I’m Your Fan:Jeff Buckley’s Irish Friends Pay Moving Tribute On Day Tragic Singer Would’ve Turned 50

It will also be the 20th anniversary of Jeff’s death next year, who sadly drowned while swimming in Wolf River Harbour, Memphis. He had gone there with the intention of working on his follow-up album to the critically acclaimed 'Grace'. Despite only releasing one album during his own lifetime, Jeff has been listed at number 39 in Rolling Stones magazine list of greatest singers.
The posthumous release of Jeff’s Leonard Cohen cover version back in 2006 – hailed by Time magazine as “exquisitely sung” and was included in Rolling Stones’ magazine's ‘Best 500 Song of All Time list’ – went to number one in 2007 in the US Billboards Hot Digital Charts and also went to number one in France and hit number three in the Swedish charts.
Soon after it’s release, a poll of 50 songwriters conducted by Q magazine listed Jeff’s rendition of ‘Hallelujah’ among the all-time “Top 10 Greatest Tracks”. With the Oscar winner and Grammy Award winner John Legend describing it at the time "as near perfect as you can get”. He added, “The lyrics to ‘Hallelujah’ are just incredible and the melody's gorgeous and then there's Jeff's interpretation of it. It's one of the most beautiful pieces of recorded music I’ve ever heard.” No mean feat.
This newfound interest inevitably lead to a wider – and much deserved – interest in his music and more material was released by his record company.
One of his most popular works that struck a chord most with many of his fans - particularly his Irish fans - was a live EP recorded back in 1992 at a now defunct Irish cafe/bar called Sin-é (“That’s It” in English) in New York, simply entitled ‘Live at Sin-é EP’. It was originally released while he was still alive, but an extended version came out in 2003 to much fanfare.

The American singer-songwriter – who was the son of the famous musician Tim Buckley who also died tragically young at 28-years-old from a drugs overdose – developed a good friendship with two Irish women during his period playing at the now defunct Irish Bar in Manhattan.
Waterford native, Mary Sue Connelly, who is a video editor and filmmaker still living in the US, remembers fondly how she came to know Jeff.
“It's hard to believe Jeff would be turning 50. Gosh!” she tells Hot Press. “I spent a lot of time at Sin-é in those days. I saw almost all of his performances. How fortunate I was!
“I lived a block-and-half away and it was literally my second home. That was the epicenter of the New York music scene at that time. Carl Geary was the man behind it all and it was a very special time. Jeff was there very frequently.”
Mary Sue, who spoke last to Jeff a few weeks before his death, recalls that he was a withdrawn character. “Jeff was a man of few words and sometimes seemed very sad, but always very passionate and focused about his music,” she proffers.
All these years later, she can still vividly recall one striking sad image of Jeff in the Sin-é bar. “I remember one day he spent the afternoon with his head in his hands, lost in a world of despair. Not sure that is the most positive of things to say, but I feel he always knew of his impending early demise. It was kind-of like his life was an open wound. He felt things very deeply."
She quickly turns to her fond memory of being in the audience the night Jeff recorded his famous live EP at the Irish venue in 1992. “It was wonderful – as were all of his performances. Every time he played/sang you could hear a pin drop. It was like the world fell silent to listen. Frequently, he sang unaccompanied – with only a foot tap as the rhythm section – and it was breathtaking.”
Irish writer Eabha Rose was a student living in Greenwich Village back in 1993 when she struck up a friendship with Jeff who lived beside her.
“It was at Sin-é I first met Jeff Buckley,” Eabha Rose tells Hot Press. Like Mary Sue, Eabha also recalls Jeff being a "painfully shy young man".
She adds: “He was a solitary figure who sometimes appeared at parties organised over bottles of Rolling Rock (beer) and Irish stew. He often brought his guitar with him or was handed one."
Despite being a withdrawn character, Eabha remembers he had his fair share of female admires even then. "Handsome and quietly cool with a mesmerizingly versatile voice, he quickly earned himself a large female following,” she recalls.
It was actually Jeff Buckley, Eabha Rose tells Hot Press, who introduced her to the wonderful world of Leonard Cohen’s music and poetry when they first met back in 1993. "He was the person who first introduced me to the music and poetry of Leonard Cohen," she says. "I was unquestionably a teenage girl on the brink of a love affair with words and poetry.
“Like Cohen, there was an intimacy conveyed through his (Jeff Buckley’s) performances, which at times verged on the mystic. They were heavy with emotion. I could feel and believe his words."
Setting the scene about the venue that is most associated with Jeff Buckley, Eabha paints a colourful picture of those halcyon days of watching him perform regularly at Sin-é. Eabha - who would often recite her own work there on poetry nights - nostalgically recalls that it was only “a stone's throw from the historic Tomkins Square Park" and that "Sin-é’s large window overlooked the parade of street artists and tottering drag queens". The intimate venue was, she says, the "embodiment's of the vibrancy and creativity that was the East Village".
She adds, "This unique cafe reflected much of that magic. As a student living in Greenwich Village in the mid-90s, my free time was frequently spent at music sessions and shyly participating in poetry readings at Sin-é Cafe on St Mark's Place. This was a cafe/bar owned by Dubliner Shane Doyle, who seemed to have incredible intuition when it came to identifying emerging talent. Sin-é sat in the heart of the East Village and its once thriving music scene. As a venue, it was a tiny space with a punk feel and uber cool staff.”
Eabha tells Hot Press how Sin-é would be packed to the rafters for Jeff’s gigs.
“Whenever Jeff was due to play, word travelled fast,” Eabha recalls. “He would slip quietly through the door, head bowed as he went to set up. Emer and the other Sin-é staff would push the tables against the wall in preparation for Jeff's growing following –oftentimes the audience would spill out onto the street. I can remember noses pressed against glass as stunned passersby tried to catch a glimpse of the performer with the incredible otherworldly voice.”
On the back of his regular weekly performances at the Irish venue that attracted huge attention over a few months in 1992, Jeff Buckley was offered a three-album deal with Columbia Records later that same year.

Mary Sue Connelly recalls the last time she spoke to Jeff, which was at a poetry reading shortly before he was cut down in his prime. “It was clear at that point that he was suffering a lot. It was sad to see,” she concludes. “There is a profound connection between the young Irish people in New York at that time, Jeff Buckley and the music scene at Sin-é.
“It was very Irish, very special and there was poetry in the air. That atmosphere ceased to exist when Sin-é closed and it was the end of an era. I only wish I had video documentation of that time. Oh, the world without iPhones was a dark and mysterious place!”
Eabha Rose says she will be eternally grateful for her old friend Jeff introducing her to the music of the late, great Leonard Cohen. She remembers the first time listening to Cohen was like a 'love at first sight' experience. “The love affair continues,” she concludes.

* Eabha Rose is an Irish writer and narrative artist. Her short poetry film, 'The Elephant Is Contagious' was directed by Simon O'Neill. It has collected a number of national and international awards.
It can be viewed on the following link:
Eabha recently recorded a collection of poems with Armeninan-American poet, Silva Zanoyan Merjanian. She keeps a blog entitled, Theatre of Words (http://theatreofwords.blogspot.ie/)