For a while there, Maura O'Connell's website brandished the subtitle "Just a Singer," but that ironic tag has evolved into an ever-changing set of comments from the cheeky (and accurate) "Just a Wonder" to the very sensible, lower-key suggestion that we "Just Listen."

From her first recorded appearance as a lead vocalist with the celebrated traditional Celtic group DeDanaan in 1981, to her tenth and latest solo disc, Don't I Know, O'Connell has married an unmistakable deep, rich, flexible voice and her signature talent for finding what's most potent in the work of a select but broad array of genre-jumping songwriters, to pull the listener right along with her--to the heart of a song.

Don't I Know, produced by her long-time collaborator, the dobro master Jerry Douglas, may be the most eclectic O'Connell collection yet, as it ventures from a contemplative turn on rising new singer-songwriter Mindy Smith's "Goin' Down in Flames" to a surprising, surging rock take on Nashville hit-maker Hillary Lindsey's "Spinning Wheel."

"This one does mark another transition," O'Connell says of her second Sugar Hill release, the follow-up to 2001's Walls and Windows. "I wanted to develop the area of singing harder, a little edgier, and with guitars. Still,for me, the song is always the main deal--rather than the style."

If the songs Maura O'Connell renders so affectingly vary across genres, from occasional tones of old Ireland to sparkling new jazz or pop, from revisited classics by Van Morrison or Lennon and McCartney to songs of new American songwriters unheard till she's found them, there is at least one recognizable pattern in most all of them -- lyrics that set the stage for the song, laying down a context, in surroundings, or mood, or the passing of time, then home in on a very specific vignette of love and life. (The title of one of the new songs "Love You in the Middle," pretty much nails the theme.)

O'Connell inhabits the song's situation; seeing the songs as drama, has led her repeatedly to certain writers, such as Patty Griffin, precisely because of their "ability to create characters" in swift strokes.

So maybe it's no surprise that Martin Scorsese cast Maura, scruffed up for the role, as an Irish migrant street singer in his recent 19th century epic The Gangs of New York. It's less known that the marriage of music and narrative was part of O'Connell's world almost from the beginning.

Born and raised in County Clare, Ireland, she was the third of four singing sisters, but it wasn't ancient Celt folk tunes in which that household was drenched--but their singing mother's collection of light opera, opera, and parlor song records.

"I'm sure that those have something to do with how I approach singing," O'Connell says now. "I was aware of singing as an art form in itself." With that awareness, and her focus on singing, she has always been most interested in tunes "that haven't been performed by other people." That was a key reason her first public role as lead singer with the tradition-oriented DeDannan never felt entirely comfortable, and the reason why, in the midst of that folk success, she was so attracted to the experimental roots music of America's New Grass Revival when the bands' paths crossed.

"They were instrumentalists who were not bound by the history of their instruments, from a generation who grew up listening to bluegrass, and the Beatles, and jazz. They brought all of that along, and pushed the envelope really far. There was an exciting feeling of creativity there--and a complete disregard for what anyone thought!"

She would follow that sound to America--and to Nashville, Tennessee. Newgrass masters such as banjoist Bela Fleck and Jerry Douglas (who's appeared on all of O'Connell's discs but one) and a floating contingent of adventurous Nashville hands have provided back-up and production for most of her recorded work--including the Grammy-nominated Helpless Heart and Blue is the Color of Hope for Warner Brothers, Stories and the Irish-oriented Wandering Home for Hannibal/Rykodisc, and the two Sugar Hill discs. The very flexible--and ace--Bryan Sutton and Jonathan Trebing (on acoustic and electric guitars), Viktor Krauss (on bass) and Shannon Forest (on drums) are the core backing band on Don't I Know--with musical textures added by everything from fiddles, to clavinets, to lap steel and B-3 organ.

If today her songs are often from the pens of unclassifiable Nashville mavericks--Jim Lauderdale, Kim Richey and Tim O'Brien are three on the new one--it's only natural; O'Connell has made her home in Music City U.S.A. for some 18 years now. "I'm a product of my environment, I suppose; when I was in Ireland, I knew many people from that scene; most of the songs I hear now, I hear here! People here know what I'm like;I've kind of grown up, and my point of view has changed, with life circumstances much different now than they were when I recorded my first album in '83. Changes have come, people have died, which happens as you get older. In fact, I'm looking forward to going out with the new songs on this record. I don't get out as much, since I've had a son--who's just turned eight."

There's a sense of the passing of time and the losses that come along with it in Maura's music now--and certainly, a higher percentage of tunes that look at the perplexities of life. But even that tone sends her back to the song as song. "Songwriters become more lyrical and poetic, more ruminative, and more in touch with the world's soul, when they're nice and depressed and pondering about it, O'Connell laughs.

If her broad musical interests have been essentially consistent over the 20-plus years of her recording career, the more mature Maura O'Connell is also sounding more self-assured than ever before, utterly ready to take us on that voyage to the center of the song one more time.

