Janet Devlin told David Hennessy about her new music, touring with Russell Crowe and getting a grip of her mental health battles.
Janet Devlin has just released the deluxe edition of her latest album, Emotional Rodeo.
The new version features bonus tracks, including her rendition of the gospel standard I’ll Fly Away, recorded live at Blackbird Studio in Nashville, and a stripped-back, acoustic reimagining of Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler.
Janet surprised some last year when the album showcased a new country sound, a genre that the singer has always been passionate about and one she intended gravitating to and staying in for good. Janet Devlin was still a teenager when in 2011 she auditioned for The X Factor. She wowed the judges and would go on to finish fifth in the competition overall.
I saw Ed Sheeran had posted a clip of Bad Habits and a link to it. I was like, ‘Jesus, that’s amazing’. I thought, ‘That’s a lovely thing’
But things were not always easy for her away from the cameras. She would struggle with issues such as alcoholism, self harm and eating disorders. She would reveal all of her struggles in her 2020 album Confessional which was accompanied by a book. Janet, who is based in London, has also recently been featured on ITV’s Life Times series. Janet took time to chat to the Irish World.
You have just released a new deluxe version of Emotional Rodeo, how do you find people have connected to your current country sound?
“It’s just been a game changer. It’s one of these things where people are like, ‘Oh my God, why didn’t you do this earlier?’ And I have to explain to them that because ending up in country music was always the plan that it had to go this way because I wanted to master my craft. I wanted to master my songwriting.
“I wanted to master my singing before I would go into the genre that I wanted to spend the rest of my career in and use my youth to play around with sound, to learn how to write and try and get to that place where I feel like my writing is in synergy with who I am as a person.
“What’s been funny with the new songs is that people that don’t like country music, there’s been quite a lot of them that are like, ‘I don’t like country but I like this’, and that’s really flattering. Some people have been following me for years, they always thought they hated country and I’ve given them recommendations.
“Or they’ve listened to the album and they’ve gone, ‘Oh, I didn’t actually think about modern country and now I have and I love it’. Now everything’s online we lack community, we lack togetherness and all of these things.
“The country community is so strong and there’s so many groups online that are trying to get you then into the real world like, ‘Oh, who’s going to this gig? It’s so nice especially living in a city like London where everything’s so non-personal and most people don’t really have access to a thriving social life because you’re too busy at the grindstone.
“It’s so heartwarming to see, even as a performer, the community that’s there and I’m just very, very blessed that the community has seemed to have welcomed me in. And they actually will go to a show, which sounds so silly, but there is a live music crisis at the moment with getting people to go to shows that aren’t arenas.
“I think any genre could even take a wee leaf out of the country music genre as far as making it a community. Rock’s very good at it as well though, rock is very good and metal are good at the community thing. If we could just get that in all the genres.”
The new version includes your take on The Gambler..
“Oh, yeah. I remember singing that to the horse up in the mountains when I was about ten. I mean singing to the pony and I just never did it publicly really. It’s that funny thing. I didn’t want to ruin the song but also it does tickle me because one of the videos did well on TikTok and the amount of people that go in and go, ‘No one should ever cover this song’.
“And you’re like, ‘I hate to break it to you but Johnny Cash’s is a cover’. Obviously we see it as his song because it’s the version that transcended but that kind of stuff just always tickles me because anyone who’s a fan of country knows how big covering stuff is. That song has always been really special to me and I just wanted to wait to the right time to do it.”
You were also recently featured on a special ITV programme..
“They’re doing a Life Times series and it’s hosted by Alison Fleming. When I told Mum I was doing the interview with Alison she was like, ‘Oh, Alison, I haven’t seen her in years’. Because she used to be in Gortin every weekend in 2011 so got very familiar with my parents and my family and the locals but funny enough, we’d never actually met ever so it was really lovely to actually just finally meet her. It was awesome because she had so much archive footage of Gortin, Tyrone, Northern Ireland at the time when I was on TV.
