Kevin Rowland discovers ‘the feminine divine’ on new album as Dexys go theatrical for York Barbican debut tomorrow

Kevin Rowland, in his pink suit, leads the return of Dexys with The Feminine Divine. Picture: Sandra Vijandi

AT last! Dexys will play York for the first time in their 45-year career tomorrow on the opening night of this month’s The Feminine Divine Live! tour.

Kevin Rowland’s revived soul band had been booked to play York Barbican on last autumn’s 40th anniversary Too-Rye-Ay As It Should Have Sounded Tour. However, his need to recuperate from a leg injury in a motorbike accident and “some health issues that will take some time to recover from” forced the September 30 2022 gig’s cancellation as early as March last year.

July 28 saw the arrival of The Feminine Divine, Dexys’ fifth album of original material in five decades, 11 years since their last studio set, 2012’s One Day I’m Going To Soar. 

Rowland, who turned 70 on August 17, will front Dexys as they “dramatically perform the new album from beginning to finale, followed by a selection of classics and hits” at York Barbican in the only Yorkshire show on their 13-date British and Irish tour.

“The first half is not a concert,” Kevin stresses. “It will be The Feminine Divine, completely acted out. It’s a theatrical performance, a drama, like we did for One Day I’m Going To Soar, but this is a completely different narrative. Last time we had Madeleine Hyland [from London folk group The Amazing Devil); this time Claudia Chopek will be the protagonist, playing the female in the songs.”

The second half will have a concert format. “We’ll probably change the set list each night, but we have a pretty good idea of what it will be, with a lot of the Too-Rye-Ay album, which we were due to tour last year, but had to cancel,” says Kevin, who will be touring with a six-piece band. “I think this show will be even better.”

Produced by Pete Schwier, along with session musician and producer Toby Chapman, The Feminine Divine is billed as “a personal, if not strictly autobiographical, record portraying a man whose views have evolved over time”.

The cover artwork for Dexys’ The Feminine Divine album

“I don’t think I could ever do the same thing twice. I can’t see the point of that. It’s not something I ever think about. It’s intrinsically important to me,” says Kevin on his Zoom call, explaining the album’s gestation.

“We weren’t looking for a theme. There was none of that. After the last album [2016’s Let The Record Show: Dexys Do Irish And Country Soul], I was drained and didn’t want to do music and didn’t feel I had the vitality.

“I needed to get away to work on myself, and actually I was almost violently against doing music, thinking ‘I want to do other things’. But in 2020-21 I had a surge of energy. I wanted to do music again.”

“What songs have we got?” pondered Dexys’ front man, suffused with a new-found positivity. Original Midnight Runners trombonist Big Jim Paterson, now a non-touring band member, sent him tunes he had written; Rowland reactivated a 1991 song, The One That Loves You, for the opening track, and a first side full of music-hall swagger duly took shape.

“Then I thought, ‘OK, let’s ask Mike [Timothy] and Sean [Read] to collaborate’,” Kevin recalls, leading to a second side “like nothing Dexys have done before” in the form of a saucy, synth-heavy cabaret.

Synths, Kevin? “I’ve always liked electronic music; I was into house music in the Eighties, so we were going to record some house tunes at the time, but we never got round to it, but I was well into it,” he says. “I thought about making the last album electronic too but went a different way with that one.”

The lyrics to title track The Feminine Divine became the driving force for Dexys’ new focus. “They came pouring out of me, and it told me what the theme should be. I started writing about my experience in recent years,” says Kevin. “Once I had a list of the titles, and put the songs in order, I thought, ‘there’s a narrative here’, so it was all serendipitous.”

“I think women are just incredibly powerful, but I didn’t realise that before,” says Dexys’ Kevin Rowland, second from left

The resulting track listing reads: The One That Loves You; It’s Alright Kevin (Manhood 2023); I’m Going To Get Free; Coming Home; The Feminine Divine; My Goddess Is; Goddess Rules; My Submission and Dance With Me.

Those songs reflect on “not just on women, but the whole concept of masculinity Kevin had been raised with: an education and an un-learning traced across the arc of The Feminine Divine”. 

“I think women are just incredibly powerful, but I didn’t realise that before,” says Kevin. Why not? “I have no idea. Perhaps my upbringing to some extent. I wasn’t given any sex education at school or at home, so any sexual feelings I had at 13/14 were secret and not talked about. I carried that with me.

