Susan McKeown
Susan McKeown is best known for her Celtic sounds, but she also delves into other areas as well, with some releases that fall far more on the Indie rock side, as well as some recent work she did with the Klezmatics. I had the chance to talk with her a while ago and we covered her career both pre and post motherhood, and what New York offers her that Ireland didn’t.
JM: You did a project with the Klezmatics, which was a little different for you. Was it nice to take a step out of the folk tradition?
SM: This has been a good opportunity for me to transition out of that – I started out as a singer songwriter and I got sidetracked by labels approaching me to do albums of traditional songs. I’ve been doing that because they’ve been approaching me and offering me money to do it. I’ve enjoyed it and it’s something that’s a part of me, it let me explore this whole love I have of world music in a fuller way, a deeper way, and I’ve gotten to work with mariachi bands and African musicians coming through town and Chinese musicians and African vocalists, which has been very exciting and I wouldn’t trade for anything, but I’ve missed my own band and doing songwriting and singing original songs. That’s cathartic for me and I’m back there now.
JM: You first album “Bones” was done on your own label and you made one other album on your own — was that ever officially released on a label?
SM: I made my own album Prophecy in 2002, but when I was about to release it, I found out I was pregnant, so I never released it really, I never went to a label and said ‘Would you take this on?’ I just put it out through Amazon and CD Baby and would sell it at my gigs. I never sent it to radio, so it’s still a kind of secret record.
I’ve gone through a lot of stuff in life and I’ve got to write about that.
JM: Were you introduced to Celtic folk music as a kid?
SM: I wasn’t brought up in it at all, which a lot of traditional musicians are. I got into it as a teenager, Celtic music was my rock music. When I came here, I had been playing with traditional musicians in Ireland and I played with Johnny Madden and Seamus Egan and John Doyle when I first came here, so that was very traditional. But I still had a large input of original songs and it was really when I came to New York that I started writing songs in earnest.
The traditional thing as a performer has always been a part of what I did, and influenced my arrangements of the original songs I do. But it’s gotten more into contemporary singer songwriter world and you’re less likely to hear tin whistles in the background.
JM: Has playing up the Irish part been difficult for you?
SM: If anything, it’s the opposite. I’m having to turn down Celtic things. Not that I can think of something I’ve turned down, but I’m not looking at opportunities to do more Celtic work at the moment. I’m making time to focus on songwriting projects.
JM: What is it about Ireland’s cultural hold? It’s such a small place, but it’s so powerful.
SM: We’re an odd kind of people. The Romans never got to Ireland, they spread out all over Europe but they never made it to Ireland because they didn’t think we were worth conquering. We have a unique culture that did get to last a little bit longer without that Roman invasion — and then we sent out our own missionaries and monks and cultural ambassadors all over the world and we always have. We have a very interesting history that is not unlike many other peoples’. We are an odd kind of people in a good way. It’s hard to pinpoint our differences, but we certainly are different from other Europeans and it is an interesting little nation. We’ve been around so long, we can trace our history back thousands of years, so we’ve got a lot to impart, good and bad.
Like Klezmer music, a lot of the songs are really sad and can bring you to tears, and the tunes are so lively they’ll bring people to their feet, or at least get them clapping their hands, so the music has great capacity to bring you to joy and to the edge of sorrow. A lot of people like to go and visit Ireland because they just feel a kinship with it, whether they’re Jewish or American or German or Korean or Japanese, a lot of people gravitate to it as a sacred place in the world, which it kind of is.
A lot of geographical landscape has marks on it that were put there by people thousands of years ago and they do seem to emanate this special energy. I’m not a New Agey person, but I know that’s true.
JM: Why did you come to America?
SM: Everybody immigrates because they’re running away from something, I suppose, but I was also running to something. At the time in Ireland, the only person that I knew of who wrote their songs and sang them was Sinead O’Connor and she was barely getting known then. There wasn’t a great history of Irish women singer-songwriters. I had already, at that stage, I had done our versions of Letterman and Leno on TV, the options didn’t seem great. Most of my musician friends who still live in Ireland do most of the work outside of the island. I was traveling outside a lot anyway and I got this opportunity to go to performing arts school in New York, so I decided to take it up and give it a try. I got known as a singer-songwriter and tried to make good friends in the industry and just felt very comfortable here, I stayed.
JM: I know that New York is often a better music city than the place of origin in regard to meeting other musicians, bouncing around musical idea,s and taking part in musical projects.
SM: Everybody’s passing through New York at some stage and there’s already such a wealth of musicians here. It’s a great live music scene – even today and today’s dismal.
JM: What’s your song writing process?
SM: Most of my songs are poems and if they’re good enough poems in my eyes, then I will turn them into songs. The usual subjects – love, death, loss, longing. Sometimes, from an Irish perspective, I suppose they have been influenced by Yeats and Haney and other Irish poets. I sometimes deal with dark topics, but I’m a pretty happy person, I just believe it’s cathartic to work that stuff out through language on paper – and then the experience of singing it for people always feels like a coming together of people. Expressing deep emotions is interesting to me.
My degree subjects in college were philosophy and English and that makes sense for a songwriter.
I’m writing all the time, it’s just a case of sitting down and putting it to music. At the moment, I’ve started to write some of songs for the new album. I’m kind of co-writing with some people, really I’m writing most of the songs, but I think it’s a good idea to be a little more open to suggestions and ideas from other musicians.
JM: What sort of orchestration do you prefer?
SM: I suppose, predictably, I like electric and acoustic guitars, but in the band a bass and drums. I usually prefer a stand-up bass and a cello, although at the moment, I’m working with a fiddler. I used two cellists on the last album. I like strings. And then I used pipes and hurdy gurdy on the original songs, I like to bring in older elements, but not necessarily in an old way, I like to use them in a more contemporary way. One of the things I’m working on is working with samples and loops and I like rap,but I don’t think I would be a rap artist at all. I like the idea in the way that it is chanting or incantation oriented and the use of poetry within that context. I’m experimenting a bit with that kind of thing. Not live or anything – just in my apartment – chanting some of the lyrics instead of singing and seeing if that’s effective. Nobody else might ever hear it.
JM: What current music are you listening to that you are thinking of incorporating to into your existing sound?
SM: I’m interested in all contemporary styles that people are into right now. I would never imagine I would ever have something that gets turned into a dance track, however there is an anthemic or more celebratory element to the things I have written, so people will come to me often and say ‘That song helped me through this thing.’ There’s always a hopeful element because I’m a very hopeful person and have been most of my life. Having that is a great gift and I like to try and impart that.
JM: How has motherhood affected your music?
SM: Motherhood is great, it’s balance, but isn’t life all about balance? It took me a little while. I’m sure there are many people who want to have a career as well as be a mother. It took me awhile to get the balance. The thing to understand is that you’ll never do it perfectly and once you let go of that, it’s grand.
Much of her life has been on the road, she’s been to 25 states and a few countries in Europe. She can name a lot of instruments but not even that, she’s just around musicians and at rehearsals and she was even on stage once because the babysitter didn’t turn up at one of the Klezmatics gigs. Normally I try to not impose things on her, it’ll be for her to take up as she wishes. But she’s definitely a songwriter. She’ll be some kind of performer anyway.
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