Eleanor puts passion for music before money

UNLIKE some other artists, Irish singer Eleanor McEvoy never finds it much of a hardship to go a bit further afield than the Central Belt when she comes to Scotland.

"I have a bit of a thing about the Scottish islands," the Dubliner revealed.

"I’m trying to do one show on every Scottish island before I die."

Ireland might have plenty of islands of its own, but to McEvoy’s eye, the ones found here in Scotland are more affluent.

"They never did stately homes on the islands here," McEvoy added.

This current jaunt into Scotland will not do much to tick any more Scottish islands off her list — though she did make a trip to the Bute guitar festival at the end of September — but Sunday’s show at Hootananny in Inverness, followed by an appearance at Portsoy on Monday, does give her the chance to perform some of the more intimate shows she enjoys.

One aspect of touring that appeals is going into communities and immersing herself in the life there, chatting to the people and reading the local paper.

"I completely enjoy being on the road," she said.

"The only aspect I’m not crazy about is that I have a little girl. When she’s in school I have to leave her behind and that breaks my heart.

"Fortunately I enjoy travelling and I love seeing places. I’m a bit of a road animal — you have to be in this business.

"It’s a funny line of business, a five-star hotel one night, a dodgy B&B the next, but sometimes it’s lovely to get a bit of luxury."

If McEvoy enjoys going on the road, then her latest album, "Alone", is also remarkably well suited to touring. True to its name, it features McEvoy on her own in the studio with a dozen songs, both old and new.

"It’s the easiest album to tour — it’s no effort to replicate it at all," she laughed.

In fact, "Alone" was not intended to be an album at all.

Offered the use of The Grange, a small studio tucked away in the Norfolk countryside, McEvoy just intended to use her time in the studio to rehearse some songs, but the engineer left the tape running and persuaded her that they deserved to be heard by a wider audience.

"I might have been in a strange state of mind," she pondered. "I don’t know why I chose to sing (P. F. Sloan’s) ‘Eve of Destruction’!

"When you have an audience, you are conscious you are trying to make a piece of magic for them. When I was making this album, I wasn’t conscious of doing anything like that. The engineer put out the microphones while I was in there, but I just thought he was doing that because he was bored!"

McEvoy was reluctant to release the album — not because she did not like it, but because she did not see where people would come from to connect with it. It has certainly connected with the critics, who have raved over the raw power of McEvoy’s stripped down songs.

However, the singer’s ninth studio album is true to the McEvoy ethos in other ways.

"I do like doing something that’s a little different," she said.

"I like the fact that it’s songs from across my career. For me that’s what’s interesting, seeing where I’ve come from as a writer."

Among those songs is the one which propelled McEvoy from unknown singer to Irish music star, "Only A Woman’s Heart". McEvoy was a member of established singer Mary Black’s band when Black heard a live version of the song and suggested she contribute it to an album she was making with other female music stars, including Dolores Keane, Maureen O’Connell and accordion player Sharon Shannon. McEvoy’s song became the lead single and provided the title for the album, "A Woman’s Heart", which went on to sell 750,000 copies worldwide, more than any other Irish album in history.

At the same time McEvoy had also been talent spotted by Geffen Records executive Tom Zutaut, who had previously signed Guns and Roses and Motley Crew to the US label.

"I had an amazing week. I signed to Geffen Records, then two days later ‘A Woman’s Heart’ was released on this small independent label," she said.

After recording with major labels Geffen and Columbia, however, these days McEvoy releases her albums herself, a state of affairs more compatible with her personality.

"It’s kind of heartbreaking to an artist when your song is used in a way you don’t want," she said.

"It’s important to me that nobody forces me to do things I don’t want to do. Financially I would be better off had I been more willing to prostitute myself in that way, but I look at people who have done that over the years and the lights go out of the eyes a bit. I still have that passion for music."

She also resists easy categorisation.

"I go into Tower Records and one of my albums is filed under ‘pop’, others are filed under ‘folk’ and another is ‘New Age’. It wasn’t a good fit, me and the major labels," she noted.

So McEvoy has the freedom to strike off in new musical directions when she makes each new album, which means there might be a wait for "Alone 2".

"Will I go in other directions the next time? Probably," she laughed.

"I might go all bells and whistles for the next one."

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Eleanor McEvoy appears at Hootananny’s Ceilidh Bar on Sunday.