Eleanor McEvoy Laid Bare

She’s known as one of our most acclaimed singer-songwriters – her feminist anthem, ‘A Woman’s Heart’ remains an enduring Irish classic. But over two decades Eleanor McEvoy has released a dozen studio albums of consistently high quality, with her songs touching audiences at home and abroad. She tours incessantly, including regular jaunts around Europe and Australia. The Wexford-based Dubliner has always done things her own way. She was the very first artist to release a ‘surround-sound’ single on the high-resolution Super Audio CD format while, until recently, she drove to her shows in a converted hearse. Her latest project marks another new departure and finds her publishing her very first music book. Naked Music – The Songbook is a collaboration between McEvoy and celebrated English painter Chris Gollon. Featuring lyrics and melodies of the songs from her most recent album, Naked Music, it includes 22 of Gollon’s paintings, which were inspired by the music on the record.

It all started quite by accident when she bought a painting of Gollon’s. “I saw it in a gallery in London and fell in love with it. I walked away, thinking it was too expensive but I kept thinking about it afterwards and decided I had to have it. So I bought it and it’s now in my bedroom,” she continues. “From where it’s hanging on the wall I can see through to the bathroom and the leaking window – which is what I should have spent the money on. But I just thought, ‘shag it – you don’t lie on your deathbed thinking, ‘I really wished I’d fixed that leaking window’ rather than having a beautiful oil painting to look at.”

Knowing little to nothing about the artist, McEvoy decided to Google him to see what else she could find out.

“I was playing in Norwich and had an afternoon off and he had an exhibition at Norwich Cathedral. So I went along, I met him and his manager, and we got chatting. They came to the gig that night and stayed on afterwards and we talked for hours. He said that he’d love it if we could do something together and I said, ‘I’d love to as well – but the problem is you’re a painter and I’m a singer – how is that going to work out?’”

Gollon suggested he listen to some of the songs she was working on for the album which would become Naked Music with the intention of perhaps painting a front cover.

“So I sent him the tapes, he loved them and sent back four different paintings. He kept on painting basically until he had about 25 paintings in total.”

The pair were approached by a London gallery who offered to do an exhibition of the paintings – with a twist.

“They said they’d call it Naked Music and suggested I could perform live at the exhibition. So we took over this fantastic big space in London, I played a couple of gigs there and the rest of the time the album was playing on a loop. It was fantastic. I’d point to one of the paintings and say it was inspired by this song, the lights would go on the painting and I’d sing the song. It was an extraordinary experience.”

Was she happy with the artistic interpretation of her songs or were there any disagreements?

“God yeah, I absolutely loved what he did with them even though there were some surprises. I just think it’s interesting to get someone’s visual take on the songs. I’m really interested in the idea of one art form informing another, and I’ve started writing songs about his paintings. I felt he really got into the sexuality of ‘The Thought Of You’ and with a song like ‘Deliver Me’ which is basically giving out about the Catholic church and clerical abuse, he did it as a kind of a crucifix influenced by Goya. It was really arresting and stark – it’s actually darker than the song.”

McEvoy says she enjoyed the experience so much that she didn’t want it to end. But the practicalities of a combined touring art exhibition and live music performance proved insurmountable. “Obviously it’s very difficult to physically carry around 25 paintings and hang them up and do a gig. But we didn’t want the thing to just die, so we thought it might be nice to have a book – with the music along with the paintings that were inspired by that music.”

So it’s the book of the album of the exhibition so to speak?

“It is but it also coincided with a lot of people asking me if I had the music for certain songs. They basically wanted the melody and the guitar chords. I write all my songs out on paper, with just sheet music and when I delivered the artwork, the guy doing it said, ‘Oh, it kind of looks cool with your higgledy piggeldy writing rather than having it properly printed.”

The project has already been invited to headline the Louder Than Words Festival in Manchester in November, and if it takes off it promises to open up a whole new arena for McEvoy.

“It’s going to be quite a different experience for me and it’ll be interesting to see if art fans buy it just for the paintings, as there were a lot of people from the art world at the exhibition.