By Martin Brady

Maura O’Connell

Walls & Windows (Sugar Hill)

“It’s the singer, not the song,” Mick Jagger wrote some 35 years ago in a now pretty obscure cut on the Rolling Stones’ December’s Children. Jagger’s self-indulgence aside, it’s an interesting concept to ponder, especially in Nashville, where songwriting rules.

But then there are artists like Maura O’Connell, whose remarkable voice has been the vehicle for dozens and dozens of songs written by the luminary likes of Lennon/McCartney, Shawn Colvin, John Hiatt, Tom Waits and Mary-Chapin Carpenter, as well as an array of Nashville-based and international writers such as Tom Kimmel, Patty Griffin, Paul Brady and Gerry O’Beirne. In her more Celtic moods, the Ireland native and longtime Nashville resident also sings traditional tunes whose lyrics derive from the poetical genius of William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney.

No, O’Connell is not a writer, a fact she’s well aware of. “I still can get defensive about that,” she says from beneath her curly red hair, looking and sounding every bit the Irish chanteuse. “The idea seems to be that you’re really not quite 'all there’ if you’re not writing songs as well as singin’ ’em too. I kinda got over that. But I’ve been asked the question so often. Your back does go up, and you can get terribly defensive, and you can say outrageous things.” Then she adds quickly with a smile: “At least I do.”

No matter. One only has to hear O’Connell sing to know she’s in the right business. Her Nov. 4 appearance at a fundraiser for Nashville’s St. Patrick’s Church found her in vintage form, mellifluously belting and crooning her way through a selection of personal favorites, from the heartrending Irish ballad “Teddy O’Neill” to the Van Morrison R&B classic “Crazy Love.” The event also dovetailed nicely with the Nov. 13 release of O’Connell’s seventh solo album, Walls & Windows (Sugar Hill), her first in four years.

Though she’s never reached superstar status, O’Connell has a dedicated following. She’s also the singer with whom great musicians like to jam, as evidenced by previous CDs under the production influence of such modern-day acoustic giants as Jerry Douglas and Bela Fleck. From the late 1980s through 1997, O’Connell’s recorded work was as distinctive instrumentally as it was vocally, with tight, snappy rhythm sections blending energetically with guitar, Dobro, fiddle, mandolin and the occasional Celtic accents of tin whistle or Uillean pipes.

The new album is produced by Ray Kennedy, whose affiliations with rootsy, iconoclastic musicians such as Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams are solidly reflected in at least two tracks—the album-opening “Every River,” co-written by Nashvillian Kim Richey, and the driving “Don’t Ask Why,” penned by Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith.

Nevertheless, a few more electric guitars don’t drastically change the overall shape of Walls & Windows, which means that it’s another tasteful Maura O’Connell project, filled with interesting musical selections captured by her rich, soulful singing. “Mostly what I liked was where the mix was,” she says. “That’s what I was going for, in terms of where the vocals are. I’d always wanted to be a part of the band.”

O’Connell keeps her philosophy of song selection simple. “I’m looking for greatness,” she says. “Again, I think that that’s the gift of being a singer and not a songwriter. I can pull from all the genres and keep it in the same vein of what I’m doing. They’re just 'songs,’ as opposed to country songs or blues songs or folk songs.... There is a huge advantage to not being the creator, to actually being the one who puts together a collection of songs—who says, 'These are great and I’m just gonna sing ’em, without any of the baggage that comes with writing them.’ ”

In the case of Walls & Windows, the song gathering was collaborative. “I went to several publishing companies myself,” says O’Connell, “and then Ray had some material sent to him by publishers. Since I was originally going to make this record for Rykodisc, I was ready to record it a year ago and I already had six or seven of these songs on my list. After I finally figured out that I was going to make the record for Sugar Hill, we convened again, and there was a whole bunch more songs to consider. So we went back to work. I never know what I’m doing till I’ve got all the songs together. Then the style of the material becomes this organic thing that directs itself.”

One writer whose work kept cropping up was Patty Griffin, three of whose tunes landed on Walls & Windows. “I’d never recorded three songs from one writer on any one album,” O’Connell says. “But I think she’s phenomenal, and a lot of the material hadn’t been put out, ’cause no one had cared to do it, except 'Poor Man’s House’ [which Griffin recorded on her first album]. Ray and I went in and I said, 'I like that...and I like that...and—hey, I can do ’em all if I want to.” (The two other Griffin tunes on the CD are the reflective “I Wonder” and a rootsy piece of somberness called “Long Ride Home.”)

Another writer with multiple cuts is North Carolinian Malcolm Holcombe, who is represented by the hauntingly gorgeous “A Far Cry” and the equally stirring “To the Homeland.” Says O’Connell, “His songs blew me away, just pure poetry.” Other tracks include Eric Clapton’s “I Get Lost,” originally a bossa nova tune in the hands of its creator, but here deftly reworked with Darrell Scott and John Mock’s sad, gentle guitar-picking and Mock’s sweet, low whistle-playing. “Ray found that for me,” O’Connell says. “I thought, 'Hey, I can do something different with this.’ ”

She also does something different with John Prine’s “Sleepy-Eyed Boy,” turning it from jaunty to lonely. Elsewhere, she offers classic Gaelic styling with Nashville favorite Jonell Mosser’s musical adaptation/co-write of the traditional Irish blessing “May the road rise to meet you,” and she nails a sultry rendition of “Crazy Love,” long overdue on CD.

If there’s one song that most closely captures the spirit of O’Connell’s new album, it’s Mary Ann Kennedy, Pam Rose and Randy Sharp’s “Walls,” a passionate, up-front ballad that tells it like it is. “And if there’s any hope for love at all,” she sings, “some walls must fall.”

O’Connell is now in her early 40s. Her voice is just a tad deeper than it was during her days as the young frontwoman for the Irish group De Danann and later as an up-and-coming, Grammy-nominated Warner Bros. recording artist. She’s lived in Nashville almost 16 years, though she does get back to the Emerald Isle often enough. She’s a mother now too (of son Jesse, soon to be 6). So life has changed a little. “I used to have a fairly active touring schedule,” she says, “but after my son was born I cut back. Now maybe 75 dates a year is probably the most I’d like to do. I wouldn’t want to do any more than that.” Then O’Connell muses: “But right now, since I’ve been doing so little, it’d be like a vacation to tour. You can really miss it.”

What hasn’t changed is the high-caliber artistry that drives her work. In the middle of a three-CD deal with Sugar Hill, O’Connell will have plenty more opportunity to put her special imprint on the songs she loves to sing. “For years I used to tell myself that if it all didn’t work out, I was gonna go home and get a real job. Finally—I’m not quite sure when it happened—I realized that this is what I was doing and there’s no going back now. I enjoy singing very much, and getting out to play is fun for me. It’s really not a chore.” O’Connell smiles. “Playing with great musicians...what more could you want?”

What hasn’t changed is the high-caliber artistry that drives her work. In the middle of a three-CD deal with Sugar Hill, O’Connell will have plenty more opportunity to put her special imprint on the songs she loves to sing. “For years I used to tell myself that if it all didn’t work out, I was gonna go home and get a real job. Finally—I’m not quite sure when it happened—I realized that this is what I was doing and there’s no going back now. I enjoy singing very much, and getting out to play is fun for me. It’s really not a chore.” O’Connell smiles. “Playing with great musicians...what more could you want?”