You can take the woman out of the Liberties, but you can’t take the Liberties out of the woman
YOU CAN take the girl out of the Liberties, but you can’t take the Liberties out of the girl. Spending 10 years in London hasn’t cut any angles off Imelda May’s accent, which boom-booms as if she’d never been away.
This time last year, we’d never heard of her. May was one of hundreds of working musicians living and gigging in London while earning a crust doing shift work. Like the other hundreds, May had a dream: to get out of working in launderettes, cafes and nursing homes, and work full-time in the music industry.
Most are left to wander along life's byways, where ambition and aspiration aren't even on nodding terms. For the 34-year-old singer from the Liberties, however, the dream has definitely come true. Last year, May got the nod for a slot on BBC2's premier music show, Later with Jools Holland. Then came a nationwide UK tour support slot with Holland's Big Band boogie-woogie ensemble. Cue a small scramble of major labels, trying to sign the canny rockabilly/soul-blues singer. Farewell to waiting on tables.
She’s surprised at what has happened to her in the past six months. “I’ve been doing this a long time, and what’s happening at the moment is all quite new, but it’s great fun.”
May started her singing career at the age of nine, the strange kid in class who was more into Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent than A-Ha and Wet Wet Wet. At 14, making her professional debut, she sang on an ad for a fish finger company. At 16, her heart was broken by some gobdaw, and in an effort to discover exactly what made boys tick, she went to her father for guidance. Are you heartbroken, asked her dad. Yes, replied Imelda. “Good,” he said. “You’ll be able to sing the blues better, so.”
Bruxelles pub, just off Grafton Street, became May’s stomping ground in Dublin. Venues such as Slattery’s and JJ Smyths also figured in her transformation from ingénue to fully-rounded performer. For all its aural delights and visceral thrills, rockabilly is a niche music genre, full of rigid style codes.
“It is niche,” she agrees, “but it’s always been a much-loved music. It’s the kind of music that comes around, though, and I know in America it’s starting to get picked up on again. Mexico, too. I think that Irish people get the music quicker than other nationalities – it’s the strong hypnotic rhythm and the juicier side of things.
“Plus, there’s the rebellious aspect to rockabilly. It was the punk rock of its day, with the rawness and the attitude. Teenagers are getting into that kind of look again. That could be to do with the recession, and people not having much money – most things tend to go back to basics when recessions kick in, and I don’t think there’s much harm in that, to be honest.”
May moved to London in the late 1990s, throwing herself into corporate shows and burlesque revues. It was fun, she recalls, but the itch to form her own band and sing her own material was too strong to withstand.
"Some people think the only way of doing well or of having a career in music is to go the X Factorroute," May points out. "But a lot of people lose the joy out of music by going that way, possibly because they're so incredibly focused on other people's ideas of success."
May remembers being turned down by record companies a few years ago. The initial disappointment was balanced by the dawning realisation that she didn’t really need them to actually make music.
“I thought, to hell with it, I’m going to make this album anyway, so I made it in a few days in my husband’s studio – a converted cowshed. We begged and borrowed money to get the sound mix done on it. We didn’t have a sound engineer, we couldn’t afford to get it mastered, and even the band we had, I told them I couldn’t afford to pay them, but they said, fine, pay us later. We just got on with it, and loved doing it. Of course, I’m delighted with how Love Tattoo has been received, but the point was that we didn’t set out with plans for world domination, but to just enjoy the music.”
Love Tattoois a deceptive little gem; just when you think the rockabilly angle is going to be shoved down your throat for the duration of the album, along comes a subtle tune here and a svelte number there to tell you a few things – notably, that May is no one-trick pony, and has talent and ambitions beyond the perceived limitations of niche music. Already, the numbers are swelling at her gigs.
“We have packed out gigs now,” she says proudly. “And the venues are getting bigger bit by bit. Not that I want to drift away from the small venues – the best gigs are where you can see people eyeball to eyeball.”
Love Tattoois on release through Universal. Imelda May plays Galway's Róisín Dubh, March 10th and Dublin's Button Factory, March 12th
