Who is John Edgar Voe?

Well, according to Martin Corrigan, the man responsible for this strange, old world moniker, he’s “a Scottish immigrant to America in the Eighteenth Century”.
“I woke up one morning with the name going round my head,” the former Corrigan, and erstwhile Alloy Mental front man explains, “and then the back story gradually started to come to me. He’s an interesting man. A bit of a mad one.”
Corrigan, as anyone who’s followed his odd, thistle and pothole-strewn, career path will know, has long been attracted to abrasive, high-wire personalities.
Many of his songs (like early favourite, McArthur) are populated by a lurid roll-call of cartoon miscreants and black-hatted baddies. And likewise, someone who has, at one time or another, made music with the likes of Jonny Black, Danny Todd and Phil Kieran, wastes little time collaborating with creative shrinking violets.
With John Edgar Voe, however, he’s taken this big-character leaning to its logical conclusion.
Not only do we have a rag-tag collection of soldiers, avenging angels, death row killers and merry degenerates popping up in the lyrics (‘From A Soldier’, ‘The Ballad of Billy Young’), but peer through the darkness at his co-conspirators in the project and you might see a few surprising faces.
If the sight of Robyn G Shiels on one side of the stage doesn’t jolt you from your seat, then Charley ‘Desert Hearts’ Mooney hanging around on the other probably will.
You need, of course, to sell records to be a supergroup. But, if there’s an alternative universe that places stock in celestial performances in White’s Tavern and The Front Page, then that’s exactly what these guys look like: a supergroup made up of the (unfairly) unknown.
“I met Robyn the traditional way,” says Martin. “ He approached me and told me he wanted to slit my throat. It’s a rite of passage with him, isn’t it? I wasn’t fooled by it though. I knew he was a man who just wanted to be embraced. So, I embraced him.”
And Charley?
“You know, I don’t remember. I can remember hearing the first Desert Hearts album and thinking it was great, then seeing him on stage and thinking ‘You really are good’. We’ve had quite a few run-ins over the years, but everything’s good at the moment.”
Enniskillen-born Corrigan, has christened the result – a rattling brew of Cash-Nelson-Skyline-era-Bob – Fermanacana. Which is quite a surprise, considering he has spent the last three years conjuring up heavy techno with Alloy Mental.
“It shocked me too,” he grins. “The first song I wrote was ‘Thelma’ and I was taken aback. ‘Okay!’ and left it for a while. Absolutely not what I expected. I’d been working on the Alloy Mental stuff and all of a sudden here was a weird, twisted folk song. I mean, it was only later that I found out that Thelma was how Alaistair Crowley used to refer to God. My favourite artist is Neil Young. He tends to follow where his songs lead, so I reckoned I’d run with it and see where I end up.”
To that end, he’s recently adopted a unique approach to cultivating lyrical ideas.
“Every morning, as soon as I wake up, I fill up three A4 pages to clear my head. It’s random stuff – lines, words, stream-of-consciousness. A pure mind dump. I look back at them every now and again and it’s always a surprise. There are little stories there, short scenes. A friend told me it was a useful writing technique and I’ve been doing it for about two years now. It’s very interesting. I’d recommend it.”
Initial recording for the first JEV album took place during the summer, with Ben McAuley at the Start Together Studios. Since then, David Holmes has come on board to help with the final mixes.
“He’s kind of mentoring me,” says Martin. “Although not in the Simon Cowell way. He was amazing ears and brilliant ideas.”
Live appearances have been fleeting, but a residency at Belfast’s Menagerie suggests Voe is eager to start making some serious introductions.
Corrigan, however, is not looking too far ahead.
“I wanted to have fun with this thing,” he says. “To write some interesting songs and then play them with these people. We’ll see how it goes. ”