After several frustrating years with a major label, Cara Dillon is making the music she always wanted to, she tells Tony Clayton-Lea
She's been described as a "wide-eyed All-Ireland champion", which makes her sound like a gauche sportswoman. Yet when you see her - petite is not the word - you know that the only part of her body that singer Cara Dillon works out is her voice. The slight frame, however, hides a tensile grip on the notion of a traditional singer operating within an industry that values grandiose ideas over simple concepts.
Born in Dungiven, Co Derry, 28 years ago, Dillon won the All-Ireland Singing Trophy at the age of 14, and subsequently travelled around Europe with the traditional band Óige. Swatting off advances from older men and worthy folk collectives throughout these career-grounding days, in the mid-1990s she waded out into deeper waters, replaced UK singer Kate Rusby in Equation (then hyped as a folk "super group") and signed to Warners offshoot Blanco Y Negro. Within a year, Dillon upped sticks, leaving the band with its founder member Sam Lakeman to develop both a musical and personal partnership.
While the personal partnership flourished (the pair married last year), the musical alliance was frustrated at every turn. Blanco Y Negro label boss, Geoff Travis (also head honcho at Rough Trade) signed Dillon and Lakeman in a separate deal, which gave them major-label backing. But major-label backing also meant major-label interference.
"Sam and I were introduced to fantastic songwriters, but it just wasn't us," says Dillon. "They always wanted the hit singles and the commercial music, real boppy stuff. It got to a point where the part of the song that Sam and I loved - essentially the part that was coming from the heart, from my whole background, the bit that sounded traditional - was the part they wanted to lose in order to get what they thought might be a good song."
Trying to harness the wind into a recognisable shape might have been more productive.
Over five years, Dillon and Lakeman recorded three albums, none of which was released. "They'd say - and this is really unbelievable, looking back on it - we love parts of this album, but if we put you with another producer they might be able to make an even better one."
Ultimately, Dillon/Lakeman was a pet project that didn't want its vanity to be stroked and after several years of going against the grain of Warner Bros's ideas to make their music appeal to more people, they parted company.
"They let us go without any fuss. We never got out to do any gigs because we were always in recording studios or songwriters' houses. They sent us over to San Francisco to record, they paid for us to live in London for two years in a nice flat, and that sounds brilliant, but the frustration of coming from a folk background and not being able to gig . . .
"To be honest, it was a blessing those albums weren't released. At the time it was frustrating, but I'm so much more happy with the music we're doing now - on our own, without producers or songwriters getting involved."
On leaving Warner, Geoff Travis stepped in again and offered the couple a deal with Rough Trade. This resulted in a self-titled début in 2001, raised eyebrows from industry observers and folk fans alike (a traditional Irish album on the same label that gave us The Smiths and The Strokes?), and a new Irish star in the making.
The début won two BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, various best traditional album gongs and grazed the Top 10 of HMV Choice magazine's 2001 critics' poll. "We never really expected anything to happen with the first album," says Cara. "We just put it out and as a result of it doing so well we got a new lease of life, more confidence."
Dillon's new record, Sweet Liberty, proffers more light, shade and risk within a recognisable format. Two songs from her Dungiven locale - The Winding River Roe and The Gem Of The Roe - are quite stripped back. The danger, of course, is some people will choose to see that what Dillon is doing is diluting the tradition from whence she came. She says she wants their music to have an appeal beyond the Aran jumper set. Being signed to Rough Trade has seen to that.
"All I want to do personally is to make music I love making," says Cara, apropos of being asked would she have a problem if her records didn't sell in sufficient numbers. "Sam and I go all out to please ourselves to start with, and if we like it then we hope somebody else will like it. You have to be true to yourself; it's one thing going in and recording an album and then going out on tour and maybe not believing in it. But music is our life and our hearts are 100 per cent involved in it."
Providing it's on her own terms, Dillon isn't averse to crossing over into the mainstream - "I don't think I could ever possibly do something that would just try and make money and please everybody. That's why I got away from Warners". Indeed, it seems as if that's quite likely considering the breadth of scope she and Lakeman have utilised on Sweet Liberty. She says the highest compliment she has received over the past few years was when someone told her they couldn't tell the difference between a traditional and an original song. The difference between MOR and material with even an appearance of an edge is something else altogether.
"We've tried to mix the old with the new and to keep the purity of the song," she maintains. "At the same time, though, within some of them we felt free to experiment, to try and enhance them a bit more. Ultimately, it's just the music we do and I'm not sure what category we might fit into yet."
The attention Dillon has received in the UK is astonishing: "People would never have come to see me at gigs if it hadn't been for the fact that the records were on Rough Trade."
With a background so rigidly traditional, one wonders how her music is received by people she knows are die-hard traditionalists?
"So far, touch wood ," and here she taps the table, "the people I've spoken with in Derry, Donegal and Antrim, people I've learnt the fiddle off, who I grew up with at sessions, are embracing it. In a way, they see that I'm bringing the local songs to a wider audience. We've kept the essence and simplicity of the songs alive there. Everyone is so proud, saying things like if other people hear this lovely song then you're doing a grand job."
Dillon is too polite to offend people, although she's quite sure there are some people who would just love to have a go at her and Lakeman for their sonic treatments of what would be presumed sacred texts.
"This is what I enjoy doing," she reasons, "and I know I'll always be able to stand up anywhere and sing a traditional song. I'll do it and I'll mean it, and it doesn't mean that I'm selling myself down the river by trying to bring them to a wider audience or by making them a wee bit more exciting."
Sweet Liberty is released by Rough Trade on September 19th. Cara Dillon plays the Half Moon Theatre, Cork (tonight); The Quays, Galway (tomorrow); Millennium Forum, Derry (Sept 16th); Whelan's, Dublin (Sept 17th); and Dolan's Warehouse, Limerick (Sept 18th)