Why Laughter Is The Best Medicine For Coping With The Ills Of The World
“The two of us see music and humour as being really the most essential things in life, and that’s why this works."
It may not be a widely known fact about acclaimed, Welsh singer-songwriter Judith Owen, but she loves to laugh. It’s an immediately obvious trait in conversation with her, her keen mind and bright personality utterly glowing through the telephone line.
Indeed, she may have built her renown on the back of several lauded full-length albums — her most recent, Somebody’s Child, is an enchanting and diverse collection of jazz, pop, rock and soul tunes that follows 2014’s Americana-tinged love letter to Laurel Canyon, Ebb & Flow — but, to those who have been listening closely, it’s been clear all along that she fiercely wields a sharp, incisive wit.
“You have that side of me that you don’t see unless you come see me perform live, and then you get that I’m actually a very serious musician who likes to laugh a lot,” Owen tells The Music ahead of her sojourn with Shearer. “And there is that ever-present humour because I am both things, and I see the humour in it all because I think it’s impossible to get through life without.
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“I’m a very emotional person with a very strong sense of humour, because that’s really the base, I think, of it all — laughter — I do. [I was] seeing my friend, Rufus Wainwright, doing a show in London, and that’s one of the things that moves me so much about him, is his utter, complete passion with which he performs, and the complete joy with which he speaks in between the songs. It’s the most human and present experience, and I’m very, very, very, very, very, pleased that I think these elements come out in this record. I think you have my true nature and character coming through.”
Her show with Shearer, This Infernal Racket — which the pair will be performing at the Brisbane Cabaret Festival this month — provides another ample opportunity for Owen to flex her funny bone, setting her on-stage alongside her husband and sounding board of more than 20 years and allowing them both a chance to do something they love they wouldn’t ordinarily.
“What’s interesting about doing a show like I have been with Harry, where it’s two sets of brains working, shall we say ... is that we’ve realised long since that we process exactly the same information in such an opposite way,” Owen explains. “So, basically, that’s the point of this show, and that’s why I get to be who I am, and he gets to be who he is. We’re not trying to pretend that we’re anything else."
“We’re both observational writers; it’s just what we do,” she continues. “We write about what we see. Harry goes straight to cerebral and satirical, and I go straight to emotional. I see things, and I see myself in them. I relate to them, because I have empathy, and I have enough self-loathing...” — she laughs — “…I have enough, shall we say, ability to go, ‘Oh, fuck, I do that, don’t I? Oh, shit!’
“That’s my whole thing; what I sing about is what we all struggle with – it’s a shared experience, to me. It’s absolutely ‘We’re all in this together.’ What Harry sees is, ‘Oh my god. Look what that person is doing.’ And the teeth are going in, because this is what we need to see, the underbelly – we need to be [aware] of how appalling this is.”
Unfortunately, Owen suggests, it may be the case that we’re all too inwardly focused at this point to look up from our smartphones long enough to pay attention to anything appalling, or anything at all beyond a chance at getting famous.
“To me, everybody wants that; everybody wants that!” she asserts. “That’s why we’re in a selfie-obsessed, crazed world, because everybody feels that they can be famous. And, for Harry, of course, he can be directly going in on… you know, we’re in the time of Donald Trump, which is the greatest time for narcissism that we will ever see. He’s somebody who’s not hiding it, he’s leading with it; there is no shame any more … I am looking at it and thinking, ‘Oh, my god,’ you know, ‘Me too?’ Aren’t we all?
“And the bar is not even at the bottom yet, but it’s been lowered well and truly now. It really is crashing down around us, but we’re all part of it, and it makes for a really even, wonderful balance, because Harry comes in with the satire, and I’m following with the same subject matter but on a completely human, empathic level. So the two parts make one perfect view of the subject matter.”
“The two of us see music and humour as being really the most essential things in life, and that’s why this works,” she continues. “And then you have the core band, of course, which is my band, my beautiful musicians who I’m out on the road with, so hopefully it should be a seamless and beautiful thing with just enough looseness in it that Harry and I do have the relationship that we have, because I think ultimately that’s the funniest thing of all.”
Funny, for sure, but beautiful and rare, too — and Owen has known that for a long time now. It's just another reason that she and Shearer work so well together, as if the acclaim for This Infernal Racket hadn't shown that already.
“In terms of married artists, we have a long marriage, and a successful marriage, I think, because we a) don’t have children [laughs] … and we travel all the time, but because, also, when I write a song, Harry is the first person to try it,” she beams.
“He’s on the double bass, wherever we are; it’s like Harry will literally get on the bass and play immediately. It’s been like that since the day we met.”
Judith Owen & Harry Shearer — This Infernal Racket
Sunday 12 June — Queensland Cabaret Festival
Thursday 16 & Friday 17 June — Adelaide Cabaret Festival
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