“I had desires that sometimes were satisfied, sometimes weren’t, but I never understood women. I’m not saying I do now, but I started doing some courses, some tantra, some Dao, and all of this recognised the sexual energy and the power of women as goddesses,” says Kevin.

“The more I got it into my head, I realised that if anything women are superior to men. They’re more flexible than men, who are set in their ways.”

Rowland ruminates on femininity and masculinity from second track It’s Alright Kevin (Manhood 2023) onwards. “It’s about recognising my own femininity,” he says, as he first did on the cover of his 1999 solo album of cover versions, My Beauty, the one with Rowland in lipstick and black dress, the hem exposed to reveal knickers and stockings.

He doubled down on that look in a white dress and pearls at Leeds Festival that year. “A lot of people were triggered by it,” he says. “But I believed in what I was doing. I don’t think I can do anything unless I believe in it. One hundred per cent that was the case at Leeds Festival.

The poster for Dexys’ 2023 tour, The Feminine Divine Live!, led off by tomorrow’s York Barbican debut

“There are women with feminine energy and women with masculine energy, and it’s the same with men. It’s big part of me, and men should acknowledge it: if you don’t acknowledge things, it’s not healthy.”

Working instinctively – “if something sounds good, and I think it will work, then I’ll do it; if I get a good melody, I know it” – Kevin “doesn’t ever think about the past” or a new record’s connection with Dexys’ history. “That’s something for you to consider, and whatever you come up with, that’s cool,” he says.

“I don’t think about continuity. There’s been no continuity with Dexys. Don’t Stand Me Down [1985] was totally different, like Too-Rye-Ay [1982] was from Searching for The Young Soul Rebels [1980] because they were like new bands, so to me it’s like I’m a new artist every time I make a record. This new album took 11 years to evolve.”

His past was framed in a childhood in Wolverhampton, then Ireland for two years and north west London from the age of 11, surely influencing his restless music-making since then? “Probably,” says Kevin, pointing to the Irish roots in the Celtic soul and fiddles of Too-Ry-Ay. “We expressed it at the time, in 1980, ’81, ’82, when people didn’t want to hear it. Like on BRMB [the Birmingham radio station]. When they played Come On Eileen, they apologised for it because there’d just been a bomb in London…but what had that got to do with us?” he asks.

Kevin has had his up and downs, not least when consumed by cocaine addiction and living in a squat after Dexys Midnight Runners’ split post-Don’t Stand Me Down at the end of the 1980s.

Now, however, he is “definitely in the best place I’ve ever been, sometimes good, sometimes not so good, which is OK, and that’s something I wasn’t aware of when I was younger,” he says, revelling is his latest rush of creativity.

“There are a lot of people who are close-minded who just want to talk about the past. Their lives are over. I don’t know why people do that. They get into that thing that things were better in their day. No, they weren’t.”

Dexys play The Feminine Divine Live! at York Barbican on September 5, 7.30pm. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk and dexysofficial.com. The Feminine Divine is available on the 100 Percent label.

The Dexys’ line-up for The Feminine Divine Live!: left to right, Tim Weller, Claudia Chopek, Mike Timothy, Kevin Rowland, Sean Read, and Alistair Whyte. Picture: Bruno Murari @DexysOfficial

One year on from Too-Rye-Ay tour cancellation, Dexys confirm York Barbican as first night for The Feminine Divine Live!

In the pink: Kevin Rowland, second left, with the 2023 incarnation of Dexys

AT last! Dexys will play York for the first time in their 45-year career on the opening night of September’s The Feminine Divine Live! tour.

Kevin Rowland’s revived soul band had been booked to play York Barbican on last autumn’s 40th anniversary Too-Rye-Ay As It Should Have Sounded Tour, but his need to recuperate from a motorbike accident and “some health issues that will take some time to recover from” forced the September 30 2022 gig’s cancellation as early as March last year.

The healing process took longer than expected, but Rowland was able to lead Dexys in their Commonwealth Games closing ceremony rendition of 1982 chart topper Come On Eileen in the their home city of Birmingham last August.

Now Rowland, who will turn 70 on August 17, will front Dexys as they “dramatically perform the new album from beginning to finale, followed by a selection of classics and hits (including plenty from Too-Rye-Ay) at York Barbican on Tuesday, September 5: the only Yorkshire show on their 13-date British and Irish tour. Tickets go on fan pre-sale from April 12 at dexysofficial.com and general sale from April 14 at dexysofficial.com and yorkbarbican.co.uk.

