THE VOICE: Maura O'Connell left De Dannan and Ireland for Nashville a long time ago, but she's far from being a country singer. 'I've spent my life always on the edge, of not really being a part of what I'm around,' she tells Tony Clayton-Lea.
'Fishmonger's daughter makes good' might not be the ideal manner in which to introduce Maura O'Connell, probably Ennis's favourite female singer, but it's one way to illustrate how far she has come in the space of 20 years.
O'Connell has been living in the US for more than 15 years, toing and froing between Nashville and Ireland, feeling equally comfortable in each place, despite reservations. The Ireland she left in the mid-1980s was, says O'Connell, a country with no roaring Celtic Tiger, but rather - in a creative sense, at very least - a soul-destroying place. Artists of her stature (instantly recognisable, but also one of the most famous poor people in the country) could tour theatre venues about once a year; any other time, she recalls, she would play support to a disco in a big barn.
"I'm convinced if I hadn't gone away I would have had to leave the music business. I wouldn't have been able to deal with it. Unless you went into the cabaret scene, which was anathema to me, there wasn't too much money."
In Dublin last weekend on a quick-stop media tour to promote her new album, Walls & Windows (easily her best yet; strong contemporary country/folk material sung with the kind of voice that cuts through layers of creative insincerity), the 43-year-old O'Connell comes across as a woman who has lived low and high in her personal life (she casually mentions her six-year-old son suffers from cerebral palsy) and as someone who has come through certain levels of hardship in order to attain her current status as a highly-respected artist. She talks with a distinct Tennessee twang, and is self-deprecating despite her pronouncement that her ego can, on occasion, be too easy to locate.
She has long since left behind the memory of her De Dannan days. She says when she first went to the US to live (several years after her initial forays with De Danann), she felt she had to stay away from "the Irish-American material because they weren't prepared to listen to what I was doing". She shudders at the thought of singing My Irish Molly-O: "Money wouldn't pay me to do it."
Introduced to Nashville by Irish producer/ broadcaster PJ Curtis, and forging a relationship with musicians such as Jerry Douglas, Mark O'Connor, Russ Barenberg, Edgar Meyer and Bela Fleck (with whom she once stepped out) O'Connell became known as someone who was, she remarks drily, "at least good enough to sing with these guys".
Yet she has moved on. Having seen Nashville change from a retro city - "I'd bring people there to show them kitschy shops that sold hokey things" - to one of sophistication - "It wasn't as cool a place as it is now" - O'Connell has also witnessed the decline of the appeal of the once ubiquitous Garth Brooks-type "Hat Acts".
Nashville, she reckons, is pulling back in terms of major label output, with the smaller, independent scene booming. She sees a definite shift in cultural and marketing sensibilities that, as of yet, hasn't largely been followed by the major record companies. With the success of the soundtrack to the Coen brothers' movie, O Brother Where Art Thou? and established big-buck country artists, such as Dolly Parton, releasing bluegrass records (two projects O'Connell has contributed to), a return to fundamentals is almost complete.
Which begs the question - where does she fit in? "I don't fit in anywhere," she responds with a cautious laugh. She says she's "around" things and, aside from her solo work, she is called upon to lend her art as a singer to various records.
"I'm what Nashville calls contemporary folk. I went to Nashville for many different reasons, but I've never recorded what you would term country music - although many people in Ireland and Europe might consider what I have done as touching on country because of the use of mandolins and fiddles. But no one in Nashville would say I'm a country singer. It suits me to be outside the realm. I personally think I'd be more in the area of someone such as Shawn Colvin, before she took off big. I'm one of your mid-level, folk-type people - that's where I am, except I live in Nashville."
Working around the rim of country but not of it - her chosen songs are often doused in themes that Nashville's rhinestone-suited and cowboy-booted shy away from; some, she says with a smile, "might be too literary for people's tastes" - O'Connell is loath to define what she is and is not.
"I'm whatever the songs are. I'm a singer, so I would never put a label on what I do. But in America, if you're an Irish singer they wonder how come you don't sing traditional Irish ballads. You live in Nashville? Then how come you don't sing country? I've spent my life always on the edge, of not really being a part of what I'm around."
As an interpretative singer, O'Connell says she has never felt the need to write her own material. "I could write a mediocre song that maybe someone else would put on a record, but I wouldn't dream of singing it. I could write something in a heartbeat, because there are formulas to everything, but I would be too embarrassed to sing it. I wouldn't do it; I have too much respect for the written word and for well-written songs. The pressure on singers to write has created some of the worst crap that has been foisted on the world, and it's all because of the money they might earn through royalties. I see albums where songs are written by four people. I don't understand the math of that, it boggles the mind, and I refuse to go there.
"Growing up in Ireland, no-one ever asked me why I never wrote a song. Was I lazy, or something? For some reason, people assume you might not be all that bright if you're not writing your own material. I chose the better ground for me, singing other people's songs. There are an awful lot of awful songs out there and it bothers me tremendously. How do I know? Because I get more drivel through my door that it would turn your brain into mush if you were to listen to it all."
Now at a point in her career where she can pick and choose her work, O'Connell's profile could be raised a notch or three higher thanks to film-maker Martin Scorsese and his forthcoming historical epic, Gangs Of New York, wherein she was cast as a street singer. Scorsese, she comments, "shot miles and miles of film, so I don't know if I'm in the movie or on the cutting room floor. I don't know why I was cast - maybe [here comes the self deprecation again] they looked at my hair colour and my girth!" Both of which, by the way, you can see when O'Connell returns to Ireland in late May for an extensive tour.
"Everyone says it'll be fine, but I'm a bit nervous of it. Some musicians seem to think they deserve the support of an audience, but I think if you don't pay attention to your audience they won't pay attention to you. I hope the record does well, but I don't hold out any hopes that the doors to the venues will be flying open . . ."
Go on - surprise her.
Walls & Windows, on Sugarhill Records, is currently on release. Maura O'Connell's Irish May tour dates will be announced shortly