Nathan Arizona Illustration / Ec
The woman’s voice on my cell phone, calling all the way from the United Kingdom, is immediately recognizable — even though I’ve never heard Joan Armatrading speak.
Sounding similar to her contralto vocals, with a beautiful accent and anchored by years of experience in an industry that often chews artists up and spits them out after a few years, Armatrading still exudes the confidence she’s carried throughout her 43-year musical career.
At 64, the Caribbean-born rock, pop, folk, blues, soul and reggae singer-songwriter is in the midst of what will be her final major tour. The largely sold-out “Me Myself I” world tour includes a stop at the Wisconsin Union Theater’s Shannon Hall on Oct. 6.
“Please note that this is not my last tour,” Armatrading stresses, adding that she will embark on smaller tours but no longer make lengthy international treks. “I love touring, but I don’t want to get to the stage where it doesn’t excite me anymore. I am not retiring. I’m a songwriter; why would I retire?”
To emphasize her vastly intimate and personal songs, Armatrading will perform her entire set solo — stripping down cuts that span her entire body of work, including “Me Myself I,” “Willow” and “Drop the Pilot,” to guitar, piano and voice. That’s the way she wrote many of her songs, anyway.
“I have to make the songs different,” Armatrading says, explaining that “Love and Affection,” a top 10 hit in the UK, sounds different every time she plays it live, either with or without a band. “I’m the constant.”
When some artists dramatically rework their catalogs later in their careers — Bruce Hornsby comes to mind — the move meets with mixed results. But Armatrading wasn’t nervous about her audience’s reaction to hearing her songs in a different context. “This tour has been absolutely fantastic,” she says. “I wasn’t nervous at all. Other people around me were, but I wasn’t.”
Armatrading’s expansive career includes 18 studio albums, multiple Grammy and Brit Award nominations, seven honorary degrees and status as a member of the Order of the British Empire. She’s achieved great success in Britain, where she became the first female singer-songwriter from the UK to gain international success, debut at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Blues Albums chart (with 2007’s Into the Blues) and be nominated for a Grammy in the blues category. Nearly all of her albums charted in the UK, and four hit the top 10.
In the United States, by comparison, only two albums landed in the top 50: 1980’s Me Myself I (No. 28) and 1983’s The Key (No. 32). She also made a cameo appearance on one of Queen’s final albums, 1986’s A Kind of Magic.
Armatrading last toured the United States in 2010, in support of This Charming Life, a guitar-driven rock album issued by 429 Records (which also has released titles by the BoDeans, Cracker and Boz Scaggs). It failed to chart, despite some memorable cuts.
In 2013, Armatrading released her latest studio record, Starlight, a collection of hip, jazzy songs that celebrated the single life, longtime friendships and hypothetical love. In a bit of foreshadowing for her current tour, Armatrading performed all of the album’s music herself.
The “Me Myself I” tour began in April 2014 and has included shows in North America, Europe, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Ireland. Recent performance reviews suggest Armatrading’s singing voice hasn’t aged significantly over the years. She also has been chatty with her audience, making jokes about her age, recalling personal accomplishments and sharing social commentary.
Armatrading plans to record again, she says, “after I sit down for a while” following the final date of the tour in late November. And her independent streak shows no sign of subsiding.
“All I know is that I can only be myself,” the singer says. “I’m not looking to be anybody else. All I want to do is write the songs I want to write. I’m lucky that people want to hear them, and I’m glad they still want to come and see me.”