Maura O'Connell

by Denise Sofranko

[From Dirty Linen #38 Feb/Mar '92]

To many performers this would have been a disaster of unrecoverable proportions, but to O'Connell it was just one of those things that happens to her. "I'm a fairly awkward person; I mean I fall down and things. I knock into things; I'm always cuts and bruises."

This popular singer can take potential disasters like that one and turn them to her advantage. While it's obvious that O'Connell has a sense of humor and a self-deprecating wit, she still exudes confidence and conviction of purpose and is one of the most focused and strong minded musicians I've spoken with. One is immediately impressed by her outspokenness and her ability to draw others to her.

Much of the press on O'Connell has emphasized how she was reluctantly pulled into the music business. While some of that is true, the source and degree of the reluctance seems to have been misinterpreted by some. O'Connell for all of her wit and seemingly impulsive behavior also has a very pragmatic and calculating side. Before seriously taking on music as a profession, O'Connell played in Ireland in folk clubs and at parties with fellow Irish musician, Mike Hanrahan (later of Stockton's Wing).

"I was already a musician as far as I was concerned and I was getting a lot of satisfaction from what I was doing. It wasn't a question of whether I enjoyed it. It wasn't anything to do with my lack of confidence in myself as a person or as a singer. I think I knew I could sing, otherwise I wouldn't have done it up to that point. After I left school and started singing with Mike, sometimes we would just sit in a room for hours just listening and then after that we would just play and sing and play and sing. I look back on that as a real magical time for music for me. In fact that was what I was afraid I would lose if it became my profession."

O'Connell, in fact, went through a period where she did resent the business part of the music for taking away some of that magic. She talks of the time when she realized that some of the joy had gone from her singing. "I, for some reason, got annoyed at music for taking away my hobby, my joy. It became a business for me. It really was a psychological reaction."

She has since managed to come full circle and come to terms with those feelings. "I don't feel that way now. You just work. You just face it and do what you're doing. You shut up about it or you leave it, you know. I threatened that, many's the time, but I'm very grateful to be able to do what I do and to be allowed. When I say to be allowed; I mean when a big record company like Warner brings someone like me onto their roster and they help me. The great thing is they've given me the courtesy of allowing my own musical inclinations to be the guide. They don't leave me completely alone, because that's kind of silly, like leaving a kid inside a toy shop or something like that, but they've taken a lot of chances in this area."

"It's been an interesting experience. It truly got me out of where I lived, in a small town. I would still be living in Ennis." Even though she is glad she has had the opportunity to travel and live in other places, O'Connell still gets homesick for County Clare. A video she made for the title song from Helpless Heart was shot in the area around her home and she describes it as a partial cure for homesickness.

"I really hadn't intended on becoming a professional musician, but that isn't to say that I didn't have the dreams of being a Judy Garland in some sort of wonderful musical where this music came out of nowhere; things like that. When I was at home in Ennis, my sister and I used to sit and listen to Bonnie Raitt records and go `God! I wish I had a band like that.' Now I only wanted it for the thought of doing the music, but, `God! I wish there were a bunch of guys like that; right here in our town and we could go and sing with them and it would be great.' I was really envious of that. [I thought] how did she (Raitt) get to know those people?"

"But I never entertained any notions... maybe I entertained notions of starring in the local musical production; my mother did that. But, I saw myself working in the shop (her mother's side of the family owned a fish market in Ennis). As a kid of course, I had different ideas of what I wanted to do, but that sort of took over. I like working with people. I thought of being an occupational therapist or a Montessori teacher. I'm glad I didn't choose to be a Montessori teacher. I don't think I could have cut it.

The pragmatic side also figured in as O'Connell was fully aware of the economic reality of a musician's life. "I think I also knew the equation somehow, I was always interested in that. I knew the equation of all the people that were professional musicians and the amount of them that were famous at it. Wait a minute now, the odds for this are how many to one? I don't think so."

