Writer of the bestselling album in Irish history, A Woman's Heart, singer-songwriter Eleanor McEvoy talks about pandemic teachings, leaping into the unknown and the mind-altering drug that is music, ahead of her appearance in An Taibhdhearc on Saturday, April 14.
Known as one of the most talented songwriters in Ireland, Eleanor McEvoy is a powerhouse that shows no sign of running out of fuel. Dublin born and bred, music has been a core tenet of McEvoy's being since childhood, with her learning how to play the piano at four years old and picking up the violin at eight. McEvoy's appreciation for music never waned over the years, with her joining the prestigious RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra in 1988 when she was in her early 20s.
For many musicians in the 1980s, that would have been it, a stable steady income playing with the largest professional orchestra in the world, but for McEvoy an ever-growing itch beneath her professional feet was becoming impossible to ignore. Driven by her desire to create and write music herself, McEvoy made the terrifying leap to start her career as a songwriter in 1992.
"It was really really scary, because when you're in the orchestra you're on a salary and I was going out in to the unknown. I wanted a record deal and a publishing deal, particularly a publishing deal because more than anything I wanted to write, writing was really where it was for me. At the time performing was almost a necessary evil, it certainly wasn't an allure, everybody says 'God, there must be a buzz being on stage or the adoration of the crowd' but for me, it was never about that, it was about the song.
"People used to ask would I not have preferred to sing the songs I had written, but I was always very happy for somebody else to sing it."
McEvoy's talent as a songwriter shone through, less than a year since leaving the orchestra, she performed one of her songs at a solo event, a song that would create a ripple effect in the Irish musical charts still felt to this day.
A Woman's Heart
The popularity of A Woman's Heart cannot be overstated enough, upon its release in 1992 the compilation album, featuring some of the best Irish female musicians the country had to boast of, exploded across the charts. Featuring the dulcet tones of Mary Black, Dolores Keane, Sharon Shannon, Frances Black, Maura O'Connell and McEvoy, A Woman's Heart became an intergenerational hit, becoming the soundtrack to core memories of people all over the world, but none more so than in Ireland.
When I asked McEvoy what was it about A Woman's Heart that gripped the nation so passionately? She said that over 30 years later she still isn't sure what it was about that album that resonated so strongly with the people of Ireland.
"Honestly, I don't know. I will say Ireland was a very different place back then. My daughter laughs when I say that when I was in college, contraception was illegal, not just hard to get or frowned upon - illegal. They sold condoms in the student union shop and they got arrested, that's at the level it was at and it was very difficult for women, now there's things like the #metoo movement and a whole lot of stuff has commenced but back then it was just accepted.
"They way women were treated, particularly by the Church having a strangehold on the country too, I think that was an element of it. I think all of a sudden this group of women singing these songs became an anthem or a soundtrack for what people were going through at the time and what is astonishing to me, at a 20-year on anniversary performance we played, I was expecting women my age or older, but there were people of all ages there including 26 year olds.
"That age group had heard the album being played in the kitchen, or one they heard in the back of the car, so we kind of got that generation as well. At a recent 30-year anniversary the audience was young. It was a mixed audience of people my age, but also the younger crew as well because it was the soundtrack to their childhood."
A Woman's Heart went on to be the bestselling Irish album in record inspiring generations of musicians in Ireland as well as thrusting the talent of McEvoy into the main stage and more than 30 years later, she continues to delight audiences across the world.
Life on the road
Though she preferred to write for others, McEvoy continued to perform after the success of A Woman's Heart releasing 16 albums, dabbling in multiple genres and touring both nationally and internationally. Despite this long career on stage, she says her love for performing has blossomed into something new this year.
"I came back from the UK a week ago and it was absolutely incredible, I don't think I have ever enjoyed a tour that much in my life. I am filled with elation and I don't quite understand it. It's like I'm in one of those periods in my life when everything seems to happen and flow, it's happening on stage with me at the minute. I'm not sure if it's the particular songs on the new album or what specifically it is, but it's magic."
Her most recent album, Gimme Some Wine, was started in the early days of Covid-19, when the arts industry, for the first time in recent memory, came to a complete stand still. For McEvoy, this period was turbulent, not only was she in the same spot for more than eight weeks, something she hadn't done since the early 90s, she separated from Mick O'Gorman, her partner of 23 years. There were some plus sides to the stand still of the pandemic for her though, allowing McEvoy to reflect on her role in life and what her music can bring to listeners.
"During the pandemic I really thought about what my role was. Doctors, cleaners, nurses they all had a clear and very important role, but what was my role? I felt it was to uplift. There is so much dark music and literature out in the world already and I want to uplift people. It's not that you don't deal with difficult issues, it's that you do, but you're bringing it to people, allowing them to let go and putting them back together at the end of the night.
"Music can be a very healing thing, it is a mood-altering substance, from dancing and cleaning to Beyoncé, it's a potent tool. When people come to see me, they might be pissed off and had a hard day at work but if they don't walk out buzzing, I feel like I've failed."
Gimme Some Wine and Chris Gollon
The story of McEvoy and the late British artist Chris Gollon sounds like a creative adaption of the film Inception, where a dream within a dream becomes a reality. It began with McEvoy purchasing a painting by Gollon titled, 'Champagne Sheila', which depicts a nude woman in middle age drinking champagne. 'Champagne Sheila' in turn would inspire McEvoy to write about ageing and female vulnerability and eventually creating the album Naked Music in 2016. One specific song on that album, Dreaming of Leaving, as a result inspired Gollon to paint a piece by the same name. The painting 'Dreaming of Leaving' served as inspiration to McEvoy, with her using it on three album covers and writing Gimmie Some Wine from just that one piece.
The muse seeking muse arrangement between Gollon and McEvoy would not end just there, when McEvoy played Gimmie Some Wine to Gollon, he would find the song so moving that he created 23 paintings under that theme, these would be the last works Gollon would ever create. This symbiotic relationship, where two mediums of creativity are effectively communicating without the need for translation, would culminate in the legacy of the famous Gollon, who had previously been inspired by the songs of Bob Dylan and Neil Young.
"It was amazing, because you'd look at something he would do and see the lyrics of the song. He would do a painting on those lyrics and I'd see the painting and think 'oh my God, he painted it about that line in the song', which I just loved. We spoke about other forms of art, we never spoke about our collaboration, we only ever spoke about the collaboration to the medium of the art, but we would chat about other things, like politics and other painters and he was a huge Dylan fan, but we never spoke about what we were going to do."
Gollon would create his 'Gimme Some Wine' pieces in the theme of the Picasso Blue, something McEvoy had said in passing that she enjoyed. Highlighting how the creative talents of the two could communicate without words, without logic but always with beauty. A major solo museum exhibition in honour of Gollon, showing his works including the McEvoy collaborative pieces, finished just this week in the IAP Fine Art Gallery in London.
What comes next?
With a schedule booked well in advance, McEvoy will be playing An Taibhdhearc on Saturday, April 15, followed by two concerts; Bob's Hideout, Durrow, Co Laois on April 27 and the Wexford Arts Centre on April 29. Following this tour, she is working on music for a play adaption of a Claire Keegan book as well as working on another album, another UK tour and even going as far as Australia in 2024.
Tickets for McEvoy's performance in the Taibhdhearc Theatre (19 Middle Street Galway, H91 RX76 ), are €30.46 and are available for purchase here. Doors open at 7:30pm on Saturday, April 15.
