Singer Mary Black
Just a couple of years ago, Dublin-born singer Mary Black was touring the world with a new album, “Stories from the Steeples,” her twelfth studio album. This year, she’s taking what might be called a victory lap around the world, marking the last time she’ll be singing abroad. At 58, with grandchildren to cosset, she’ll be bringing her “Last Call Tour” to Phoenixville’s Colonial Theater on Friday, October 24, and drawing it to a close this spring in Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK.
“Last Call” has an unmistakable finality about it. “I’m trying not to think about it too much,” said Black on the phone from her home in Ireland, where her daughter, Roisin, a singer-songwriter who will be opening for her, was making tea. “Cuppa tea, love,” she calls out to her. “I’m looking at her now,” she says into the phone. “I’d love a cuppa,” she says to Roisin.
Along with Roisin, Black has two sons with husband, Joe O’Reilly of Dara Records—Danny is part of the popular Irish group The Coronas and Conor “is the only one in the family with a real job,” she laughs. He’s a surveyor.
It was tough balancing motherhood and a music career that kept her away from home for weeks at a time. It occasionally burned her out—hence the long stretches between tours—and finally, she says, “I had enough of traipsing around.
“I’m not giving up singing,” she hastens to add. “I’ll still perform in Ireland and I may pop across the water to England and if the odd interesting festival pops its head up, I may go. But it’s time to call it a day.”
The tour coincides with the publication of Black’s autobiography, “Down the Crooked Road,” which she wrote, with Roisin’s help, at the request of Transworld Publishers—their second request for a book in two years. (The book was released in Ireland on October 9, but isn’t available in the US until late November.)
What made her say yes the second time?
“In light of my last world tour, if I ever needed to write my autobiography, this was the time,” she says. “Roisin stepped in, typing and drawing the stories out of me. She’s an avid reader and has a natural instinct for painting a picture and setting the scene. It’s hard to be objective about it because I was so involved in it, but I think for fans it will be a good read and will give them insights into who I am and how I handled the ups and downs of life.”
There are no big revelations, she says, but the “crooked road” reference is to more than just a line from one of her songs. “My life was all twists and turns all the way, little hills and dips,” she says. Fans may be surprised to learn that at the height of her career in the 1990s, Black was beset by depression. “It’s very personal, really, but I thought it was important to speak about these things because mental health issues are still a little bit taboo. At times it was a huge problem in my life, so it seems silly to write a book about my life an not say anything about that. At one stage it was really bad, probably the highest point in my life from a career standpoint, when I was really flying high—that was the toughest time. ”
She also struggled, like most working mothers, with the dreaded “work-life balance,” and she delves into the ways “the Catholic religion affected me,” both deep sources of guilt. “I was riddled with guilt and not even aware of it,” she admits. “When I finally realized I thought, well, what the hell was that about?”
Black was born into a musical family. Her father, who came from a rural part of Antrim, played the fiddle and other instruments. Her mother was a singer. Black began singing Irish traditional songs at the age of eight, and she and her four siblings, brothers Shay, Michael and Martin, and her sister, Frances, performed as The Black Family in little clubs around Dublin.
In the 1980s, Black joined a small folk group called General Humbert. They toured Europe and produced two albums. Then, in 1982, she put out her own solo album, Mary Black, which went gold in Ireland. She was part of the group De Dannan and the album, Anthem, which she recorded with them was named Irish Album of the Year.
Her subsequent solo efforts took her into new territory for someone who still sang centuries-old songs in Irish. She began to blend more contemporary tunes into the mix, drawing particularly from two songwriters she loved: Jimmy McCarthy, who wrote “Adam at the Window,” “Bright Blue Rose,” and “Wonder Child;” and the late Noel Brazil who wrote, among other songs, one of Black’s biggest hits, “Columbus,” from her “No Frontiers” album. “No Frontiers” was a career changer for Black. It stayed in the top 30 in Ireland for a year and went triple platinum. It’s also the album that won attention—and adoration—from a new group of American fans. She did her first American tour in 1991.
Though she has co-written several songs, Black does not come from the tradition of singer-songwriters, as her daughter and son are. Her gift and what she is recognized for is her remarkable voice, her interpretation of songs, and a talent for choosing the right material.
“Coming from a folky background, the tradition of writing isn’t there,” she explains. “You’re always on the lookout for a good song, something you hear at a session, but I never thought to pick up a pen. My real talent is interpretation, that’s what I’m good at. I leave the really good writing to people who are really good at it. If you’d ever heard Noel sing his own songs, you would not be impressed. He’s probably listening to me saying this from wherever he is.” She laughs. “But I would take them and put in a bit of magic, not change the lyrics but build on the arrangement. “
Nevertheless, the first piece of advice she gave to the offspring following in her footsteps was “Get the pen out and start writing. Number one, that’s where the money is,” she says, laughing again. “But you need to start from an early age learning the craft. When you’re younger you’re too full of emotions, with the ups and downs, the sadness and the heartbreak, and it’s easier to write when you’re vulnerable like that.”
Though she’s happy with her decision to pull the plug on extensive touring, Black admits that the words “last call,” when she does think about them, leave her “a bit emotional” knowing that this will be a final time she’ll be traveling this particular crooked road.
“But I’m looking forward to it and it’s great having Roisin with me and all the amazing musicians in the band,” she says. “As I said, I try not to think too much about it being the last tour, about it never happening again. I’m just going to try to enjoy it.”