Perhaps Maura chose the music or perhaps the music chose her but at any rate she did go with it and, at the invitation of Frankie Gavin, joined De Dannan. Before joining them she had to get past another set of reservations about her own musical background. "It wasn't against the band or anything like that, it was that I had not been a traditional singer. What a traditional singer needs to have is some songs first of all, and I had none. None, not a one of that idiom. But they said they wanted to try and do something different. I really felt that there were enough people doing traditional Irish music and I didn't have the background anyway, so they were doing just fine without me. I concentrated on other things and other kinds of songs and really, to my own sadness (and I'm ashamed of myself), I turned my back on it."

The first tour to the States with De Dannan did cause some people to complain that there weren't enough traditional Irish songs in their sets. This was an Irish group and they were doing covers of American R&B songs. At a concert in San Francisco, they were met with jeers and calls for Irish songs. "It was tough at the very beginning, but then we did `Irish Mollie' and that album (Star Spangled Mollie). With `Irish Mollie' then I toured with them (De Dannan) and people were happy then because that was a successful album."

The touring and recording she did with De Dannan gave her the poise and confidence she needed on stage and at the same time opened doors for her in the music industry. Because of her association with De Dannan and the notoriety she was gaining in Ireland, O'Connell began meeting some of the musicians that were to become invaluable in shaping her career in the States. She met the members of New Grass Revival while touring and dobroist Jerry Douglas through her Irish producer, P.J. Curtis. They all hit it off, both as musicians and as friends, and began jamming together. "It was very much related to friendship in the beginning and mutual respect and that sort of thing. We were all young and they were already a group of these whiz kid guys. I felt very honored to be a part of it and boasted about it greatly."

O'Connell's association with these "whiz kids" resulted in her recording four Bela Fleck-produced tracks. Along with Fleck and Douglas, other musicians included Mark O'Connor, Edgar Meyer, and Mark Schatz. Nanci Griffith, Kathy Chiavola and Jonathan Edwards all contributed backing vocals. Former New Grass Revival bandmates of Fleck Pat Flynn, Sam Bush and John Cowan also made appearances. In all, it was a pretty stellar group for what had started out as an experiment. "We were just experimenting and we kind of went back to the people who were doing my records in Ireland and said, `What do you think; can we make an album?' They said ok, so we made an album and called it Just in Time." The album, released in Ireland, was a success, but wasn't released in the States until 1988.

After completing Helpless Heart (released in Ireland as Western Highway), also produced by Fleck, O'Connell gradually began spending more time in Nashville and eventually moved to the area in 1988. Her work with Douglas led to touring with him and guitarist Russ Barenberg. She still maintains friendships with these musicians and when their schedules permit it, they occasionally do gigs together along with bassist Edgar Meyer.

Although much of her success appears serendipitous, O'Connell takes responsibility for her career and makes decisions based on a combination of economics and practicality while still following gut feelings and her own inner voice. "I do tend to follow my nose in a lot of things, and each action has a reaction. I have made some major moves, but I've usually thought about it first; at least for an hour," she laughs. "Something that I do gets me around to doing different things, but I just wouldn't up and leave and go and live in Turkey. If there was a nice hotel there with a real nice view and a real nice restaurant, boy I'd be gone; and if it was a nice private place. But I'm not motivated by things like that. I'm very lucky at what I do. I mean that sincerely; I don't mean that as any kind of pat notion. I very much enjoy what I do. I love playing on stage. I love it. I love it. I love it."

With her ears always open to new material, O'Connell takes the initiative in picking the music she performs and spends time on the road listening to tapes, constantly looking for new songs. "I go to the publishing companies and I get a lot of tapes sent to me and I cajole songwriters I know. Others have written things and sent them to me knowing that I would love them, and it was great. There's a songwriter in Ireland, Jimmy McCarthy, and he'll call me up and say `Maura I've got this great song.' I'll go, `Yeah yeah.' And he'll say, `There's this great song, do you want it?' and that's fun. Gerry O'Bierne writes such beautiful poetic pieces and I love Paul's (Brady) writing."

