Heidi Talbot

In association with Reveal Agency

Ireland has long been a fount of great female singers, but Heidi Talbot’s breakthrough solo release, 2008’s In Love + Light, swiftly assured her promotion to the premier league. Its artfully chosen mix of traditional and contemporary material, reinvented classics and little-known gems, and above all Heidi’s achingly bittersweet, spun-gold voice, won glowing reviews across three continents, a US Indie Acoustic Award and a Best Female Vocalist nomination in the Irish Music Awards. With critics mooting comparisons as diverse as Björk, Enya, Linda Ronstadt, Norah Jones and Kirsty MacColl, the album received widespread radio airplay and has been followed by two years’ solid gigging, both as headline act and sought-after special guest.

“What an impressive record this is. Very highly recommended.” Billboard

Recent career highlights, in a schedule that numbered nearly 150 shows in 2009, include supporting Eddi Reader on her 45-date UK and Irish tour - having sung on the Scottish chanteuse’s latest album, Love is the Way. In between fronting her own trio line-up, with her multi-instrumentalist partner John McCusker and Boo Hewerdine on guitar, Heidi has also featured frequently as opening act and backing vocalist with folk/rock supergroup Drever, McCusker Woomble, meanwhile lending her radiant tones to a string of albums by other leading artists, including Michael McGoldrick, Idlewild, Kris Drever and Sandy Wright.

Most of the above - including her partner, renowned multi-instrumentalist John McCusker - plus such fellow folk luminaries as Karine Polwart, Ian Carr, Alan Kelly and Andy Cutting, have now lent their talents in turn to In Love + Light’s hotly anticipated follow-up, The Last Star. Marking Heidi’s debut foray into songwriting, it also sees her engaging afresh with her traditional roots, while seeking out rarely- or never-recorded contemporary material. It simultaneously reaffirms all the expressive and interpretative magic of its predecessor, and extends it in arresting new directions – the sound of an artist who’s constantly seeking alternative ways to inhabit a song.

“A voice that’s both awestruck and tender” The New York Times

This singular breadth of eloquence rests on deep and extensive foundations. In Love + Light may have seen Heidi widely hailed as a major new talent, but its first seeds were sown years before in rural Co. Kildare, where she grew up as the middle of nine children, singing along to her Mum’s radio favourites and her brothers’ record collection – everything from Nana Mouskouri to the Pogues – as well as in the local church choir. After two years at Frank Merriman’s renowned Bel Canto singing school in Dublin, she moved to New York aged 18, and her voice has been her living pretty much ever since. Initially paying her dues in wedding bands, she then honed her craft around the Big Apple’s bars and clubs, soaking up influences, examples and experience.

Amidst the city’s vibrant Irish musical community, she eventually crossed paths with Joanie Madden, flute/whistle champion and founder/frontwoman of celebrated Irish-American group Cherish the Ladies – who just happened to be looking for a new lead singer soon afterwards. Heidi spent five happy years with the band, touring coast-to-coast and beyond, acquiring a veteran’s road-skills along with seasoned savoir faire in performing to crowds of thousands. At the end of 2007, though, after a warmly received solo release, Distant Future, three years previously, and with In Love + Light due out early the following year – with its launch at Glasgow’s world-famous Celtic Connections festival – it was time to go it alone. As outlined above, her feet have barely touched the ground since.

“Talbot is primed and ready for crossover success.” Colin Irwin, Daily Telegraph

Although based back in Ireland during her last year with Cherish, it was also around this time that Heidi relocated to Edinburgh, where she’s made her home with McCusker amidst Scotland’s thriving contemporary roots scene. The combined effect of putting down her own new roots in the city, and of all that concerted performing, fed directly into the making of The Last Star.

“I definitely feel the most settled I’ve been for years,” she says. “Quite a few musicians on the new records were also on the last one, but now I really know them as friends, as well as having gigged with most of them, so that made it loads easier and more relaxed in the studio. And I feel I’m finding my feet as a solo artist, not only as a performer, but also in terms of coming up with new material through the live side - working things out at sound checks, trying out different songs and arrangements.

“That’s one big difference with this album, compared to the last one: we’ve already been playing most of the songs for the past six months or a year, so by the time we recorded I’d really found how I wanted to do them. Quite a lot of the new material was written on the road, too: John and Boo wrote a couple of songs together, and John and I wrote another couple. He’d usually come up with the melody and leave it with me, and then I’d very gradually work on the words, keep changing them about, then changing them back, then changing them again. It’s another whole learning curve, another slow process of gaining confidence, but I’ve really enjoyed it.”

Other tracks combine traditional tunes with new words, or vice versa – with Heidi herself and Kris Drever both contributing in this vein – while two are early, little known compositions by Karine Polwart, written while she was in the Battlefield Band. There are also reinterpretations of such venerable classics as ‘Willie Taylor’ and ‘The Bantry Girl’s Lament’, and a cover of Sandy Denny’s ‘At the End of the Day’.

“It’s one of hers that nobody seems to know,” Heidi says of the latter, “but I’ve just loved it for ages.” It is, in fact, the only cover on the album that hasn’t been sourced from her immediate musical circle – in contrast to In Love + Light, which features songs by Tom Waits, Tim O’Brien, Jay Clifford and the Inkspots. “It wasn’t really a conscious decision to move away from covers, but it feels right for where I am,” she says. “I found myself leaning naturally more towards the traditional side again, and I felt at the same time that working with songwriters I know, as well as starting to write myself, was a way of being a bit more original, developing my own particular sound. There’s still a bit of disparagement attached to being ‘just a singer’ – which I don’t think is right at all, I totally believe there’s a place for singing other people’s songs, for the role of interpreter, but the way it’s perceived makes it harder to establish your own identity.”

Laudable though such high standards are, she needn’t worry. The only thing less likely than Heidi Talbot being called “just a singer” is that The Last Star won’t send her own star even more steeply into the ascendant.

Heidi’s new album The Last Star will be released July 2010. Produced by John McCusker and will feature Ian Carr, Ewen Vernal, Kris Drever, Roy Dodds, Eddi Reader, Andy Cutting, Phil Cunningham and more.

“Heidi Talbot sings in a voice that’s both awestruck and tender”
New York Times

“Talbot is exquisite. . .Björk combined with Enya” Village Voice