“I have found my voice,” sings Maria Doyle Kennedy on ‘The Silence’, a track from her beguiling new album, Sing. And what a voice. Sometimes melancholy, other times joyful, always passionate – elemental folk shot through with a potent soulful impulse.
Yet as a singer, Maria remains one of Ireland’s best kept secrets. Indeed the raven-haired Dubliner is probably more familiar as either Katherine of Aragon, nanny to the son of a serial killer or the estranged wife of the lovely Mr Bates from the three award-winning television series, The Tudors, Dexter and Downton Abbey.
That’s set to change with Sing, her fifth solo release proper. The 10-song collection was co-written with husband Kieran Kennedy, and features duets with Damien Rice, Paul Brady and, on the jawdroppingly beautiful ‘Yes We Will’, the legendary John Prine.
“John’s a hero of mine,” says Maria. “After we had written ‘Yes We Will’, I heard his voice singing in my head. I know that sounds insane, but I really did! I knew I had to get the song to him, and was overjoyed when he called me to say that he loved it and would record it with us. What an amazing singer and human being he is, like a big ball of grace on legs.”
She joins an illustrious cast who have shared a mic with Prine, among them Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Irish DeMent and Bonnie Raitt. But then it wasn’t for nothing that influential Irish music monthly Hot Press once described Doyle Kennedy as “the finest voice this country has ever produced”.
Rice features on the title track, “a lullaby for grown-ups”. He was always on Maria’s radar.
“I really hoped he would like it. He cares very much about what he does, in the same way as John Prine and Paul Brady, my other collaborators, do. I knew he would only agree to sing on that song with me if it moved him in some way. I was very happy that our singing together happened.”
As for Brady, she’s a long time admirer of his work and feels fortunate that he agreed to partner her on ‘Hola Luna’.
“He has quite a high voice and I have quite a deep voice. I thought the contrast would make a special sound. Again, he said he would be interested in collaborating if he could hear something that would suit him in the song. A couple of nail-biting days for me! After he had received the song he called to say he loved it and thought it would work.”
Maria has spent more than two decades performing all over the world before audiences ranging from tens of thousands at Glastonbury, Oxygen and the Cambridge Folk Festival, to hundreds in small, intimate theatres.
“Playing live gives me more pleasure than almost anything else. Something extra happens when you’re playing live. It’s the best way to share the songs, I think. The expression of them is different and affected by the people who are in the room. You’re sharing the songs with your audience.”
She honed her craft as a performer with the Black Velvet Band. They released two albums, When Justice Came and King Of Myself, before calling time in the mid-1990s. By then, Maria’s reputation was strong enough to earn her a place on Elektra Records’ 40th anniversary album, The Lady Sings The Blues, alongside Aretha Franklin, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Tina Turner and Annie Lennox.
In 2001, she made her solo bow with Charm on her own Mermaid label. It was an album that encompassed everything from unadulterated rock’n’roll to left-field Americana, with the kind of lyrical sensibility that suggested Lorca rewriting creepy Eastern European fairytales.
Two years later, Maria curated and sang on the Sirens anthology, bringing together many of the most innovative and independent female artists working against the mainstream – think Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, Neneh Cherry, Ani DiFranco and Lisa Germano.
Proving herself to be very much a Renaissance woman, her acting career gained in strength during the noughties. As well as a plethora of small screen roles, she has starred on the big screen in Albert Nobbs, for which Glenn Close received an Oscar nomination, and has just completed filming director Neil Jordan’s Byzantium.
While success as an actress is gratifying, and gives her “the opportunity to wear crown jewels every so often”, it isn’t how she wants to be defined.
“I am definitely a singer first. Singing is the thing, apart from my family, that gives me the most joy in the world. I love acting but I don’t ever miss it when I'm not working. I don’t ever spend a day without singing. I cannot imagine a world without music.”
Maria’s last two albums have demonstrated her evolving artistry. 2007’s Mutter was inspired by Chuck Palahniuk’s novel, Diary, about a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, while The Storms Are On The Ocean (2011) placed her in the Elizabethan world of haunting folk tales and murder ballads. Inarguably Sing is her most accomplished and accessible work yet, a celebration of “the power of the voice, the sound a group of people can make when lifting their voices together – the human act of singing”.
And it doesn’t stop there. Her plan is to tour Sing as much as her and Kieran’s four children will allow, and she’s contributing to the Uncommon Folk project re-imagining the songs that made America. Again, Doyle Kennedy’s burgeoning status finds her rubbing shoulders with luminaries like Glen Campbell, Robin Zander, The Blind Boys of Alabama and Mavis Staples. She belongs in such exalted company.
This biography was provided by the artist or their representative.