With her new album Suit Yourself and upcoming tour date in Cardiff, singer and songwriter Judith Owen talks to Charlotte Hardie-Watts about her success, emotion in musical performance and what the Welsh crowd can expect from her June show.
A Carmarthenshire native long settled in New Orleans, Judith Owen returns to Wales in early June, with a show in the Cabaret space at Cardiff’s Wales Millennium Centre. She’s also got a new album, Suit Yourself, to play for us, and she’s eager to talk about it.
“Suit Yourself is about being a powerful woman. I am drawing on all the things that I am, being the powerhouse, a band leader, an arranger, a pianist. So it’s every aspect of the artist and performer that I am and want to be.”
Working with an eclectic palette, Owen boils down her music to “a mix of jazz, blues, pop, rock and a bit of classical”. These various styles have differing virtues, she thinks: jazz, for example, “is about being a place that takes you away from all sorts of scary things happening around the world right now.” Conversely, when I bring up how language functions in song, Owen says, “That’s why I’m a classical baby – the music is the emperor of emotion without words.”
Owen dubs herself “the queen of bittersweet” and, with a 30-year recording career under her belt, channels what she’s experiencing – be it magnificent or painful – into her songs. Suit Yourself ends with Inside Out, a song she co-wrote with Jamison Ross, and where a choir assists her in bringing that gospel feeling to the album to wave us off in uplifting fashion. Stylistically, though, the whole thing is Owen’s sound, with songs stemming from initial writing sessions at the piano.
As a title, Suit Yourself feels like a manifesto, a way for Owen to be big and bold with herself as an artist. What, I ask her, does suiting herself actually mean at this point in her career? “Swagger and balls. And me being as big and brave as I always was. Everybody has a mutual desire for joy, escapism and entertainment at the moment.”
This, Owen thinks, might be the most fun she’s had in a career that started in 1996 with her debut album, Emotions On A Postcard. Since then, her definition of success has changed. “Personally, it’s about being healthy, and my music has gone hand in hand with that. It’s been the best form of self-medication.”
Being based in New Orleans, where she lives with her actor husband Harry Shearer, Owen’s definition of a successful iazz show has also changed. “The greatness that’s in this small environment [New Orleans] – it can be in bigger places like festivals but for the most part, it lives in those lightning-in-a-bottle live places.”
A series of American shows to mark Suit Yourself’s release went more than swimmingly, Owen says. “The reaction was the same everywhere I went, it was extraordinary. Seeing a whole audience be lifted and feel the way you feel.” The Callers – her backing band, drawn from the New Orleans scene – will be accompanying Owen to the UK. “It feels pretty good bringing back these players with me. They take it to another level of thrill and they do it with joy. I think it’s going to be quite an evening.”
And with the Cardiff show being one Owen is particularly looking forward to (“it feels like a homecoming”), Welsh audiences can expect something momentous from the singer, an emotional charge boosted by memories from Wales and beyond. There are two specific songs she’s excited to perform here. “Conway Bay! It’s such an emotional song, I could not not sing that. And then Inside Out. I always get the audience to join in.”
Judith Owen, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay, Thurs 4 June.
Tickets: £17-£20. Info: here
words CHARLOTTE HARDIE-WATTS