And by now, we're assured that she'll get us there. Just listen.

MAURA O'CONNELL, captivating stylist ...introspective chanteuse ... musical explorer... songwriter's singer.

Whatever label one attaches to Maura O'Connell, there are precious few singers with the natural ability to delve so deeply into a vast array of musical material, inhabiting each note and every space between each note with such conviction that both performer and listener are left unquestionably moved and unexpectedly exposed.

With Walls and Windows, the Irish-born O'Connell continues to build on the strong foundation that is her spectacular voice, and reinforces that foundation with delicate glimpses both inward and outward, thus earning her latest album--her first for Sugar Hill--it's apropos title.

She's also satisfied eager fans awaiting a new release since 1997's much-heralded Wandering Home, the luminescent valentine to her birthplace. Most significantly, once again, Maura O'Connell has assembled a collection of songs to which she feels a deep personal connection. "I work very much on how I feel about things, and different gut-level emotions," O'Connell says of her organic approach. "I listen to songs, not looking to create a tableau. I eventually find that the tableau has been created somewhat, but I'm not aware of it at the time. I really just get together with a bunch of songs that I really like, because I think that's a category all by itself:"really good songs."

As with each of her previous recordings, the musical landscape of Walls and Windows is varied and the sources of Maura's inspiration are numerous.

Chief among the many highlights are a heartbreaking take on Eric Clapton's "I Get Lost," a driving version of Ron Sexsmith's "Don't Ask Why", and a joyous reading of Van Morrison's "Crazy Love".

Although each tune has another artist's name attached, the true marvel among the dozen tracks on Walls and Windows is the effortlessness with which Maura molds them into her own pieces of art, discovering untold beauty and nuance along the way.

Perhaps most significant are the multiple contributions of songwriters Patty Griffin ("Poor Man's House", "I Wonder", "Long Ride Home") and Malcom Holcombe ("A Far Cry" and "To the Homeland"), whose distinctive gifts are enhanced by O'Connell's obvious regard for them.

"If you're a singer and you're looking for songs", she says, "it's always going to be about the truth of the words and the beauty of the music."

Once destined to take over the family's fish shop started by her grandmother in the town of Ennis in County Clare, music was an integral part of Maura's childhood, growing up the third of four singing daughters, with a mother who also sang.

"When you had a voice and you could sing, you almost had elevated status in the community. I guess I was aware of that in my whole family, because of my mother. Everyone knew us. We were all "Amby Costello's daughters." Not my father's, because he wasn't from the town that my mother was! They'd say, "Oh, you're Amby Costello's daughter, you can sing. Sing us a song."

Maura O'Connell began her professional musical journey during a six-week tour of America in 1980, as vocalist for the traditionally-based Celtic group DeDanann. The following year, she was featured on the band's landmark album, The Star-Spangled Molly, which became something of a national phenomenon in her homeland, not unlike the 1993 compilation, A Woman's Heart, (featuring Maura and several other popular Irish female artists), a copy of which was estimated to be in every single home in Ireland.

"I really felt like such a fraud the whole time," she says of he early days with DeDanann. "Even though I was enjoying the gigs and all that stuff, I really didn't feel it was me that was being represented."

Soon, Maura had left DeDanann and moved to a flat in Dublin, eventually making her way to Nashville, to record her first solo album. Though she says that record (little-known in the U.S.) proves she was "just flailing around in the dark before I could focus on the songs themselves," her time in Dublin and her early trips to Nashville were spent making important connections that would eventually lead to record deals with independent Philo/Rounder and, more significantly, with major Nashville label, Warner Bros., though her tenure there proved short-lived.

Maura says of the experience: "It had me seriously considering whether I should go home and get into the family business...again, as I do in my life occasionally. I can't anymore, because it's sold, but I was debating at that point whether it was worth my while hanging around."

Hang around she did, earning a Grammy nomination for 1989's Helpless Heart, and following it up with two more acclaimed albums before moving on to the Hannibal/Rykodisc label in 1995, for another pair of releases.

All the while, she collaborated with Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck, Tim O'Brien and other top-flight acoustic players, furthering Nashville's reputation as a center of musical eclecticism. Throughout her career, Maura has also made dozens of guest appearances on other artist's albums, including those of Dolly Parton, Van Morrison, Rosanne Cash and her longtime producer, Dobro player extraordinaire, Jerry Douglas.

Walls and Windows, her first album in a decade not to be produced by Douglas, was produced instead by Ray Kennedy. Known for his sparkling, inventive approach to acoustic music ranging from rambling alt-country to all-out rock and roll, Kennedy's producer credits include working with Steve Earle (as "the twangtrust"), Lucinda Williams and David Allan Coe.

In recent months, Maura has also made four trips to Rome to be a "featured extra" in a new Martin Scorsese film, Gangs of New York, portraying, to no one's surprise, a singer, (although she hasn't seen a "final cut" confirming that she'll actually appear in it when it's released at Christmas time.)

