IMELDA MAY

Dublin’s swinging rockabilly whirlwind gets ready to rumble with T Bone Burnett.

ot many albums gets disrupted by Bono’s boundless enthusiasm. But so it has been with the forthcoming LP from Dublin’s rockabilly-jazz queen Imelda May. For throughout recent sessions, the U2 singer has been bugging producer T Bone Burnett to check all is going to plan. “Bono has been like a mentor with this record,” explains May. “So he’s been hounding T Bone about me. They know each other very well, so it’s quite funny. It’s like, ‘Jeez, will you get that Bono off my back? I’m gonna have to get this album just right now!’” The idea of a collaboration with Burnett – storied veteran of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue band and producer of myriad roots greats from Roy Orbison to Elvis Costello – was mooted a while back, when May began writing material for a follow-up to 2014’s Tribal, a fiery rocker that topped the chart in Ireland and reached Number 3 in the UK. Long a fan, T Bone “had been keeping an eye” on the singer since her 2008 breakthrough Love Tattoo; hearing her new demos last year, he felt the time had come to work together. “We went for dinners and drinks and got on very well,” says May. “I saw him in LA and Nashville. T Bone’s a great person to watch and learn from – he’s a genius.” On previous albums, the singer had written her own material, but this time round she was encouraged to

N