I’m not giving up the singing... I just miss my grandkids
Mary Black regrets being on the road so much when her kids were young... and is determined to make up for that with her grand-daughters
simple really.
‘These days, its downloads and Spotify and YouTube hits and streams and yet there’s very little monetary value in it. I suppose it does get your music out there and if people like it, they will come to your concerts. ‘That’s where the money is. ‘I’m glad I’m not starting out now. But that’s all they know. Róisín has never complained about it because that’s the way everyone is doing it.
‘I think it’s very tough now getting airplay, especially if your genre isn’t pop music.
‘But if you’re anyway left or right of that, it’s difficult to get airplay on radio unless you’re hugely successful.’
Mary laughs and says she spends more time talking about her children in interviews than her own career.
But while the second generation are proudly flying the flag, the music of Mary Black is on a different level. Mary herself has just released an album which celebrates the work of her longtime friend, songwriter Jimmy MacCarthy, whose classic songs she has sung for the past three decades.
MacCarthy told Mary she brought life to his songs. On the album you will find Mary’s immortal versions of No Frontiers, Adam At The Window, Katie and many other MacCarthy standards, along with a number of previously unrecorded songs.
SHE also sings for the first time Mystic Lipstick, a Jimmy MacCarthy song previously sung by Maura O’Connell and Christy Moore. In fact, you would be doing well to find an Irish family that has not had her music playing in the house at one time or another.
‘New songs are lovely. I think There Is No Night is a beautiful song. It’s very sad in a way. It’s pretty much autobiographical from Jimmy’s point of view. But lots of people could relate to it. And the other two are nice.
‘So many young people say, “I did No Frontiers for my Leaving Cert music” even now, and it’s like I recorded in 1989.
‘I’m so blessed to have had somebody like Jimmy and all the great writers that I was lucky to be in the way of. Great material to work on and Declan Sinnott and myself, between us, we got the best out of the early recordings and since then, with Bill Shanley and myself. I haven’t done so many of Jimmy’s songs in recent times, so that was nice to just go back there and I felt it was good because I continued to record Noel Brazil’s songs right up till recently. But Jimmy got quiet for a while and maybe he was recording a lot himself. So it was nice to have the strong connection back again.’
Mary is married to Joe O’Reilly, who owns the independent record label Dara Records.
He has gone off to do some errands while Mary does the interview and has returned to check in on her progress. They split their time between their homes in Dublin and Kerry, and Mary says that singing now, with time and experience, has become a real pleasure.
‘I think I enjoy singing more now than I used to and I’m not as good a singer now as I was because of age and everything. But I just feel the songs more and I feel the expression is better, rather than the actual voice.
‘It’s more about telling the story and feeling the story and the band are amazing. You bounce off your band and when you’re got different musicians doing different things, it’s not always the same.
‘You hear something and you try to answer it in your own way. And I feel the band is playing around me and you just become involved in this whole circular thing where people are speaking and answering and it’s nice.
‘Feeling comes with age and experience, and sometimes you can interpret a song in a completely different way ten years down the track, if you hear it again. It’s like, “Wow, that’s really relevant to something that’s happened to me.”
‘It changes your perspective completely and your take on life. It’s a good thing.’
As a woman you feel guilty leaving your kids, but they’re not too damaged by it