Joan Armatrading chats about her 'Charming Life'

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Joan Armatrading chats about her 'Charming Life'
July 1, 2010
By Michael Keating
Seacoastonline.com

For 30 years, British pop singer Joan Armatrading has made a career of making the personal universal. From happy little love songs to break-up ballads, she has the uncanny ability to capture the complexity of raw human emotions and the yearning for happiness.

"When I write it's a purely selfish act; there is no one else in mind," Armatrading said in a recent telephone interview from Croydon, England, where she was preparing to perform that night. "I'm not thinking of what you like, what your friends in New Hampshire like, or what my No. 1 fan might like. I can only think, 'Do I like it?' If the answer is 'Yes,' then I just hope it connects."

WHAT JOAN ARMATRADING, SOUL/FOLK/ROCK/SOPHISTICATED POP DIVA, WITH OPENER JAMIE MCLEAN

WHEN Sunday, July 11, 7:30 p.m.
WHERE The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth
COST $45/$57
CONTACT 436-2400, www.themusichall.org
Armatrading, who released her 20th album in March, "This Charming Life," brings her international tour to The Music Hall in Portsmouth on July 11. She and her band will be performing many of the songs that have "connected" with fans over the years.

"You'll hear old songs and new songs," she said. "You'll hear 'Love and Affection,' '(I Love It When You) Call Me Names,' 'Heading Back to New York City,' and you'll hear newer songs from "Into the Blues" and "This Charmed Life."

Many of Armatrading's best-loved songs focus on the push and pull of desire, love, lust and loss. A song like "Water with the Wine," started when a friend tried to get her to have a drink. "I've never drank a drop of alcohol in my life — never even tasted it," she said. "But somebody I know tried to persuade me to drink some wine once and said that if you mix water with it that it will taste like pop. Then, one day I was on a train and this chap started chatting me up — a very nice guy. He skipped his stop, got off at mine and walked me to my door. He tried to go at me, but I said goodbye. Then I just made up what he was trying to get to and remembered what my friend had said."

Met him on a Monday

And he said he loved me so

Walked me to my door

Before I knew it to my living room

I thought there was no need for worry

When he took me in his arms

Drank some whisky

Hung his coat upon the stand

That's when the music started

I heard the light switch click

I stumbled on a lost shoe

The fever's starting

This man was getting hot

I got no strength to make him stop

I guess it's too late

But I'll know next time

To mix some water with the wine

Armatrading is always surprised by which of her songs become hits.

"'Love and Affection': I definitely knew it was going to be good, but I had no idea it would be such a big hit," she said. "'Willow': I never thought people would like it to the capacity that they do. I mean, they've named their dogs, their cats and their cabins after that song."

She writes from observation, watching the emotional pull between people.

"I was watching two people the other day who were obviously in love," she says. "They tended to whisper. They seemed to be really, really serious, but when you listened they were talking about these totally mundane things. But because they were so intense it looked like it had to be so fantastically important. This chap was all kind of lovey-dovey, but what he was saying was, 'be sure you don't rush, take your time, I'll see you there.'"

Armatrading, who will turn 60 in December, began writing songs at 14. "I suppose I was just born to it," she said. "Because it was in me at some point it was going to come out. I started when I was 14, but I could have been 40 or 50. No one said, 'Here, go about writing,' but my mom bought a piano and it was just very natural. No one showed me how to play. I picked it up and taught myself. I've learned to play everything that way."

She was sacked from her first job making tools at a factory in Birmingham because she insisted on bringing her guitar to work so she could practice while everyone else took their tea breaks. She considers herself a pop rock writer, some might call it "Lover's Rock," but many of her albums have some jazz, reggae and blues tunes as well. In 2007, she released "Into the Blues," an entire blues album that debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Blues charts and earned her a Grammy nomination — her third.

Now comes "This Charming Life," on which she again performs all the instruments (except drums) and which includes some smoking guitar riffs that would surely make fellow Brit guitar hero Jeff Beck smile with admiration.

"I'm lucky, I've been blessed from the time I left my mother's womb," she said of the album's title song. "I've been given some very fortunate opportunities and I wanted to express this out of my head."

Armatrading, who performed the MUB at the University of New Hampshire in the late-'70s, is excited to return to the Seacoast on her current tour. "I'm really looking forward to coming to America because my favorite audiences are there," she said. "And I say that no matter where I am. I was just in Germany and said it on stage there. It's the truth. I have a great connection with America and with my American fans."