Joan Armatrading: ‘I will never retire’
Joan Armatrading is on the road a lot. In fact, she’s been traveling on her current tour since September 2014. The British singer-songwriter, who makes a stop in Spokane on Sunday, has been calling this her last major tour, but she wants to make something plain: She’s not retiring from music.
“I will never retire,” she said during a recent phone interview. “I try and make that as clear as I can.”
But the weariness of life on the road is starting to get to her a bit, and these yearlong tours will soon be a thing of the past.
“I had a birthday in Australia in December 2014, and I was 64 then,” Armatrading said. “When the tour ends, nine days later I’ll be 65. So that’s like two birthdays in one tour, so that tells you how long it is. After I’m 65, I don’t think I need to be on the road 18 months nonstop. … I’m at the stage of still really enjoying it. I don’t want to get to the stage of not enjoying it.”
Armatrading has consistently released albums since her debut in 1972, and her deep catalog contains as many spare folk confessionals as glossy, nervy, New Wave-influenced pop tunes. You can clearly hear the roots of Lillith Fair-era folk in Armatrading’s songs: Her introspective, poetic lyrics have inspired the likes of Tracy Chapman, the Indigo Girls and Melissa Etheridge.
She’s worked with several legendary rock producers over the years, including Steve Lillywhite (U2), Gus Dudgeon (Elton John) and Glyn Johns (The Who). But she’s always been intimately involved in the production and engineering of her work, although she wasn’t listed as a producer on her records until the 1986 album “Sleight of Hand.”
“Right from day one, I’ve been very involved in the productions,” Armatrading said. “From the beginning, I really should have had production credit. This is not a big complaint to put in the paper; I’m just telling you what it is. … On the last four albums, I’ve played everything myself apart from drums. And on the last one I did in 2012, I programmed the drums, so I was completely on my own.”
Armatrading is similarly on her own for this current tour. It’s the first time she’s toured as a solo act without the support of a touring band. But it’s not much of a difference, she said, from playing with a stable of musicians.
“I’m enjoying being on my own,” she said. “I wrote (the single) ‘Love and Affection’ on the guitar. I didn’t write all the arrangements all at once, so I know these songs from that perspective. It’s not a big revelation to me.
“But when I’m in the studio with musicians, I’m thoroughly enjoying their input. They’ve got the songs, they’ve got the stuff I need them to play, but I still need them to show off and be who they are. You’re working with them because they’re talented people. You not getting them in there to be robots.”
Reflecting on her four decades as a professional musician, Armatrading credits much of her artistic longevity to her fans.
“The audiences everywhere have been great to me,” she said. “They’ve been with me for all these years. As I’ve said many times, in order to sustain a long career, you can’t just have the people who were fans of yours in 1972. … You must have new people hooking up with your music throughout the years. So that’s really nice; you get different people every time, and you see that in the audiences.”