“I think the saddest thing of all really is the fact that when that period of my life was happening, I had no idea of what was going on at home. I didn’t really know that they were meeting in the bars or they were meeting down at the local community centre to watch it. I didn’t know because I really didn’t have access to call my parents that much or text my parents or anything like that.
“My mum came over every weekend and then I’d get to chat to her but obviously when you haven’t seen your mum in a week and you’re a 16 year old girl, you’re more concerned about having a cuddle and a catch up more so than, ‘Oh, what’s the gossip in Gortin?’
“It was lovely to actually see that footage because I’ve never seen it before. It’s never been aired before. And just heartwarming to know that there were so many people there and turning up every week for me. It’s very surreal, even now.”
Is the difficulty that some people want you to remain as that teenager that stepped on The X Factor stage?
“I think people get a bit disappointed that I haven’t discovered the fountain of youth, that I don’t look 16 anymore and that I’m an adult woman with a fully formed prefrontal cortex and an independent lifestyle. People get really upset about it and I’m just like, ‘There’s nothing I could do about getting older. I don’t know what you want me to do’.”
What else did your chat with Alison go into?
“We talked about the TV stuff and then we went into the middle phase of my life which I’ve been quite open about. It’s easier to talk about now because I’ve got my diagnoses. I talked about finding out I had Borderline Personality Disorder and ADHD and how those things made a lot of sense.
“And then I talked about rehab a wee bit and basically spending a mortgage on my mental health and not through choice, kind of having to but how much it’s changed my life and how much it’s impacted my life to get a diagnosis and to get medicated, have a really good psychiatrist.
“Now I’m at the point where I’m in remission which isn’t even proposed to you when you get treatment for Borderline because the actual percentage of people that get into remission with a condition like that is so minimal that it’s not worth even posing as a concept sometimes so to be in remission from that is truly life changing.
“I’m in remission from bipolar type two and I got diagnosed with ADHD and now I’m medicated for that.
“Life is hard, there’s a lot of things that happen in everybody’s life and everyday life and the past couple of years, stuff has happened that I never would have known how to get through and I can get through it the way an average person does. The only way to get over something is to go through it and I can do that now without leaning on crutches or any bad self- behaviour.
“It’s honestly life changing. I can do my work now and I get time because unfortunately, with ADHD especially, you lose your weekends, you lose your evenings, you lose everything because you’re constantly chasing your tail and then you’re burning out and then resetting and just going with it. Now I can efficiently work almost regular hours. That’s never going to be a thing obviously but as regular as you can for this industry.
“I can sometimes get a good weekend off, not this weekend but I can sometimes get a weekend to go to the horses, go see friends or fly home. I can’t even say it’s given me my life back. It’s given me a life and that’s something that I’m very grateful for. I wish more people knew it was a thing you can just hire a psychiatrist.
“Obviously it costs money but I didn’t even know you could just get a psychiatrist and save up for an appointment to get a diagnosis. I didn’t know that was a thing. I posted a series on my Instagram about something as simple as the fact you can hire a psychiatrist and I swear to God if I got one DM, I got 400 saying ‘I did not know that, I’m looking into it’. It sounds so silly but genuinely little things can change someone’s life forever. I’m just grateful that me over sharing chronically on the internet, it can sometimes have a nice, positive impact.”
Last year around the time of the album’s release you did a little tour with Russell Crowe and his band, what was that like?
“Oh, there’s times in life where, especially in this job, you get given these opportunities that are so surreal. Getting the opportunity to go out to Australia for the first time was unbelievable. I did two shows, supported him in his local town and stayed at his farm, met his family, met his band, hung out and it was lovely.
“And I thought that would be the end of it and then getting out for a whole bloody tour was just so surreal. It’s such a privilege and honour to be able to watch someone of that calibre.
“The man’s won Oscars which are for storytelling, telling a story so obviously, he’s going to be class at doing that musically and so being witness every single night to his stage presence, his story, his music, his craft, his writing: It was just an honour. In those moments, it really does feel like living the dream when every day, you’re doing the thing that you love. It was unbelievable.”
