It’s hard to believe, but Joan Armatrading doesn’t like to talk about her voice. “I know nothing about it,” she said abruptly, when asked why most interviews tended to overlook that aspect of her performances. “I don’t know what I would say.” You can’t egg her on with earned praise either, noting the amazing versatility of her vocal modes, from rock, folk, and jazz to the deepest American strain of the blues. (“Muddy Waters should have been my father,” she has often said.) Her sense of drama is high, too, especially in classics like “Love and Affection,” “Down to Zero,” and obviously “Show Some Emotion.”
But this isn’t what interests her about herself. “I suppose I sang a lot when I was in school like we all do,” said Armatrading, who was born on the Caribbean island Saint Kitts but raised in Birmingham, England. “But I don’t think I stood out and didn’t kind of go into the choir.” And she never sang hymns to the birds as she skipped home from lessons. “No,” she laughed. “And I wouldn’t do that now either.”
Armatrading, on the phone from Chicago last week, had just finished her 133rd show in what she’s promised is her last big tour: “I’ll go out and perform again, but just for one-month excursions.” She’s playing solo on this tour, which is something she hasn’t done since her first United States tour in the mid-1970s, but she’s nonplussed being out there alone. “I get nervous no matter, whether I’m with a band or by myself,” she confessed. It’s just the walking out and getting started that’s bad. “Once I hit the third or fourth bar, I’m okay,” she said.