I’ve come out the other side
Eleanor McEvoy is back in the driving seat with an album, a tour… and a fresh start
Eleanor McEvoy released a very fine album in November called Gimme Some Wine. However, like many of her musical peers she was denied the opportunity to promote it properly by touring due to the stop-start nature of the Covid restrictions. Now that we can all enjoy live music once again, Eleanor is finally able to perform the beautifully honed songs from Gimme Some Wine and favourites from A Woman’s Heart. That album – which featured Eleanor and five other celebrated Irish female artists such as Mary Black and Maura O’Connell – has sold almost a million copies worldwide, of which 750,000 were sold in Ireland alone.
Eleanor opened her 18-date tour on Friday and was raring to go when we spoke a couple of days before that.
‘I’m champing at the bit to get back out there to make magic, to heal hearts and spread the gospel of Gimme Some Wine,’ she says. ‘I probably took the performing thing for granted but I needed a rest as well. I’d been doing it for 30 years, touring constantly; it was no harm to get some nights in my own bed.’
Gimme Some Wine features solo compositions and a couple she wrote with Paul Brady and former Beautiful South member Dave Rotheray. Some of the songs were written in the aftermath of her split from partner Mick O’Gorman – who was sound designer on shows such as Riverdance – after over 20 years. The song Found Out By Fate, the Paul Brady co-write, tells the story of a cheating partner. When I ask if she was talking specifically about her relationship with O’Gorman, the father of her 19-year-old daughter Sarah Jane, and also about references made to the end of a relationship in another song, South Anne Street, she won’t confirm it.
‘I’m not saying anything,’ she laughs before adding, ‘People say, “You have such a great imagination,” but I was like a reporter with music, telling it like it was’. Survival, the closing song
on the album also packs a hefty emotional punch and anyone who has gone through the dark times following a relationship split – in other words, everyone – will relate to the song and
Eleanor’s characterisation of the experiences that inspired it.
‘It is a bleak song about a dark period, that’s true,’ she says.
‘If you are going through something awful, people say, “Oh, take it day by day,” but at that time it’s hour by hour. There are days when you feel you can conquer the world and oth
‘I’m champing at the bit to get back out there to spread the gospel of Gimme Some Wine’
ers where if you get to the end of the day, it’s an absolute triumph. I hope people realise from the rest of the songs on the album, you come through these things.’
One of those other more hopeful songs is Fragile Wishes which was written for her daughter.
She says when she was younger, she would have had qualms about penning such a personal lyric but not anymore.
‘She [Sarah Jane] is the love of my life. She is amazing,’ Eleanor says. ‘First of all, I thought it was so naff for a songwriter to write a song about their kid, then I had a kid, of course. You start off thinking you are in control and you are going to mind and nourish them but as time goes on you realise that you have no control. The world is a cruel place. You don’t wish huge riches for them; you just want them to be happy. You hope they’ll find a partner that is going to be decent and kind and help them. You want them to have friends that last that won’t shaft
them. They laugh at you for wanting those things for them and you think, “Some day, darling, you will have a kid and wish the same things for that person. Then you’ll get it”.’
Eleanor likes to keep her role as chairwoman of Imro (the Irish Music Rights Organisation) off topic when she is speaking about her own musical career, but I thought it would be remiss, as we closed our interview, not to ask did she find it difficult when Imro was criticised for not doing more for musicians who were unable to play live.
‘I think there is a perception out there that Imro collects money to pay musicians. What we do is distribute royalties due to songwriters, composers and publishers. That is all,’ she says.
‘There is another organisation Raap that pays musicians [Raap collects and distributed performance royalties]. There are different organisations for different royalties.
‘But, as a musician myself, I know it was really so very hard for people and people’s mental health suffered really badly.’
‘I thought it was so naff to write a song about a kid… but then I had a kid’