Sing out sister

NANNY to the son of a serial killer, she has managed country heartthrob Eoin McLove and was even married to Martin Cahill and King Henry VIII.
In Dexter, Father Ted, The General and The Tudors, respectively, actor Maria Doyle Kennedy has played diverse parts but it is in her role as singer-songwriter that she will be performing an acoustic set with partner, Kieran Kennedy, in Dolan’s in Limerick this Saturday night.
Speaking from her home in Dublin on the eve of a national tour, Maria brims with enthusiasm about the shows, she and Kieran have just played across Europe. Over the last few years, the duo has diligently built up a following on the continent through their live performances.
“Like most things, it happens just by somebody coming to see a gig or someone who’s just heard our music and who then invites us to play,” says Maria. “We’re a small label so things usually start small and then we’re invited back. It’s the old-fashioned way.”
It’s clear that performance is essential to Maria and Kieran and the connection they forge with audiences informs their music.
“Playing live gives me more pleasure than almost anything else,” explains Maria. “Something extra happens when you’re playing live. It’s the best way to share the songs, I think. The expression of them is different and affected by the people who are in the room. You’re sharing the songs with your audience,” she adds.
After their current Irish dates, Maria and Kieran will play in Spain, London and the US, including a show in Nashville.
Such has been the reaction to their new material during their European tour that they are thinking of recording live versions of some songs for their forthcoming album, Sing.
“There’s a little studio in West Cork we have in mind,” says Maria. “It can only hold 20 people or so and we’d have to select the songs that are just simple and heartfelt and that work best acoustically.”
Most of Sing has already been recorded in Los Angeles and sees Kieran and Maria collaborating with John Prine, Damien Rice and Paul Brady. 
Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 2003, Prine was first introduced to the US country scene by Kris Kristofferson in the early 1970s. The latter was so impressed by Prine’s songwriting that he famously quipped “we’ll have to break his thumbs”.
Prior to duetting on Sing, Maria had met Prine only briefly at the Cambridge Folk Festival but didn’t get to speak to him properly. She sounds genuinely privileged to have performed with the country giant. “John’s a hero of mine. I wrote a new song for the album and when I sang it, I heard John Prine’s voice. I was completely sober at the time,” Maria laughs. “It was really weird but I knew I had to get the song to him. So I sent it off and he phoned me to say ‘I’d like to sing with you’.”
Maria recalls the experience of working with Prine, Rice and Brady as overwhelmingly positive and believes that it affected her own contribution to the album. 
“I love Damien and Paul’s voices,” Maria explains. “They really care about what they do and they wouldn’t duet with me just to be nice. I was really honoured that they agreed. It’s very exciting and it forces you to up your game and to be really present in the song,” she says.
Sing will be Maria’s fourth solo album of original songs in a music journey that began when she formed the Black Velvet Band in 1987.
Blending folk-rock with traditional influences, the group released two albums before splitting in the mid-’90s.
In 2001, she released Charms on Mermaid Records – a label she founded – before curating and singing on the Sirens (2003) anthology, which featured stellar names like PJ Harvey and Patti Smith in an all-female cast of leftfield artists.
With her last two solo albums, Mütter (2007) and The Storms are on the Ocean (2011), the Dubliner switched direction. The former was strongly influenced by Chuck Palahniuk’s Diary, a novel about a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The latter delved into the Elizabethan world of haunting folk tales and murder ballads.  Alongside this, Maria has carved a distinguished career on the screen since her breakthrough role as Natalie in The Commitments.
Most recently, Maria played Sonya in the fifth season of the Golden Globe and Emmy award-winning crime drama Dexter. Made by CBS and starring Michael C Hall as a Miami police officer who moonlights as a serial killer, Sonya is an Irish nanny to Dexter’s son, Harris.
“The role was written originally as an English nanny,” says Maria. “When I joined the cast I said I’d like to be American because I think it really helps to have an accent when you’re acting because it’s not you – you’re somebody else. But they said ‘No, we love your accent’. To them, an Irish accent is trusting and comforting and suited the part of a nanny.”
Like Maria’s collaborations on Sing, her performance in Dexter was influenced by the professionalism of those around her.
“It was my first experience of working in the US and it couldn’t have been better,” explains Maria. “All my scenes are with Michael C Hall and he’s a brilliant actor. I’ve huge admiration for him and it was great to work with someone of his calibre.”
In 2007 and 2008, Maria won an Irish Film & Television Award (IFTA) for her portrayal of Katherine of Aragon opposite Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ King Henry VIII in The Tudors. The quality of the script helped her inhabit a character she was keen to play.
“The writing was very specific and it was easy to find a path into the role,” Maria remembers. “I was always fascinated by Katherine. She was an educated but doomed, tragic woman who changed the course of European history just because she couldn’t produce a male heir.”