You spoke about Russell as a storyteller, its storytelling nature is part of the reason you feel country is for you, isn’t that right? You’re a storyteller…
“That’s everybody from home, isn’t it? Everybody from home loves a good yarn, loves a good story, doesn’t matter if you can’t sing. You’ll go to a pub and somebody can start half singing a story/ tune. I love it and I love that music is such a beautiful vessel to take people somewhere. I think it’s beautiful.
He said, ‘How would you feel about coming out to Nashville, mid to end of March, to do some recording, to record another album?’ I said, ‘Oh, absolutely, that sounds class’.
“And it obviously makes sense Irish people loving country music because of the history of country music and the history of the Irish within country music and its origins.
“It makes complete sense. Every day is a blessing when you get to do what you love. Every Irish person loves telling a story. I love telling a story. I’ll keep telling them until people make me stop.”
I saw you tell the story onstage about how Russell came to discover your music. It had something to do with an Ed Sheeran cover, how did it happen again?
“I should post more but I run my YouTube channel and I’ve had that YouTube channel for donkeys’. It’s the thing that got me to do X Factor but I post covers on there for fun. Some people read too heavily into it. I’m just doing it for the craic.
“I like reworking songs and just having fun so when Ed Sheeran released Bad Habits I was like, ‘Awesome. It’s a pop song with miserable lyrics. That works perfectly for a ballad’. I just did a ballad version of that, posted it, thought nothing of it.
“It did alright and then one day I’m about to go get my nails done and while I’m getting my nails done, my phone’s going off. I’m like, ‘What’s going on here? Who needs me this bad that my phone is constantly vibrating?’ I saw Ed Sheeran had posted a clip of Bad Habits and a link to it. I was like, ‘Jesus, that’s amazing’. I thought, ‘That’s a lovely thing’.
“Move on with my day because that’s normally where those things end, right? And then I log on that evening and Russell Crowe co- tweeted it and said, ‘Yeah’. No context, no nothing. Just, ‘Yeah’. I was like, ‘Alright, fine, deadly’. And then Ryan Reynolds liked it. I was like, ‘Jesus Christ, this is going well’. And he (Crowe) followed me then the next day and he was posting out my covers.
“And people always ask, ‘Did you message him?’ And I’m like, ‘No, he’s a busy man. Give him peace. He’s followed me. I’m very grateful. I leave him be’. And then I got a message.
“I wake up and I see that Russell’s asked me if I want to come out to Australia to do that show. And of course I did.
“And when I then finally went on tour with him, we were doing a press interview and I was telling the story to the interviewer as to how this all came about. And he went, ‘That’s not how that story goes’. ’Pray tell. How does it go?’ Ed Sheeran had sent him my video and said, ‘Is this better than mine?’ And instead of texting him back, he co-tweeted the post and said, ‘Yeah’.”
So that was the story… That was the real story, that I wasn’t privy to.”
What’s next? Are you already working on the follow up to Emotional Rodeo?
“At the start of this year the label called. It’s an independent label. I’ve been working with them since 2014 so I get on really well with the head of label. He said, ‘How would you feel about coming out to Nashville, mid to end of March, to do some recording, to record another album?’ I said, ‘Oh, absolutely, that sounds class’. He goes, ‘Do you have the songs?’ I said, ‘Absolutely, I have the songs. Don’t you worry about it’. ’Right, I’ll book that in’.
“Off the phone I’m like, ‘I don’t have the songs. I’ve used all the f**king songs on the last bloody album. I’ve done a bit of writing. I’ve been writing but I’ve not been writing writing’. So I ended up doing a month intensive writing and I must have done about 45 songs in a month and went out to Nashville in March and I recorded 22 new songs out there. And now we have ten songs mixed and mastered so by the end of this year, I’ll have a whole album done.
“That’s the plan then for next year and hopefully get a good bunch of festivals in. I would absolutely bloody love to do some of the Irish country festivals but I think they’re allergic to my existence which is really sad because I’d love to do more work at home.”
Emotional Rodeo, the Deluxe Edition, is out now.
For more information, go to janetdevlin.com.