For songs to ring true with an audience, they have to show your vulnerable side, songwriter Karan Casey tells Tony Clayton-Lea.
It isn't all glamour and glitz for the popular singer, you know. Waterford-born singer and songwriter, Karan Casey, realises this; the dressing rooms at Dublin's Temple Bar Music Theatre are spartan, the rider (theoretically, a selection of food, drink, and other treats as asked for by the artiste for pre- and post-gig indulging) amounts to little more than water.
And the audience? Well, for a while it looks as if there'll be more people on the stage than in the theatre seats. As 37-year-old Casey commences her first concert for some time in Dublin, strays drift in to lessen the potential embarrassment, but still, you have to wonder - if one of the best-known Irish folk singers of the past 10 years can't draw a large crowd for the launch of her new (and fourth) solo album, Chasing the Sun, something is wrong.
Casey dismisses the paucity of punters with a "what-can-you-do?" shrug. As someone who has seen popularity come and go, the fickleness of audiences is something she is used to. She started off her career in the mid-1990s, in New York-based Irish-American traditional band Solas, with which she recorded three albums in four years. Shortly after her debut solo record, Songlines, was released towards the end of the 1990s, she returned to Ireland to set up house and home with fellow musician Niall Vallely, and their daughter Muireann.
Casey's stature in the traditional/folk music area has advanced with each solo album, and her latest is the best to date. It's certainly the most personal; dedicated to her grandmother, who passed away during the record's genesis and its making, Chasing the Sun sees Casey fully embrace original songwriting. "It was a huge leap of faith for me, because songwriting is completely different to singing. The songs I like are the ones that touch your vulnerable side, whatever part of you that is. In order for songs to ring true, you have to go to the vulnerable areas of your own life. Songs don't always have to be sad, but they have to resonate within the listener."
Around the time of writing songs for the new record, Casey implies she was going through a period of deflation and defeat. Looking about for resilient role models to get her through those days, she quickly focused on the women she knew in her life. "I went home, and talked a lot with my mother and my grandmother about growing up. I wanted to remember the strong women in my life. I was looking for a hopeful way out of something, a resolution, to celebrate through song the very fact of keeping going. That if things are tough, you have to continue."
Casey declines to go into what made her defeated, but whatever it was, it's clear she no longer feels that way. "In order for you to move on you need to explore, or not be afraid of, sadness. You need to accept that human weakness can be a wonderful thing, and being able to overcome it is a part of human life." The balance between being a mother of a small child and operating within the music business is a tricky one, however. Prior to Muireann starting school, she went on tour with mammy and daddy. The experience, says Casey, was positive on many levels.
"There isn't much time for nonsense," she says. "I'm working most of the day, so I don't have time to dwell or get hung up on things. I'd have Muireann in the morning, then I'd do interviews, and then we'd travel in the car, and keep her occupied. We'd get to the hotel, and maybe go for a swim - if it had a swimming pool.
"Like most people, we juggle, and we're philosophical about it. We're blessed with both sets of grandparents - they go above and beyond the call of duty." Is she a mother first and a singer second? "Now that is the question, isn't it?" A long pause. "When she grows up, I want Muireann to think I was a good mother - that's probably the most important thing to me. I struggle internally with that."
In the past, says Casey, women have fought tremendously hard to enjoy a certain level of freedom that her generation is still coming to terms with. "My mother wouldn't have had the kind of freedom that women of my age have, but there are times when I question a lot of those freedoms - especially in relation to my child."
Casey is now talking as if to herself, weighing up the possibilities. "Am I a good mother? Should I be working, or be away so much? It's not like I'm dropping her off at a crèche. And I have all that time with her. I have the luxury of being with her." The latter is the clincher - her mind is made up. "That's a good balance, and I have to remind myself of that, too."
Would she rather be her now, or her mother, or grandmother 50 years ago? There can be but one answer. "I'd much rather be me now - I wouldn't have the career I have now if I'd lived 50 years ago. You weren't allowed. And if I hadn't had career role models like Maura O'Connell, Mary Black and Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh I wouldn't have known any better. Role models are the most important things."
Karan Casey performs at Nun's Island, Galway Arts Centre, June 23 (with poet Gearóid Mac Lochlainn); and at Town Hall Theatre, Galway, August 10. Her new album, Chasing the Sun, is on release through Gael Linn