Superstar Macy Gray kicks off the Cork Jazz Festival weekend

A week had passed since Sinéad O’Connor passed when I chatted to Macy Gray and I couldn’t help wonder what this idiosyncratic and distinctive sounding singer thought of the Irish icon.

“I was a huge fan of her fearlessness and her ability to be exactly who she was,” Gray immediately responds from her home in Los Angeles. “I got to talk to her on the phone a couple of times. I don’t think we ever met in person. We talked on the phone and I know I did a festival and she was on the lineup but I didn’t get to see her that day.”

All she remembers of the call was that she was with someone who knew Sinéad really well and he happened to have her on the phone.

She recalls the moment: “He said, ‘Sinead is a big fan of yours’, and she knew that I was with him. And he put us on the phone. And we talked. And we had a very like… it was like, ‘hey.’

“I think we were both kind of shy to each other. It was like, oh, my God, I’m talking to Sinéad O’Connor. So it was a little contained. It wasn’t like we let loose and made plans. We did say we would meet up because I was going to be somewhere she was going to be, but it didn’t happen.”

Looking back now, Gray views it as just one of those things. “I think if I would have met her in person I probably would have fainted,” she says.

Gray, like O’Connor, appears as nothing less than strong and confident, so it’s interesting she considers herself to be shy. It feels like a handicap in this unforgiving business. Gray suggests that being an artist in the public eye is more complicated than that.

“It’s definitely difficult,” she considers. “You know, there’s a lot of things that I wish I had the balls to say and a lot of things I had the balls to say and I wish I wouldn’t have said it.

“People forget the only reason to go through all this, to put yourself through this and put yourself out there and pour your heart out in front of the whole world, is because you’re lacking in something and you’re hoping that that’s going to make up for it. Every artist has some kind of void. Or it might just be that they are shy and that’s the only time they can just come out and say whatever. Every artist that I’ve met is a little bit off.

“You got to do this because you’re hoping it’s going to compensate. I thought, okay, I’m going to be a star. I’m going to have a ton of friends. I’m going to have the perfect husband. And I’m going to get me a house and I’m going to pay off my mom’s credit cards. You know what I mean. I’m going to live happy ever after but it doesn’t always work out like that. It’s a totally different vibe,” she adds sagely.

Macy exploded onto the scene in 1999 with her second single, “I Try”. An international hit, it topped the charts in Ireland and she became instantly recognisable for her bluesy, soulful delivery and raspy vocals. Her debut album, On How Life Is, was also huge. And while nothing she released since has approached anything near that success her albums have been generally well received, if not quite being huge commercial success.

“I think I spent a lot of time really figuring out who I was as an artist because my first couple of albums I was just being myself,” she reflects.

“And then I think people weren’t responding to my records like they used to and I tried to switch it up, you know. I tried to do something different and present myself in a different way, and that totally backfired. That was a disaster. So I really just settled into who I am as an artist and I’m cool with that. And I just want to be consistent and I just want to make as many great records as I can.

“I’m settled into the fact that I’m 53. You know that’s like nursing home for the music industry. You may as well go get a cane and a walker. But I’m still very active. I still have a lot of ideas. I still have a lot of music in me. And… and I still have fans, you know, which is so cool. That’s the best! So I’m just really adjusting, really settling into who I am and where I’m at and what I have and what else I want to do.

“You know, I hate to say it but I feel like I finally grew up.”

Her new album, The Reset, her first independently made album, recorded over the last couple of years with her long term musicians, the California Jet Club, sounds like the work of an artist who is very comfortable in her own skin.

“We did go in with the idea that we wanted to put out a record that would lift everybody up and bring everybody out of whatever situation they were in and get people dancing and singing again,” she explains.

“That was really the motive. I don’t know if we did exactly that because we were so consumed by our emotions during the time and what was going on in our own personal lives. So I think all that is on the album. It’s where we’re at and where we want to be. And this homage to our fans — like, we’re going to be the ones to get you out of Covid,” she says with an infectious giggle, “through our album!

“So there’s a lot of dreamy going on there, but to me it’s a great album. And while we were in the moment of covid and all that was going on around us I still think everything we’re talking about is still relevant even though covid is over, kind of, and I think it will be relevant 20 years from now, you know, because it’s just about life,”

• Macy Gray plays a sold out show at Cork Opera House on Thursday, October 26.