MUSICIANSHIP, honesty and compassion combine in Judith Owen's album Somebody's Child which challenges us to be more humane to our planet and fellow human beings.
The Welsh songstress promises an evening of "grown-up music and humour" when she brings her two-month-long European tour to Belfast next month.
Born the daughter of an opera singer, the acclaimed pianist, singer-songwriter and storyteller began writing songs as a teenager. When she became a professional musician, she met and married US comic actor and musician Harry Shearer, best known for his roles in This Is Spinal Tap and The Simpsons, and contributed vocals and keyboards to his 1994 album, It Must Have Been Something I Said. Her debut solo album, Emotions on a Postcard, was released in 1996.
Owen clearly loves variety in music and Somebody’s Child reflects her having melded different sounds and influences into a stylistic gumbo of her own, with voice and piano front and centre among the album's musical vignettes of life.
"The whole record is much more outward looking than my past albums. It's about recognising what is important in life and finding humanity," says Owen. As well as her own writing, the record features an adaptation of Aquarius from Hair and an unrecognisable makeover version of Bryan Ferry's More Than This.
"I know Bryan wrote it as a romantic song – but I came to it when I was on the road and people in my family had been ill. So for me it's about how nothing really means anything unless the people you love in your life are OK and are with you.
Owen penned the title track Somebody's Child in response to seeing a young homeless pregnant girl during winter in Fifth Avenue, New York.
"She was barefoot, off her head on drugs, pregnant and just wearing trash bags as her clothes – one covering her chest and one underneath her gigantic belly. I ran across the road to avoid her, as most people do. In doing so I thought ‘This is somebody’s child’. I could easily be in the same situation if I had a different life, different breaks, a different start. Or any of us [could].
"There is a compassion and humanity we all lack when we see a homeless person on the street and think 'Get away from me'. We’re all so dehumanised, and this whole record is about reconnecting with our humanity, really seeing what’s around us, discarding, even if it is just for a moment, our constant state of denial," adds a passionate Owen, who has also filmed a powerful accompanying video and will be sharing proceeds from her forthcoming concerts with homeless charities.
Owen has revisited Fifth Avenue a number of times since, but has never seen the girl again. "The image is engraved on my brain and I will never forget her. I can't imagine if she is still alive – I just don't know. But sadly every time I walk up there I see similar things."
Having suffered clincal depression herself, the line 'it could have been me', was even more poignant. "I know better than anyone how easy it is to fall off the edge. We are all born with different brains and psyches and while some of us get great parents who love them, many get horrendous parents who are abusive or drug addicts. It's really the cards you are dealt."
In 2010 Owen collaborated with Ruby Wax to write the stage show Losing It, on the subject of mental illness.
"Ruby is a good friend and Losing It started in The Priory about our lives. It was about destigmatising depression and getting it out in the open. We ended up taking it to the West End, it was a great experience," she recalls.
Describing herself as a "failed eco-warrior" due to the air miles she accumulates touring and travelling between her two homes in London and New Orleans, Owen tries her best to help the environment and penned the track Tell Your Children in response to a news report which said that at our present rate, we have 50 to 100 years at the most of normal life on Earth.
"Although we have energy alternatives, the fact is we are still oil driven and we are fracking. We have abused this planet faster than the ice age or anything else. We are a very complex animals and we are just wiping out everything in our paths. We have this brain which can do such good and worthy deeds and we have done such devastation and acts of cruelty."
As well as her general observations on life, Owen also personally reflects on life, death and love. She wrote No More Goodbyes for her late father. "I wrote it about the thing no-one admits to – the relief and release that none of you are in pain anymore when someone you see suffer lets go."
There are also a number of joyful songs on Somebody's Child including That's Why I Love My Baby and Mystery, which she describes as "the most honest love song I’ve ever written".
"It's about the hard job of sharing your life with a partner. How you come together and stay together is a bloody mystery, but it's worth it. I'm with someone who doesn’t go by the rules romantically," she says of husband Shearer, who features on her album on upright bass.
"However, he's my soul mate. Music and laughter is the thing that gets us through life. We don't have children because we both love to work and we are each other's biggest supporters."
Shearer, is of course known as the voice of almost two dozen characters on The Simpsons, including Homer's neighbour Ned Flanders and Mr Burns. And this month, Owen made her second appearance on the long-running animated comedy. Having appeared as herself on The Simpsons in the 13th season episode The Blunder Years, she was honoured to be asked to sing a spoof version of Shirley Bassey doing James Bond at the end of the 600th episode – Treehouse of Horror XXVII.
For her Belfast gig, Judith will be joined by the crème de la crème of Los Angeles session musicians – bassist Leland Sklar (James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Phil Collins), percussionist Pedro Segundo and cellist Gabriela Swallow who Owen points out "was born in Belfast".
"It will be very much a rollercoaster ride of moving and emotional songs but there will be a lot of joy and laughter in the show," she promises.
:: Judith Owen plays Belfast's Black Box on November 2. Blackboxbelfast.com
