'He asked me am I dramatic. Whaddya think?'

Maria McKee made her name thanks to Tom Cruise. Now she's back in business - but life has changed, she tells Tony Clayton-Lea

What a tangle of contradictions Maria McKee is. She exudes the laid-back hippy chick demeanour that went out of style the day after Woodstock, yet she's no sooner sitting down in a Dublin hotel than she refuses a polite request to move to a smaller table. Her assertiveness would be admirable were there clearly a good reason for it. In the middle of our conversation she calls to her quiet American husband. "Hey, Jim, he just asked me am I dramatic. Whaddya think?" Necks crane as people try to see where the loud voice is coming from. Jim demurs, saying no but probably meaning yes. If you plan to walk around Maria McKee you'd best bring a metal detector for all those hidden landmines.

But then McKee is in flux. She is promoting High Dive, her first album for seven years and one that lacks the backing of a major label. This means she keeps artistic control, owns the copyright and avoids having record-company executives looking over her shoulder, wondering why they don't hear a hit single, but it also means it lacks the financial and promotional backing of other albums. Even if the positives outweigh the negatives, however, McKee is at loggerheads with the change of status.

"It's exhilarating when it comes to making the music," she says as she folds and unfolds a piece of paper that she plays with until the interview ends, "but putting the album out on our own has been an extraordinary challenge. There were times when we felt we were banging our heads against the wall." Despite her independence, she knows she can't take her work to the next level until she once again has big guns behind her. The people who come to her gigs know her name, she admits, but she's preaching to the converted. She needs to reach a wider audience.

"It's great to go away and come back seven years later and still be playing to people, but the show has gotten bigger, grander, it needs more space. I'm at the point now where if my audience doesn't expand I may not continue, because I'm feeling constrained. The trick is figuring out how to go about achieving the balance. What do you do: keep making record after record?"

Now approaching 40, McKee says she finds touring a burden. It's fine for a month or two, travelling in a van playing one-nighters and staying in small hotels, but after a while she loses stamina if not interest. She needs, she says, lucky breaks - "a soundtrack maybe, an opening slot with a big band, word of mouth, Internet." Ironically, her big break came with a song from a soundtrack, Show Me Heaven from the Tom Cruise film Days Of Thunder. Although not a hit in the US, the song, which is unrepresentative of her repertoire, brought McKee a level of success in Europe that you suspect she sorely misses.

Born in Los Angeles in 1964, McKee was influenced by the baroque 'n' roll of her half-brother Bryan Maclean, who was in the acclaimed 1960s rock group Love. Influenced also by Bruce Springsteen, nascent Americana, punk rock and theatre, in her late teens she formed Lone Justice and rode a wave of success, enhanced by the patronage of U2, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty.

Breaking up the band in 1987, she then forged a solo career while living in Ireland, signing a deal and releasing three albums between 1989 and 1996. She considers Ireland her second home, spending as much time here as her schedule will allow. She didn't intend to leave, she says; she returned to LA to record an album and "just got back into the swing of things there".

Although her roots run deep in California - she's fifth generation and lives in the house her grandmother bought in 1938 - she says she lives like a gypsy; even her roots are transitory, she explains, as she and her husband love to travel. "I'm kind of like an itchy soul: when I'm home I want to be away. When I'm away I want to home, and so on."

Then she declares that she's remarkably needy when it comes to routine, prompting eyebrows to arch quizzically: what might be at the core of McKee's dissatisfaction? Then she comes clean. She suffers from mood disorders, and if she doesn't have a strict routine she gets into trouble. "The weather has something to do with it, too. I need a stable weather pattern. It's very difficult for some people," she says, her voice dropping, her fingers still working on the paper.

"I've learned to try to curb my impulses as much as possible, so that I don't hurt people, but there are some things that never change, and I am who I am. I suppose I'm not the easiest person to be married to. Jim is very patient. I need patience and understanding. There have been some people I have alienated along the way. It takes a lot of love for people to stick around me. There's a lot of good, but you have to navigate your way."

Acknowledging horror stories about her in the music industry, McKee says those days are over. But you wonder. She admits to clashing with her young road crew - "that's been an issue" - and says she finds songwriting difficult.

"It's hell, mysterious. There's no formula I follow. I'm not a craftsman; I don't go to the piano every day. I wish I were, but I'm not. I admire my favourite songwriters' almost mathematical approach, but that's not me. I like to keep a flawed element to the songwriting, because it allows for an emotional trail."

She has lots of plans for future work, despite having said earlier that she might not continue. "Musically I'm more ambitious than anyone I know. I have specific goals, however. I don't want to be a huge rock star and I don't want to make huge amounts of money, because that's the enemy of art. But I'd love to make enough money to make art and to do it comfortably, but not so comfortably that it takes an edge away."

Is there anything she would like to change about her life? She seems curious, mercurial: her head is above water, but other parts of her body seem immersed in quicksand. "I'd like to find the balance between being an incredibly dynamic artist and yet as a person learn how to think about how my impulses affect others. It's gotten a lot better as I've gotten older, but there's some way to go. I'm still not a walk in the park."

High Dive is on Viewfinder Records