Pretty heady stuff for a woman who routinely proclaims she's "just a singer," but Maura has rarely wavered from that notion in her lifetime. "Whether I was doing what I'm doing now, or if I'd stayed in Ennis and had taken over the shop, I'd still be a singer. I'd still have to perform somewhere. That would be my identity. It's just that now, there's a few more people who know about me." And those who don't will be catching on soon.

--Written by Steve Betts Autumn 2001. Return to top.

(Following is the "official biography" released with "Wandering Home" in 1997.)

In times past they would have billed her as a "chanteuse."

"I'm a singer, a song interpreter" says Maura O'Connell.

Since her U.S. debut fourteen years ago, the internationally-acclaimed stylist has applied her luminescent voice to the songs of John Hiatt, Janis Ian, Tom Waits, Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Paul Carrack, Karla Bonoff and dozens of other song poets.

Along the way, she has earned a Grammy Award nomination and multi-platinum sales success in her native Ireland. She continues to impress with the release of WANDERING HOME, a selection of traditional Irish songs as extraordinary as her undeniable talent.

"I have a mandate", says the critically applauded O'Connell, "and that is to bring back honor to the art of singing. Not every singer can write, just as not every writer can sing. Historically, what I do has been proven as an art form on it's own. Nobody says to an opera singer, "Why didn't you write that?"

"To me, being an interpreter is a tremendous art."

Through five esteemed U.S. releases, O'Connell has specialized in passionate yet respectful renditions of lyrics that stand the test of time. Her art has nothing to do with over-embellishing songs with vocal acrobatics and everything to do with communication.

Her musical peers have led the cheering section for this simple yet eloquent philosophy. O'Connell has been summoned to sing with, among others, Van Morrison, James Taylor, Nanci Griffith, Dolly Parton, Bonnie Raitt, The Chieftains and Roseanne Cash - each a genre-defying stylist ideal for O'Connell's liberated musical vision.

"A good song is a good song," says O'Connell. "That's why I sing songs from such diverse corners of the globe and from such diverse corners of the poetic spectrum. A good song doesn't have to be a 'country' good song or a 'blues' good song. It can stand on its own. It can live in the time it's written, in the time past and in the time future. That's what I aim for."

As a live performer, O'Connell is well on her way to achieving that goal. "My one vanity is that I can pretty much win over any audience - just get me in front of them. When I sing live, it is more intense. I am a singer who's like an actor. The emotion that comes from seeing what I do - my body, my personality, the banter, the energy from the crowd - has a much to do with how I sing a song as why I sing it."

In an artistic odyssey that has led from small-town Ireland (she grew up in County Clare) to Music City, USA, O'Connell first came to prominence as part of the traditional group De Danaan.

With O'Connell as lead singer, the band recorded THE STAR SPANGLED MOLLY, it's most successful album and one that spawned two Irish hit singles. When people began to refer to O'Connell as "Molly", she quit the group and recorded her first solo album.

During this time she met and grew smitten with the virtuoso American band New Grass Revival. Despite the fact that she had become a huge star in her homeland, the group's dazzling instrumental skills eventually enticed her to Nashville, where in 1987, she began a new phase of artistic experimentation in the city's acoustic music scene.

Just as she had done in Ireland, O'Connell started sitting in with pickers she liked. In short order she was the vocalist of choice among the musicians who were redefining instrumental music - Mark O'Connor, Jerry Douglas, Edgar Meyer, Russ Barenberg, Bela Fleck and other Nashvillians who were forging the jazz-inflected style that became known as "new acoustic music."

"I grew so much during that period of my life," she recalls, "musically, socially, in every way. Whole new vistas opened up to me."

This instrumental community also became a big part of JUST IN TIME, issued by Philo/Rounder as her stateside album debut in 1988.

As the critical praise poured in, Warner Bros. picked up her contract and released HELPLESS HEART in 1989. O'Connell was nominated for a contemporary folk Grammy the following year, and the subsequent albums, A REAL LIFE STORY (1991), BLUE IS THE COLOUR OF HOPE (1992) and STORIES (1995) added luster to the singer's rising star.

O'Connell's versions of "Living In These Troubled Times" and Cheryl Wheeler's "Summer Fly" became standout tracks on the 1993 album A WOMAN'S HEART, on four all-female overseas tours and on the 1994 follow-up album in her homeland. A WOMAN'S HEART 2 features her heartfelt renditions of Nanci Griffith's "Trouble in the Fields" and Gerry O'Beirne's "Western Highway."

WANDERING HOME is O'Connell's Irish album, a record that took nearly 15 years to make and it seals her reputation as a modern-day chanteuse.

By transforming lyrics and music into intimate portraits of human life, she offers soulful consolation on simply living it. The ultimate singer's singer, O'Connell's gems are worth hearing again and again.

Written by Randy Moomaw