She seems to make a point of making the music accessible, but still picks songs to challenge her audiences to think. "I don't have an agenda that I work through. Songs are never themselves really social statements. It's how people relate to music, I think. It's not always the same but it affects them because of something, and that's often what I'm talking about rather than just the song itself. If I'm introducing it in some ways it's just like that. Even today when we were down around the monuments (on the mall in Washington, D.C.), we were thinking we traveled an awful lot and we see so many homeless people. We can't collect money at each show but we must try and talk to people about it and just do something. You just can't keep your eyes closed, really. It's not that I'm a flag waving anything, but if I can just get to the human aspect rather than the politics or anything like that. I really don't care for the politics. But the basic humanity or inhumanity that is going on; it is just hard not to talk about it. Even talking about relationships almost feels political at this stage because there is so much tension between the sexes now. But I like to cajole the audience, too; make cracks about relationships and introduce the songs. For some people there are just so many different facets to things. It's fun because it's how I relate to the song that makes it for the audience."

O'Connell grew up in a culture that valued music and the ability to sing, and while she doesn't have any formal voice training, her mother was helpful in her early years. "It's a family thing, again. Breathing was taught to us early on by my mother, in as much as she would say sing from your stomach and stop singing from your throat. She had studied some and she really always wanted for us to go have our voices trained, but we never did. You get great training in certain schools, certainly most schools in Ireland and I'm sure in some schools here. In choirs; I was in a lot of choirs and the choir directors were great at showing kids how to use their voices. The most I learned about singing, I learned from my mother and the greatest ingredient after that has been practice and doing it a lot.

"I figure the way to become a singer is to first of all have the inclination and then after that just practice and work with different people. There is no magical ingredient. Nobody can teach you how to sing. Absolutely nobody. If you're using your voice badly, then a voice teacher can show you how maybe not to do certain things, but for the most part if you are a singer, you will be a singer. There's no way to stop yourself in a way."

O'Connell is not a song writer, something she makes very clear from the start. (In fact she has recently had T-shirts made to that effect.) The mark of a good song interpreter is being able to take someone else's song and make the audience believe that you are the character in the song. O'Connell has a real talent for that; she becomes the character, even if for just the length of the song.

"I really feel that a singer's job is to convey your reading of the song which does involve a certain acting quality, but it's not an artifice. I don't sit down with the song and say, `Well I think I will be like this with this song.' Again it's all to do with the song and where you're headed on a given day and if you're enjoying the gig and stuff like that. It just gets away from you. It is kind of like acting, some form of character thing, but I always feel that sounds so pretentious.

"Each song deserves its own pace and I really prefer to hear things in their raw stage so that I can go from there. But I try as much as I can to not do something unless I feel I can put something into it of my own, which creates it's own melody in the song. It's like poetry. My reading of the song will give a different perspective or at least that is what I would hope to do. I really don't want to do a song unless I feel I can add to it. I wouldn't feel any point in going off and copying anything that's already done. I wouldn't be putting myself up for that kind of comparison. There's already enough of it going on in the media."

This approach to the music comes from several different sources. She tinkered around a bit with local community theater in Ireland when she was growing up and picked up some of her style from her mother, who sang light opera. She also credits Barenberg, Douglas and Meyer with helping her to loosen up on stage and just go with the music. "A lot of it is physical. They've had a lot to do with what I've done and how I approach music. and the same is true of Zane (Baxter) and Dave (Francis) actually. They respond well to the music and that's all I ever ask of anyone who's ever worked for me. Just listen to the words and hear where the music is going. It's a very instinctual thing. There's a lot of things done on instinct on the way the music is flowing on the spur of the moment. That sort of thing. In fact, my initial inspiration for that way of thinking came from watching Van Morrison perform. In the way that he allows the flow of the music and allowing the rhythm to take itself away. I don't like to be bound by rhythms and I don't mind if they (the musicians) go in a different direction if it suits the moment or the excitement of whatever is going on."

