What dreams may come

Hot Press meets Imelda May in the studios of Today FM, where she has just completed an interview with Ian Dempsey. The presenter brought up the subject of one of Imelda’s first serious vocal performances – singing the jingle for a Findus Fish Fingers advert aged 14 – and even prevailed upon her to sing a snippet of the tune. Whilst the request was unexpected, Imelda coped with ease and performed the number with considerable aplomb.

Though she retains her distinctive Dublin accent, May has in fact lived in London for the past 10 years. She started her musical career playing in various bands around Dublin (there were many late night jam sessions with the likes of Hothouse Flowers and Richie Buckley), before moving to the UK when she met her husband, Darrell Higham. Was she straight into playing music when she relocated to London?
“It took me about six months or so to find my feet,” recalls Imelda, sitting across from Hot Press in a quiet corner of the Today FM offices. “I went over with Darrell, who’s a guitarist, and he was doing very well over there. The first band I played with was called Fat Jacket. He was the first fella to take a chance on me really, and coincidentally, he now works with Jools Holland. He’d been telling Jools, ‘I know this singer’, but of course that doesn’t have any weight to it at all. Then I was with a few different bands, like Blue Harlem, and Mike Sanchez, who’s quite a well known boogie-woogie player over there.
“I learned a lot from them. Then my spots started getting longer and longer; it went from, like, three songs to 10 songs. So I thought, ‘I may as well get my own band together’, cos I wanted to do my own songs. That was within the past couple of years. I just got itchy feet, and I’d learned as much as I could being with other bands. It was great fun, and I got to meet loads of great musicians, and had a blast along the way, but I was itching to get my own band going.”
Imelda built up a devoted following through her live performances, and got a big break when she was invited to play on Later With Jools Holland. As she alluded to earlier, her appearance came about not through her acquaintance with Holland’s collaborators, but a slightly more circuitous route.
“We were doing a gig up in Sheffield, and the guy who booked us mentioned it to an agent,” explains Imelda. “That turned out to be Jools Holland’s agent, and they asked about us. My lovely manager chased it up, and he got us almost like an audition gig. We were told we got one gig, and it was very much that they were gonna watch and see how it went. It went very well, and the audience reaction was great. Then we got sent a whole list of dates, and they said, ‘Pick which ones you can do.’
“So we did a load of dates with him, and he was very good to us. He stood by the side of the stage and watched us. He said, ‘You’ve been doing this a while, you should be doing better. I’m going to put you on my show.’ He put us on his radio show first, and then on Later. Natalie Cole was supposed to be on, but she got sick, and I got a call. I was in me mam’s in Dublin, and they said, ‘You’re on Later in two days.’ We’d no record company backing, which is unusual. So he really took a chance on us, and it was very nice of him.”
Undoubtedly the strongest influence on Imelda’s music is rockabilly. How did she first become acquainted with the genre?
“When I was about 13-years-old, I learned the words of a Buddy Holly interview,” remembers Imelda. “I knew it back-to-front. When you’re that age, you get a bit obsessed. So I was into that, and I stole my brother’s tapes of Elvis, Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson. Then I got into the jazz side when I heard Billie Holiday.
“So I looked into that end of it, and I got into the bluesier side of what she was doing. I also got into Howlin’ Wolf in a big way, and Elmore James. I loved how they could make very simple songs really work. My husband, Darrell, is a great rockabilly guitarist, so when I was writing my own material, he was constantly playing rockabilly stuff.
“So it kind of re-ignited my love for rockabilly all over again. I’d never lost it, but as I was writing, it was seeping back into my head, as were blues, jazz and all the other things that I absolutely love. But I love the fun of rockabilly. I think music has been missing a bit of fun for a while, so it would be good to bring some of that back.”

Love Tattoo is out now on Universal