When life on the road gets too much, Heather Nova tells Kevin Courtney, she just goes back to Bermuda
Bermuda. Sunny Caribbean paradise, songwriter's idyll, and the place where Heather Nova grew up, living on a boat with no running water, no electricity and no TV, just the endless sky and the wide blue ocean to keep you company.
Sounds like the perfect place to do an interview with one of rock music's most interesting new arrivals.
"The best thing about Bermuda is the ocean," says the 33-year-old singer. "It's a tiny little island about 20 miles long, and the ocean is the open space, because Bermuda is kinda crowded, so you go out on a boat to get away from things, and there's reefs surrounding the island. The skies are beautiful, they just go on and on. I go there to feel that connectedness with the natural world again, to feel in touch with myself. Sounds a bit New-Agey, but it's real." OK, you've sold me. Let's do the interview right there. And so I touch down in Bermuda's crowded airport, take a land rover down to the beach where Heather Nova is waiting at a tiny beach café, wearing a grass skirt and sipping a pina colada. And then I wake up.
Back in the real world, Nova is sitting in a Dublin restaurant, surrounded by the clatter of plates and cutlery. It's a dull winter's day and the only thing shining around here is Heather's wild, strawberry blonde hair.
Such was the positive reaction to her last appearance in Dublin in November that she returns to play the Ambassador on Sunday March 10th. Get your ticket now - it's cheaper than flying to Bermuda, and you're guaranteed to go home with a warm glow.
Born Heather Frith on the aforementioned island paradise, Nova really did spend most of her childhood on a 40-foot boat with her parents, brother and sister, a cat, a dog and a record player. She still spends part of her year there - when she's not touring - but lives mainly in London with her producer husband, Felix Todd. For Nova, going back to Bermuda is her way of clearing the music biz madness from her mind.
"Each time I release a record I'm about a year or 18 months on the road. In a way it's very exciting and it's fun, but you kind of lose your centre. And so I like to go back to Bermuda and just get quiet and focused again. And that's when I start to write again, because I find it hard to write on the road, it's just too distracting. The funny thing is, I don't go to the beach when I'm there. It's the place where my family is, so I go back there to reconnect with people." So, no grass skirts and bikinis, then, and no boat either, because, Nova reveals, her parents sold the skiff two years ago. Seems that the seafaring life in the Caribbean isn't always like a Duran Duran video. "It's not so idyllic when you're in a storm at sea and you think you're gonna die," she says.
Because she leads such a nomadic existence, Nova finds that when she returns home, she feels all at sea among some of her old friends and acquaintances.
Her new single, Virus Of The Mind, touches on the subject: "Well I went to this party thing last night/ A lot of people I hadn't seen in a long long time/ And they wanted to know about my life/ But making me feel like it wasn't quite right/ Like 'Where's is your kids?' and 'Where is you car'/ I said 'I don't have either but I have a guitar'".
"People think I'm pretty weird. I'm in my 30s, I travel around the world for months on end. I'm married, but my husband doesn't come with me. They think it's strange that I'm not settled with children and doing the things you should be doing at this age."
Nova's journey began around the age of seven, when her parents took her out of school and whisked her off to sea, giving her a basic education along with some useful sailing skills. There was a small generator on the boat, so young Heather was able to listen to her favourite records by Neil Young, Van Morrison and the Rolling Stones. She learned to play the guitar and violin, keeping a steady hand through the pitch and roll of the boat. At 19, she enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design, where she studied painting and filmmaking, and began to develop her self-confidence as a singer-songwriter. When she took her first plunge into performing solo gigs, however, Nova found herself getting a little seasick.
"I would be shaking so much I could hardly play the guitar," she recalls.
"But then I started playing with a band, and I realised I could totally lose myself in the music, so it became the most wonderful freedom, because it's the only time in the day, or in my life, when I'm freed from the intellectual life, this cerebral thing. You're not in your head, but you're totally in the moment. It's a really good feeling - I'm addicted to it." She's been addicted now for nearly 10 years, from her 1993 debut album, Glow Stars, through the acclaimed Oyster in 1995 and 1998's Siren, right up to her current collection, which featured last year's excellent single, I'm No Angel along with Virus Of The Mind, If I Saw You In A Movie and Heaven Sent. She has also released no fewer than three live albums, so it's safe to say she's gotten over her stage fright.
I, for one, hope that Heather goes supernova, because then her record company might have the budget to fly me off to the sunny Caribbean for the next interview.
"Oh, I'm looking forward to that too, when I'm successful, so that I can just invite the journalists to Bermuda." I'll start packing my grass skirt.
Heather Nova plays the Ambassador on March 10th. South is on V2 Records