Joan Armatrading - Live at Asylum Chapel (Contains Signed Insert)

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I recently watched the new animated lyric video for “Natural Rhythm”. The animation is so vibrant, playful, and witty. I’d love to know about the concept behind the animation. She was seven when she moved to Brookfields, then a district of Birmingham, to join her parents, who had come over a few years earlier. I'm just listening to them and enjoying them. Because they have done it. I don't need to do a bad version of them.”

I decided not to tour, to do any extensive touring after 2018, but when I did the album, I really liked the album and I thought it would be great to do a show, having the new songs, and do a show in the way that I do, which is old and new songs. I’m really glad I did it because we really had a great time. The reception for the concert has been great. Anybody who’s seen it has seemed to absolutely love it, so I’m hoping you were one of those! [laughs] Around 1988, she wrote a song called The Shouting Stage after watching a heated argument between a couple in an Australian restaurant that resulted in the man storming off, leaving the woman in tears.

laughs] I’ll own up to it being recorded. The place that we were at, the internet access was not great. We would have been stopping and starting every two seconds. I couldn’t put that on people. It’s too worrying. I have heard too many scary stories of people doing “live” livestreams and it’s going horribly wrong. [laughs] I didn’t want to put myself through that thing. Of course, we played live and treated it as a live show. It was fantastic. We really enjoyed it. Once you get the people joining in, that's when it becomes what it needs to become, whether you're talking to me, the Beatles, Taylor Swift or whoever.”

Since 1986, she has been producing herself in the studio and since 2003 been playing almost all instruments on her records.From her arrival in Birmingham from the Caribbean island of St Kitts, to the release of her self-titled breakthrough album in 1976 and all the years since, she has remained steadfast in her independence. I have to say, the song that excited me during the livestream was “Mama Mercy”. You could have heard me shout “Yes!” all the way from New York. I’ve always wondered what was the driving force behind that song when you wrote it?

Unlike many artists, the singer-songwriter behind timeless songs such as Drop The Pilot and Love & Affection has achieved longevity through consistency and gentle evolution. She also tells me about Mark Knopfler, frontman of Dire Straits, who wrote one of their biggest hits, Money For Nothing, after a throwaway exchange with a shop clerk. Congratulations on the livestream concert. I had the privilege of being in the virtual audience. The concert began streaming at 8:00 p.m. At 7:59 p.m., I thought, I wonder how Joan is feeling right now. I always say that I knew Love & Affection would be liked,” she muses. “And I knew it would have some success if people heard it. Because this is a live album, Armatrading cannot play all the instruments, but she does bring together a group of very talented musicians, namely: Jennifer Maidman (Bass), Paul Stewart (Drums), Alex Lee Richards (Keyboards), Jamie Anderson (Saxophone). This band works as a tight unit and brings new life to the music. It is clearly Armatrading’s show, but she allows her band to demonstrate their own individual talents as well.No, because I needed us to see each other at some point and not just the day we were doing it. That was quite important that we could see each other and kind of socialize a bit, if you like, and chat in between things. Of course the first day all the cameras were coming in and the rigging was going up and the lighting was getting done, so it was quite a confusing first day with lots of stuff going on. Although we were playing, it was interrupted all the time. The third day, we just did the show. It was great. It does have a lot of value. The value is that I've lasted this long,” she offers with a warm yet steely laugh. This is a great live album. Live At Asylum Chapel is a great example of what can be done with live albums and how they can be a wonderful history of an artist. She is smart to include new and old songs, hits as well as deep album cuts. It is a very slight glimpse into an artist who has released 20 studio albums and four live albums. This is a great overview of her career and might push the listener to dig into her catalogue and discover this truly talented individual. I’m quite good at singing the arrangements. I’d heard an interview with Wynton Marsalis and he said exactly the same thing. He said when he writes he can hear the arrangements so that’s kind of like that. I knew that I wanted it to be very rhythmic, and drums were the way to go, really. That’s where I started. I didn’t start with, Is it going to be on the piano or the guitar? I started with, What’s the rhythm of this? Then I worked on the drums. Knowing what you want in the arrangements, things will suggest themselves to you as you go along.