Andy Howells chats to singer/songwriter Joan Armatrading ahead of her forthcoming appearance at Newport Riverfront

It’s incredible to think that in 42 years of touring and performing Joan Armatrading has never toured solo. Yet as her last major world tour reaches Newport Riverfront in October the singer/songwriter reveals that her current tour will be quite different from all her others.

“I’m after that intimate feeling that kind of special thing,” says Joan, “People have asked me am I nervous? I’m more excited than nervous. I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve chosen to play smaller concerts because it’s me on my own. It means the audience can see me, there’s nothing else on the stage distracting and we’ll be able to talk and have that intimate moment. I’m doing it like a special thing for me, it’s for the audience as well of course, but I want to give myself a really nice memory of the last major tour.”

The audience will be guaranteed a fantastic mix of magical old favourites plus more recent compositions to fall in love with. Joan is as happy to play Love and Affection, Willow, Drop the Pilot and Me, Myself I, as the audience is to hear them. “Its a good cross section all the time, that makes sense to me,” continues Joan, “I don’t want to just give people the latest album, that seems unfair, I’ve never done that. Sometimes people might think “well, you’ve given us quite a few new ones,” but it’s always intermingled with a few other things. There’s always a good cross section. On this tour it'll be stuff going right back to the very first album right on through to the latest.”

Does Joan have a particular favourite memory of playing live over her 42 years in music? “I love all the gigs,” she says, “When I took my song Best Dress On to Europe, the very first time it was played we stopped playing because the song was finished. The audience just kept on singing so the band joined back in. The next night the same thing happened again. It was like a thing that was happening and I ended up doing a league table of which city was singing this song the most. It ended up with Canada winning; they sang the chorus 27 times for 15 minutes. You get stuff like that and it’s special because you’d never think that would happen, it was a big surprise, that was a brand new song first time playing it live and to have that reaction is wonderful.”

So what does Joan hope the audience will get from her forthcoming Riverfront show? “I hope, like with all the tours, the audience will have that strong connection to all the songs and love hearing them live. I just want them to be into it, because I know I will be. I’m really excited and I want everybody to have a great time.”

Joan Armatrading plays Newport Riverfront on October 13. Call 01633 656757 for details. Joan will also play Cardiff’s St David’s Hall on March 3, 2015 visit

www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk or call the box office on 029 2087 8444 for ticket information.