Armatrading Continues Her Charming Life

Singer/Songwriter Comes to Long Beach Terrace Theater Aug. 7

By Charles Karel Bouley
karel@gayblade.com

“Is she the one that sounds like Tracy Chapman?”

That’s a question often posed when explaining the musical wonderment of Joan Armatrading. Since the release of 1972’s Whatever For Us, the European-based singer-songwriter has consistently satisfied lifelong fans and created new ones. Her success abroad is undeniable; America has welcomed her throughout the years, but never with the commercial success it has awarded some female singer-songwriters cut from the same cloth.
Armatrading is touring and doing interviews in support of her 20th album, This Charming Life, and in her own words, “This would be a great album for America, if they would just give it a listen.”
This Charming Life is a return to Armatrading’s rock and pop roots. She played every instrument on Charming, as well as on her previous two albums — an undertaking not foreign to her, but one she doesn’t repeat live.
“It hasn’t changed much, really,” she told the BLADE. “When I do my demos, and back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I was writing, playing, doing my arrangements. It’s not that different, except I’m doing it on records now and not demos.”
Armatrading, who said she “should expect to be 60 this December,” is reflecting a little more on Charming.
“I’ve written songs called ‘I’m Lucky,’ ‘Blessed,’ and I’ve written ‘This Charming Life.’ They’re all songs saying ‘thank you very much’ for the life I’ve been given, I’ve really enjoyed it, I’ve really appreciate it, and I want to say it someplace outside of my head,” she explained. “I actually think a lot of people have a charming life if they would just step back and take a look at it.”
Nevertheless, she acknowledges many singers, particularly pop/rock performers, don’t often tour or worry about releasing new projects. Armatrading, however, is not one to sit still. She can’t.
“When people say to me, ‘what inspires you, what keeps you going, why is it that you do what you do,’ I say, ‘I’m alive.’ It’s a simple as that to me,” she stated. “As long as I’m alive, I’m going to be interested in things. I don’t need another motivation.”
Plus, she added, as long as people continue to fall in love, fall out of love and experience unrequited love, she will always have something about which to write.
“Everything happens over and over again. I write about people’s relationships with each other, the emotions they go through, the falling in love, how people treat each other,” she said. “Two people fall in love and both react to love in a very different way. [Whether it] happened in 1972 — the year my first record was released — or in 2010, they’re still falling in love the same way. People are still having conflict within that love; they still fall passionately in love with one and have an affair with another. It’s all still going on, but within that part that is still going on, you have differences.”
One thing that isn’t too different for Armatrading is the industry that first put her on the road to success almost 40 years ago, despite how different the artists’ pool looks like.
“The [music] industry hasn’t changed for me,” she said. “The business goes through all these changes. But, like most industries, when [big change] happens — like technology advancements — of course things get displaced. If you had a telephone when [telephones were invented], [writing letters] went out a little. When e-mail came in, traditional mail declined. The dynamics change in the industry, but it’s the same thing. For me, it’s ‘write songs, put them out.’”
There is, however, a caveat, she added.
“It’s harder for everyone in the recording industry, because of how certain things went when people stopped appreciating that someone producing music didn’t just sit down and have it happen by osmosis; somebody had to sit down and create it,” she said. “And in the creating of it, it costs people to do that and it has value. If you want to have music of a certain level, it has to have the name ‘professional’ attached to it, which means that’s the thing you do the most. You’re not someone with another job; you’re doing this for a living. And many don’t think like that. They think music just ‘happens.’ It doesn’t just happen and it has value.”
Armatrading’s fan base supports the belief that value in music results in universal appreciation of it.
“When I talk to people about my songs, a gay man and a straight man say the same things about the songs; the people say the same things — men, women, they all still feel the same about love and life underneath,” she said.
Armatrading plays at the Long Beach Terrace Theater Aug. 7. For more information, visit www.joanarmatrading.com or www.longbeachcc.com.