When you’re a woman in music, chances are you’re probably going to get asked about it a lot. ‘I find it strange that women are seen as a minority almost’, singer-songwriter Anna Calvi told us ahead of her show at the recent Green Man festival. ‘We’re having to talk about being a woman as if we are a minority when we account for 50% off the population’.
On the release of her latest album, One Breath, a subtler but no less powerful continuation of her bombastic self-titled debut, Calvi told The Guardian that she initially felt insulted by the fact that she was inundated with questions relating to feminism rather than about her music. ‘Why are they saying that to me? Just because I'm strong on stage...’ she told the paper.
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Calvi has since mellowed on the matter. ‘Being a woman in music is seen as a big deal so it can be good to talk about that’ she tells us. Does this mean that she feels a certain pressure to raise the issue, either in her music or interviews, acting as a spokesperson for her gender, perhaps? ‘No not really,’ she says firmly. ‘If I felt like I wanted to speak about it then I would but I don’t feel like I have to’.
The day we meet, Calvi is in her makeshift dressing room at Green Man, a tent where only tarpaulin and bunting separate her space from that of smooth-voiced Bill Callahan, also playing the festival that day, there is a seriously subdued air of calm. Wild rock and roll this is not, with Calvi perched catlike on her small sofa and Bill only putting down his herbal tea when he swaps it for a guitar and takes to the stage. This is befitting of the mountainous Welsh setting and no doubt comes as a welcome change to Calvi’s gruelling year-long tour that this show marks the end of. ‘I don’t really get influenced by places,’ she says, when I wonder if this nomadic life and constant change of atmosphere impacts on her writing. ‘You’re normally just seeing hotel rooms’, she says. There are however, some moments of respite in a schedule that saw her playing shows in France and Belgium within 48 hours of arriving in Wales. ‘Italy was a really nice place to play festivals – they do them in quite unusual places like by the sea, or we did one in an amphitheatre,’ she reflects. ‘It’s more interesting than standing in a field.’
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As well as taking some time out to work on her next record: ‘It’s early days to say what it will be like yet but I’m putting together ideas,’ Calvi says, she hopes to travel without her journey having to take place on a tour bus. ‘I want to go back to Mexico,’ she says. The last thing she’ll be doing in her downtime is going to any gigs, though. ‘When you’re a performer, it just sort of feels like work,’ she laughs.
Calvi might not have been keen to share a Women in Music manifesto the day we meet her, but when she puts on her mega-heeled platform Gucci peep-toe shoes, transforming her miniscule physique into a towering presence, it’s clear that she doesn’t have to. Noodling her guitar on stage, recalling the style of Jeff Buckley, who she notes her long-standing admiration for, and belting out the huge voice she has become famous for, Calvi puts on one of the most powerful performances of the weekend. She doesn’t need to tell us about the importance of women in music – in getting an entire audience to put down their pints for an hours and watch her play, awestruck, she shows it instead.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.