Francis has been touring with O'Connell, playing bass and guitar since she signed with Warner Bros. He seems to have a steadying influence both on and off stage, laying down a solid rhythmic foundation for Maura to sing around and acting as tour manager off stage. Baxter was a welcome addition to O'Connell's tour in April, ending a search for a new lead guitarist after the Helpless Heart tour.

"I enjoy working in a small unit actually. Some people feel that it's not strong, but I feel in terms of giving me a space and a place to be all the time, it's great. When we made the new album that kind of instrumentation (dobro, fiddle, mandolin, guitar and bass from the Helpless Heart tour) just wouldn't work, so I figured the best way to do it without going to a bigger band was to get two thrashing acoustic guitars going. You can get even more noise out of that somehow. So that's what we've been doing. It sounds great and I love those guys. I love working with them. If I become rich and famous, I'll expand. What I want is every form or kind of musician to be there on stage at any given time for me to indulge in every musical fantasy that I would want to indulge myself in; truly. But, you know, you can have a great, great band with a lot of people and often times the performance will become more important than the song. With a real pared down thing, it's hard to take the focus off the lyric."

O'Connell is on the verge of recording her fourth solo album, one to be produced by Douglas. Her old friend Arty McGlynn will be joining them in the studio and she has plans to record some of the songs that have become favorites in her live shows. Going back to Nashville and using Douglas as producer sounds like she may be going back to a similar format as Helpless Heart. Was Real Life Story, recorded in L.A. and with a heavier pop sound, an experiment? Was it a direction she wishes she hadn't gone?

"Well I tried a different thing with that album and I'm very very proud of the album in terms of how it sounds and the whole idea. I enjoyed working with the guys out in L.A. and, while it wasn't a phenomenal success in terms of selling larger numbers, the reviews have been steady. I never think in terms of huge steps."

Although she is willing to try new things and experiment with different styles, she is adamant about not wanting to be categorized as a specific kind of singer. "I know it's hard to work without a label but every time I have done one thing, people automatically think, `There she is, that's what it is, now we have her,' and that's the most frustrating thing. I understand why but at the same time it makes me say things and do things. When I left De Dannan and I did this album over here, I didn't want people to think that, `Well, she went to Nashville and now she's going country.' I dyed my hair all these different colors and I was almost like a cross between a soul and a punk band. I really wanted to become involved in what was new but I was also madly in love with soul music.... I was covering Aretha anyway even knowing I shouldn't have been.

"I learned a lot of things about what I shouldn't do in that whole time. I grew up a lot in terms of musicians and in front of a lot of people. Everyone seemed to like it; they just didn't know how much I was hanging by the grip.

"I've come to enough of a faith in myself and a belief that at least I'll be able to have a career somewhere in there. There are enough people out there who know me and what I'm doing. That's very real for musicians to know that they can have a career rather than something that's fleeting. The people that come are very loyal and they come and see me a lot. I get to play with great people and I've been able to sing on their records and some of them come and sing on mine and I jam with some cool people and it's great. I think it's serious; I think it's fabulous."

O'Connell in a lot of ways really is like that kid in the candy shop. She still has a sense of wonder and enthusiasm for what she is doing. She seems to delight in little things like audiences reacting to her antics on stage or a particularly good rendition of a song. You get the distinct impression that she wouldn't trade her life right now with anyone.

"I get to sing, I get a choice of great songs, I get to sing with great people. People actually pay to hear me and they clap when I say something and they laugh at my jokes. What else is there? There are days when I want to kick it in the teeth and smack it around and it makes me crazy, but it's the whole romance of it. The smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd; it has its own mystique. It's a wonderful thing."

Return to the back issue page.