underprivileged kids. For me, I had a great childhood.”
Now that happy-go-lucky girl is a responsible parent who is “very, very happy about” motherhood being the biggest change in her life. May obviously wants the very best for Violet, who sings the song and one day hopefully will look “back on her childhood with the same fondness that I do.”
Birth of an album title
Those days of yesteryear are just a small part of Life. Love. Flesh. Blood. The album title came to her after “the lovely U2 boys” invited her to one of their concerts in Paris in November 2015, when she later met up with Gavin Friday, a singer-songwriter-composer from Dublin who shares a strong mutual friendship with Bono.
“You need to get an album that encompasses this, your whole life as of this moment,” May recalled Friday telling her.
Shortly afterward, the terrorist attacks at the Bataclan theater in Paris happened and one of the victims was Universal Music Group executive Thomas Ayad, a member of her record company’s team in France.
“That hit everyone pretty bad,” said May, who shared her thoughts and condolences on Facebook. “Actually, I went to Paris a couple of weeks ago. They still have his desk there. And they miss him a lot. All his stuff is still on his desk.”
The tragedy stuck with May as she continued writing songs for the album, including “Love and Fear,” which appears on the 15-song deluxe edition, and “How Bad Can a Good Girl Be,” a steamy shot of eroticism with Chrissie Hynde intonations that includes the passage “Of Life Of Love Of Flesh Of Blood.”
“It seems to encompass everything,” May said of the title. “It just seemed to say what I wanted to say.”
Changing gracefully
She downplays her physical transformation from the carefree teenager who used to perform at the Candy Box, a burlesque club in Birmingham, England, to the sophisticated chanteuse with the dark bangs and lovely gowns.
“You get heartbroken and you get a haircut,” said May, dismissing the notion by some that it was a calculated Madonna-like move. “It wasn’t a big plan. It’s not a strategy of when you make a new album. …. I just didn’t feel like myself anymore. I felt like I was dressing up like Imelda May for a while. … It was becoming a character. And you know, it wasn’t fake. It was the way I felt at one particular time. But you don’t feel the same way forever. If you do, then I think you’re probably emotionally stunted in some way. … And I felt like I was in this little box. And I might have created it for myself. I think a lot of people do that.
“Now I feel like me. I just went out and got a haircut, wrote an album and I feel like myself again. And I’m feeling really good.”
That means the quiff is forever part of her past, and May sums up its demise with “Been there, done that.”
The same feeling doesn’t apply to rockabilly, which she vows never to give up because “it’s in my blood.” But that won’t prevent May from continuing to explore other ways to improve her creative self.
“I hate being bored and I hate being stagnant,” she said. “I like to learn, I like to do things. And I like to try things that I don’t know how to do well, to push myself and then learn and keep learning. Until the day I die, you know.”
Involved in producing her previous four albums, May wants to continue that role with other artists. “Yeah, funny enough I seem to like sitting up listening to a bass drum till 6 in the morning. (laughs) Not everybody’s cup of tea. I’m happy to do that. I get the best takes out of everybody. And it’s a big passion of mine.”
Addressing this next phase of her career and the expected reaction to her new album, May said, “I have no idea what’s gonna happen. I think I’m gonna lose a lot of fans who want me to stay with the rockabilly, which obviously is a big love of mine, but so is blues, so is jazz, so is soul. I really dip back into all the roots music that I started singing as a teenager in Dublin and stuff that means a lot to me. … I’ve just followed my heart making this album and I’m quite proud of that. You’ve got to take chances.”
If her appearance and performance soften the edges, that doesn’t mean May (right with Darrel Higham in 2014) will change her hardcore ways in dealing with an audience like the one she faced three years ago in Lyons, Colorado.
“I love music and I love the history of music and I love how incestuous it all is. It does bug me when people put themselves into a little label. Because it isn’t really how music is or how it should be. And I don’t feel bad for people doing that whatsoever but once you open your mind to things, I think life can be way, way better.”
Referencing Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, May said “without rockabilly, you certainly wouldn’t have the Beatles,” and pointed out that Irish traditional music gave birth to bluegrass and country.
“They all mixed together with gospel and blues and then you got rock ’n’ roll and then that went into punk and progressive rock,” she added. “I think it’s all fabulous. It’s like a kid in a candy store and making yourself only eat one. You know, eat them all. Enjoy it.”
Next on May’s calendar of pleasures to treasure, though, is a date to celebrate St. Patrick in Dublin.
On Green Day, she said, “we always go down there where the parade passes by (near the cathedral) and I’ll bring my daughter to watch that and we’ll go and eat and probably rope one of of my nieces into babysitting while I go see my brother play in a traditional Irish session with lots of stew and Guinness and sometimes more musicians than there are audience members, which I always love when that happens.”
They’ll undoubtedly sing like there’s nobody listening while serving up a slice of heaven on earth.
Concert photos by Michael Bialas. See more of Imelda May at the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival in 2014.