The Feminine Divine, Dexys’ fifth album of original material, will be released on July 28, 11 years since their last studio set, 2012’s One Day I’m Going To Soar. Lead single I’m Going To Get Free is up and midnight-running already.

The album artwork for Dexys’ The Feminine Divine, set for release on July 28

Produced once again by Pete Schwier, along with session musician and producer Toby Chapman, The Femine Divine is billed as “a personal, if not strictly autobiographical, record portraying a man whose views have evolved over time”.

After taking time out to refocus his energy, Rowland has come back to music with a fresh perspective and new-found positivity, leading to an album that reflects his thoughts “not just on women, but the whole concept of masculinity he had been raised with: an education and an un-learning that is traced across the arc of The Feminine Divine. 

The first side is full of music-hall swagger, much of it written with original Dexys’ trombonist Big Jim Paterson, now a non-touring band member. The second side is “like nothing Dexys have done before”: a saucy, synth-heavy cabaret, written in collaboration with Sean Read and Mike Timothy. In a nutshell, steamy, fizzing and sultry; at times doom-laden and heavy, at other times raunchy and funky.

Behind them, Dexys (or Dexys Midnight Runners until the name shearing in 2011) have chalked up one billion worldwide streams, three British top ten albums, two number one singles (Geno, Come On Eileen), a Brit Award and multi-platinum sales of sophomore release Too-Rye-Ay. 

When Too-Rye-Ay’s 40th anniversary shows were called off, Dexys’ official announcement read: “We had tried to keep the tour on track, but now it is clear that that there won’t be sufficient time to do the work needed to deliver the show as we had envisaged. Dexys feel awful about cancelling and are immensely sorry for the inconvenience caused.”

Too-Rye-Ailing: The original poster for the 2022 Dexys tour that could have been, until Kevin Rowland’s motorbike accident forced its cancellation

Reorganising the dates was ruled out. “We did consider postponing the tour until next year, but we already have plans for 2023, and we promise that when we next tour, and, it won’t be long, we will do plenty of material from ‘Too Rye Ay, As It Should Have Sounded’,” said Dexys at the time. True to their word, here come The Feminine Divine album and tour.

Their reworking of Too-Rye-Ay, As It Should Have Sounded went ahead with a 40th anniversary album release last October on single CD, triple CD and vinyl formats on Universal.

Released in July 1982, Too-Rye-Ay was the one with strings, brass and dungarees attached that reached number two, Dexys’ highest ever album chart position, buoyed by the top-spot success of ubiquitous wedding-party staple Come On Eileen.

The Van Morrison cover, Jackie Wilson Said (I’m In Heaven When You Smile), went top five too and Let’s Get This Straight (From The Start) peaked at number 17, but the notoriously perfectionist, restless Rowland later said: “For many years, I’ve struggled with Too-Rye-Ay.

“I was never happy with many of the mixes on the record. Tracks like ‘Eileen’ and one or two others were really good, but with most others, while I felt the performances were really good, that didn’t come over properly in the mixes.”

The cover artwork for Dexys revisited: Too-Rye-Ay As It Should Have Sounded

He went on: “I even felt fraudulent promoting the album, because I knew it didn’t sound as good as it should have.

“And of course, the irony was, it was by far our most successful Dexys album, because of the worldwide success of Come On Eileen. I knew there were other songs on there just as good as ‘Eileen’, but they hadn’t been realised properly.

“So, I was absolutely delighted to get this opportunity to remix the album with the masterful Pete Schwier, who has worked with Dexys since 1985, and Helen O’Hara [violinist on the original album] is also helping.”

Rowland concluded: “This is like a new album for me. It is an absolute labour of love. I want people to hear the album as it was meant to sound.”

Words of reflective satisfaction that now make way for a focus on the new Dexys of The Feminine Divine, whose track listing will be: The One That Loves You; It’s Alright Kevin (Manhood 2023); I’m Going To Get Free; Coming Home; The Feminine Divine; My Goddess Is; Goddess Rules; My Submission and Dance With Me.

First single I’m Going To Get Free sets the tone by dint of its central character responding to mental-health struggles by striving tooptimistically break free from internalised trauma, depression and guilt”. New-found positivity indeed.

The 2022 Dexys’ line-up for Too-Rye-Ay As It Should Have Sounded