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

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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. 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] It's just that it works for me to be the person who does what I do. That's the only reason. I can do all those things therefore I will do all those things.”

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. It’s quite difficult. I wanted people to hear old songs but I wanted to make sure that they knew that there were songs from then till now. I didn’t want to do loads of old songs, which I don’t do anyway on my tours. I always mix it. I started with something from 2007, then I went to 1976, then I went to 1975, then to 2018, so you’ve got this nice kind of up and down thing, not a “chronological date” thing going through. I try and have a show build so that you start off and it climaxes. You get this nice kind of a thing at the end where you’re just jumping!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.

Her musical tastes have always extended beyond those heard on her records – she tells me her recent listening has included the American rappers Wiz Khalifa and Desiigner. Selected items are only available for delivery via the Royal Mail 48® service and other items are available for delivery using this service for a charge. I love listening to other people do it. It's wonderful. It's really interesting. But again, you need to do what makes you feel really good.” 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? Joan Armatrading came into the consciousness of music lovers in 1972, with her debut album Whatever’s For Us. She was known as a singer-songwriter and her reputation grew throughout the past 50 years. Not only did she firmly established herself on the charts in Europe and the UK, but also developed as an incredible writer and musician. In fact, Armatrading has produced and played every instrument on her albums since 2003. She has her loyal fan base in North America but she is a chart topper throughout Europe and her adopted home in England (she was born in St. Kitts and moved to the U.K. when she was seven). This concert, recorded at the historic and iconic Asylum Chapel in London highlights everything brilliant about this artist. Her songs, her musicianship, and her wonderful voice. This album is being released alongside her first book, a selection of her lyrics titled The Weakness In Me: Selected Lyrics. All of these releases are to assist Armatrading in celebrating her 50th anniversary in music.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. As a creator that's what you do. You observe. You are present. You can see those things that would creep in and make a song. That's how it works.”

Yes, I couldn’t wait to see what you had in store for us. I’d detected that it was going to be a pre-recorded situation but it still felt exciting because it’s a concert that’s never been seen. All of us could experience it together in real-time. After a year-and-a-half of going through the pandemic, we’ve become accustomed to seeing artists stage livestreams on different platforms. The production values of your concert — sound, lighting, camera angles — were top quality.Although her debut was release in 1972, her breakthrough came four years later with her self-titled album, which contained the hit Love & Affection. 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. Monroe, Jazz (5 May 2021). "Joan Armatrading Announces New Album Consequences, Shares Song: Listen". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 27 December 2021 . Retrieved 26 December 2021. 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. I was looking at different places. Somebody suggested one place. I looked at it and I thought it’s alright but it actually looks quite cold. I just looked around for something that I thought was really atmospheric and I found Asylum Chapel. I thought that’s really good because it’s sort of run-down, but it’s run down in the best possible way. It’s got an incredible atmosphere.

laughs] That’s it! I think — and I think I’m right — that it’s a rare thing for two people to fall in love simultaneously. I think that when you have love at first sight, it’s going to be one person who sees another and falls in love and then hopes that they catch up, and that’s what “Already There” is: “You just told me you loved me for the very first time” — that’s them catching up. Then you’ve got a beautiful happy ending love story. Sheffield, Rob (18 June 2021). "The Eternal Cool of Joan Armatrading". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 27 December 2021 . Retrieved 27 December 2021. At the time of writing that song and “Kissin and A Huggin'”, “Help Yourself,”“Like Fire”, all of those things, I was very much into strong acoustic guitar-playing. I mean I still am, but I was really like, “I need to hit this thing really hard”. I needed the rhythm, so that’s why I would come up with those types of very rhythmic, percussive “digging in” songs. That would have been the motivation behind all of those ones that I’m mentioning — to play aggressive guitar. Of course, the livestream was a fantastic way to experience some of the new songs on Consequences. I loved seeing you dance around to “Natural Rhythm”. It’s impossible not to move to that song. In thinking of the record, I’d love to know more about the interplay between the bass and the drums on that song. Baltin, Steve (6 July 2021). "Q&A: Joan Armatrading On 'Consequences,' Songwriting And More". Forbes . Retrieved 26 December 2021.It does have a lot of value. The value is that I've lasted this long,” she offers with a warm yet steely laugh. At 15 she left school and worked in the office at the Rabone Chesterman factory, a company who made spirit levels and rules. At 16 she performed live in Birmingham for the first time.