- Music
- 25 Aug 09
Ever Ready
Ever27 are four determined Midlands musicians with their eyes on the main prize. Their frontman Brendan McEvoy, formerly of the much-loved Mesner, is enthused by the support they’ve had from the Mullingar community and beyond.
First off, I need convincing that Ever27 haven’t borrowed their name from a brand of car battery. Brendan McEvoy assures me this isn’t the case. He says: “We took the name from the famous painting, Forever 27 Crew, which was about all the greats who died aged 27 – Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones and Kurt Cobain. Our bass-player Tanya O’Callaghan used to call me ‘Forever 27’. It seemed like a cool name.”
The band began life about a year ago, when McEvoy came back from California, where he’d been active with another group, Mesner.
“We had an album completed and some videos we’d done in the desert,” he says. “Sadly, I thought Mesner had run its course and we decided not to release the record. Tanya had also been in the US playing with the lead singer from Tool. She liked the videos we had done with Mesner and suggested we hook up.”
One of their strengths is that all four members write both lyrics and music. Fitzsimons and Feery had a band called Waiting To Explode, so there’s no shortfall in the experience department either.
Continues McEvoy: “We plan to survive and thrive by playing live. We’ll give away a lot of our tracks for free on our website to get people into the music. If, say, we get 1,000 tracks downloaded in Portugal, that opens up possibilities to gig there, and so on.”
Ever27 have recorded a new single, ‘Closer’, for August release while an album with producer Greg Haver will be unveiled in February next year.
The singer describes his native Mullingar as a “phenomenal” music town: “There’s Danny Byrne’s and The Stables for gigs, and nearly all the pubs do live music four or five nights a week. We rehearse upstairs in Danny Byrne’s old nightclub. We’ve had a lock-out there for five months. It’s perfect to allow creativity to flow. They feed us in the pub and give us anything we want. We had 720 people the first time we played.”
What about getting on radio?
“i105-107 and Phantom have playlisted ‘The Ground Where You’ll Be Livin’’. Red FM and 2fm have been phenomenal. We’ve had plays on 98 and FM 104. Unfortunately, Midlands 103 decided not to playlist it. It’s very disappointing, especially as I’m a Laois man and the other three are from Westmeath. The station have every right not to playlist our record. But I can’t understand why they would want to do that.”
