A few years ago, Joan Armatrading had the blues. This year she’s happy again.
It’s not as simple as it sounds, though.
Armatrading has always tried to ignore the lines between different styles of music, and her string of ’80s hits freely blended bits of rock, jazz, folk, soul and reggae.
But in 2007, Armatrading, who hadn’t had an album of new material in four years, released “Into the Blues,” which was as direct and powerful an album as any she’d ever made. But it was — as the title suggests — an album full of straight-up blues, marked definitively by her powerful six-string style. It was authentic enough that it hit No. 1 on the blues chart and garnered a Grammy nomination.
This year, Armatrading is back with another well-defined effort, “This Charming Life,” which sits firmly in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, albeit with the singer’s trademark lyrical ambitions.
Armatrading says the albums were part of a conscious effort to zero in on particular styles.
“In the past, I’ve done all different kinds of songs and put them all on the album at the same time,” she says. “I decided with the last two CDs that I would kind of stick to one genre. This one’s rock.”
In the past, Armatrading has often played multiple instruments, but for “Life” she played everything except the drums, which she left to the able hands of Miles Bould.
“I would write something and then just record it straightaway, instead of writing everything first and waiting to go in and record,” she says. “I engineered it myself as well.”
For this tour, she’s joined by Spencer Cozens (keyboards), John Gibson (bass) and Gary Foote (drums).
She promises that the arrangements will differ not only from the album, but from night to night as well. “I don’t like to just take the record out and say to the musicians, ‘Play that exactly.’ That to me would be completely boring.
“Some of the songs we play on the tour are pretty old, too, and I don’t want to be hearing exactly the same arrangement for all these years.”
Armatrading issued her first album, “Whatever’s for Us” — co-penned with lyricist Pam Nestor — in 1972, but it didn’t sell well and the writing partnership withered.
In 1980, the St. Kitts-born Briton released an eponymous third album that yielded the international hit “Love and Affection.” That kicked off a string of memorable tunes including radio smashes like “Show Some Emotion,” “Drop The Pilot,” and “(I Love When You) Call Me Names” and concert staples like “Down To Zero,” “Tall in the Saddle,” “Willow” and “The Weakness in Me.”
But by the mid-’80s, it seemed that Armatrading’s run at the charts was over. When the singles slowed down, so did the rate of her album releases.
She admits she’d love to have another song on the radio — and in the title track and “Heading Back To New York City,” “This Charming Life” certainly has candidates.
“Any artist, if they said they didn’t want hits, I’d have to tell you they were lying,” Armatrading says. “Of course you want as many people as possible to enjoy your music and to want to own it. That’s just a given.
“I’d be writing music even if people didn’t want it, but once it’s out there, you want people to want to own it too.”
In her heyday, Armatrading was a pioneer, carving a path for female artists and black artists alike. It’s almost hard to imagine Tracy Chapman, Melissa Etheridge and Indigo Girls without Armatrading breaking ground first.
Armatrading herself demurs at the idea, but admits, “I certainly know that when I started I wasn’t aware of anyone else, as a black person, writing what I was writing, because at that time, if you were black, you were doing soul or blues or R&B. I just did whatever I did.
“Being a pioneer wasn’t on my mind and it wasn’t my plan.”
“Joan Armatrading.”
Pop/Rock. Denver Botanic Gardens, 1007 York St. 7 p.m. Tuesday $60. 888-440-9568 or
