Music
29 Apr 04

Yola Tango

After ten years on a major label, Eleanor McEvoy went deep south-east to learn the value of self-determination.

How times change! A decade ago Eleanor McEvoy was on a whirlwind of writing, recording and non-stop touring – mainly across America – with a full band in tow. Back then she was signed to a world-wide deal with a major label. These days she lives in a remote part of south Co Wexford with her partner and two-year-old daughter. She now records on her own label and tours, either solo or with her collaborator/pianist Brian Connor.

“I’m in a completely different place in my life now than I was back then,” she says. “I really like the idea of having a little cottage industry and putting out my own albums and touring whenever I feel like it. Being able to work at your own timescale is so important to me now. I’m 37 and I want to control my life. Even basic things like being able to put whatever song you want on an album and deciding what you want to put on the cover is really important.”
Having initially enjoyed massive success at home with her composition, ‘A Woman’s Heart’ and the subsequent best-selling album and sell-out tour, the Cabra born singer-songwriter effectively turned her back on the trad folk world. She signed to Geffen Records (by Tom Zutaut, who discovered Guns N’ Roses) and made a bid for the big time as a contemporary rock singer songwriter. Following the world-wide release in 1994 of her self-titled debut, she toured widely in the US, Europe and the Far East. Her second album What’s Following Me?, released in 1996, featured the US radio hit ‘Precious Little’ while ‘A Glass Unkissed’ from the same album was featured in the ABC Television series Clueless. Another song from the album, ‘Whisper A Prayer To The Moon’, was featured in the Pierce Brosnan film, The Nephew. Her final major label release, the Rupert Hine produced Snapshots, released in 1999, was equally well-received. Despite building up a loyal following and generating impressive sales, she didn’t make the huge commercial breakthrough expected and she parted company with the label in 2000.
“Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was all great at the time,” she says. “Record companies fund the records and you get advances and support and all that. Looking back, the major label thing probably wasn’t for me, but that said, if I had the whole thing to do again and I was that age, I probably would do things in the same way. But it annoys me that somebody else could own your music. I recently bought back the first album, which Geffen had sold to Sony in 1996. They wouldn’t put it out and it wasn’t available anymore. With the help of lawyers and a lot of money I finally got it back and put it out myself.”
McEvoy’s last album Yola, released on her own label in 2001, saw a return to a more acoustic, folk-based format. With little fanfare it gained extensive airplay on the all-important BBC Radio 2 and garnered positive reviews in magazines such as Mojo. Her latest album Early Hours follows a similar pattern, albeit with more of an emphasis on jazz based songs.
Early Hours is released on the new high resolution format multi-channel SACD while the single ‘I’ll Be Willing’ is reckoned to be the first ever surround-sound CD single. She has just appeared on the cover of Hi Fi Plus magazine and is in demand to perform at hi-fi exhibitions. For McEvoy it meant gaining a new audience of (mainly male) hi-fi enthusiasts.
“It’s amazing, the effect it has had,” she explains. “For a start I’ve never had a big male audience before but when I played at one of the big hi-fi shows in London I was joking that I hadn’t played to an audience with no women since I played in Wheatfield prison. All these men sitting out there was very unusual for me.
“It all came about because I didn’t want to do things in a cheap way. Too many bands leave a label and then do a cheap album, recorded live on the back of a lorry somewhere. I wanted to have really good musicians and I wanted it to sound good. When I heard SACD for the first time my jaw dropped to the ground. It was so much better than CD in terms of sound quality and dynamics. Even when I’m writing songs now I think of how they’ll come across in surround sound.”
Known in the past for intensely personal lyrics, McEvoy says she has become less introspective and more positive in her lyrical outlook.
“My songwriting is getting less introverted,” she says. “They’ve always been very dark but gradually there is more hope in the songs.” Some of the new songs even display a sense of humour – something that was lacking in her previous work. The opening track on Early Hours is entitled, ‘You’ll Hear Better Songs Than This’. Some might say this is asking for trouble!
“One of my musicians said ‘you can’t put that on the album; you’ll leave yourself open to being slagged off’. I thought, ‘I don’t care’. If they want to slag me off they’ll do it anyway, they don’t need an excuse. I suppose it’s a little bit tongue-in-cheek.”
Early Hours also features several covers, including the Bert Jansch song ‘Where Did My Life Go’ and more surprisingly, a smouldering, jazzy version of Chuck Berry’s ‘Memphis Tennessee’.
“I thought this is my fifth album, if you’re going to do a cover, now is the time to do it,” she explains. “It was almost like, ‘They’ve had my songs – here’s someone else’s for a change.’ ‘Memphis Tennessee’ is a song I’ve always wanted to do for political reasons because of the subject matter, which is about fathers not being able to see their children. There was a case in England recently about this guy who has been trying to see his daughter for five years. He’s been through 16 judges and had 43 court hearings. He’s supposed to have access but every time he goes around the mother is not there. I feel very strongly about this and I know a lot of people who had similar problems.”
Another song, ‘Ave Maria’, explores the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland, another subject McEvoy feels strongly about. “For our parents’ generation the church really was it,” she says. “They gave up their entire lives for the church and now they find out that they were abusing our children and lying through their teeth about it. To find all that you believed in destroyed must be utterly devastating for them. I have respect for people who follow religion – the song is looking at a woman and saying, ‘Don’t let her down whatever you do’.
The success of Yola and its follow-up has meant that McEvoy can tour the UK several times a year – she’s just finished a short UK trek and heads back in July for an extensive tour.
“I find that the scene that is just developing here is flourishing in the UK,” she says. “There are thousands of little theatres and venues all around the country, you drive into them and you find the gig is sold out. Places like Wentworth in Yorkshire, which most people haven’t heard of, then we drive another 14 miles down the road to Selby and again it is stuffed.
“They’re hearing the songs on BBC Radio 2 – some of them read the Mojo review which was very positive. Things like that really bring out the crowds. There’s a very hip gay magazine which gave it a great review and even the porn mag Fiesta gave it a good review, although funnily enough nobody comes to the gig and says they’re there because of the review they saw in Fiesta.”
While her fan-base in the UK is solid and growing, McEvoy is less certain about working in the US in the near future.
“I’ve done most of my work in America up until recently, but I’m not so sure about it anymore,” she says. “Trying to get a work visa for the States has become so difficult. It’s unbelievable – they ask so many questions and you have to be so careful in case you say the wrong thing and you might be construed as anti-American. That, combined with a lot of other things I’ve been pissed off about for a long time. Such as the fact that they don’t pay royalties in a lot of cases. They’ve been up before the World Trade Organisation who told them they have to comply. But they’re not complying – they’re bigger than us so they can bully us. So I don’t know if I’m going to go to America this time around. I’m just so pissed off with their attitude.”