Peter Viney's Blog

Forest Arts Centre
New Milton, Hampshire

11th November 2024

SET LIST

Found Out By Fate
The Spanish Word For Heart
Gimmee Some Wine
Sylvia’s Mother
Harbour
Fragile Wishes
The Way You Wear Your Troubles
Is She Really Going Out With Him?
Scarlet Angels

INTERVAL

Sophie
The Man Who Faked His Own Life
You’re So Vain
South Anne Street
Wrong So Wrong
Tunes: The Kerry Polka / The Lark In The Morning
Milord
Only A Woman’s Heart
ENCORE
Oh! Breathe Not His Name
An Englishman in New York

Forest Arts Centre is a venue where I’ve seen Jon Boden and John Spiers, Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick. The photo from their website is what it’s like (though they now have ‘cold’ LED lighting).

I first met Eleanor McEvoy via her version of Chuck Berry’s Memphis Tennessee from Stuff. It’s one of the best-ever Chuck Berry covers. It started me investigating her work to the point where I soon had seven of her CDs. There are a lot more. Eleanor McEvoy and Scots songwriter Michael Marra were my two best new discoveries of the last decade. One album of hers, I’d Rather Go Blonde, ranks among my favourite album titles ever. Linda Thompson’s Proxy Music stands with it.

Her set lists reveal a penchant for at least three covers of well-known songs in her own style, usually to a theme. Her own songs are even better. It’s a solo show, and she plays acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, violin and percussion. Forest Arts is an intimate venue. I can only describe the sound quality as ‘perfect.’ She has intriguing intros and explanations to every song. I won’t spoil any of them. Go and see her.

The set opens with three in a row from her lockdown album, Gimmee Some Wine, all with acoustic guitar. The opener, Found Out By Fate was a co-write with Paul Brady, reminding me that I have a bunch of his albums (and him with The Johnsons) and it’s too long since I put one on. Gimmee Some Wine was hard to get. I ended up breaking my rule and buying it on iTunes. I was pleased to finally get a proper CD copy at the gig. It’s one of the best albums I’ve heard in the last few years too.

The Spanish Word For Heart is a melody that sticks instantly. A gorgeous song. Somehow, it benefits from being stripped back to voice and guitar, perhaps it’s the intimacy of the venue. Every word is crystal clear.

The title track, Gimmee Some Wine ups the pace and the cheerfulness.

I was expecting covers. This is by Shel Silverstein … she asks for suggestions of a Shel Silverstein song, and as I’ve revealed it here, it would be cheating to shout out the title if you go to a show. It was a hit for Dr Hook and The Medicine Show… Sylvia’s Mother. The chat about it afterwards enhanced it.

She moved to upright piano for Harbour from I’d Rather Go Blonde. Again, the sound was perfection. It’s become a popular wedding song. She might have guessed it would be.

She stayed at the piano for Fragile Wishes. I loved the song anyway, but again explanation enhanced the lyric. It’s from Gimmee Some Wine.

Then she switched to electric guitar for the bluesy The Way You Wear Your Troubles which is from Out There. Like several of her albums, the original Out There album is CD / SACD compatible. SACD (trust me) sounds better than either CD or vinyl. I’ve observed in the past that some singers have problems with unaccompanied electric guitar being jarring. She doesn’t at all. Great blues playing.

The next cover was from Joe Jackson, for Is She Really Going Out With Him? She’d told us there was a theme. It was ‘after the break up.’ It fitted the theme perfectly, though Joe Jackson said he’d intended it to be about gorgeous girls going out with ugly blokes. The original was 1978, and one of the songs that stood out for me that year.

Scarlet Angels took us to the interval. It’s the opening track on Gimmee Some Wine. That’s another superb tune. The audience were going on the la la la la chorus, allowing her to take a different harmony.

After the break, she started at the piano for Sophie (from Snapshots), about an anorexic girl. It’s a touching song. We had family experience years ago. It all came back.

The Man Who Faked His Own Life is from Gimmee Some Wine. It’s credited to Dave Rotheray (from The Beautiful South) and Mike Greeves. The Beautiful South were a Hull band, always a major plus for me! The two writers and Eleanor McEvoy had a trio together briefly called Prosecco Socialist. In her accent, faked and fecked are very close indeed. It was still piano.

The third apposite cover. Carly Simon’s You’re So Vain. It was a hit in 1972, but never leaves the airwaves. You could write reams about the song, and it’s now generally accepted to have been about Warren Beatty. He was pleased with himself, but Carly Simon said the subject is a composite of three people and he’s only verse two. Another suspect, Mick Jagger, sang backing vocal on Carly Simon’s original, and Angie Bowie said she was the ‘wife of a close friend.’ I can’t see James Taylor talking a Lear Jet to Nova Scotia to see a total eclipse of the sun. I digress … the song is a great favourite, and she sang it absolutely brilliantly, with guitar playing to match.

South Anne Street is set in Dublin, with an evocative storyline. It would be one of my first choices of her songs. It’s another that’s on Gimmee Some Wine. If you do anything download the original. The narrative live is so entrancing that I didn’t miss the flugelhorn on the record: but the flugelhorn is marvellous. There’s a full band version on YouTube here.

This is where she picked up the violin and played a short intro piece. That went into Wrong So Wrong from Naked Music. The original is guitar, but this was violin played percussively with the bow tapping on the strings. Inspired instrumentation for the erotic memories song.

Then came a solo violin piece. This usually combine three tunes (and I’ve heard fiddlers call them tunes as opposed to songs). I asked her afterwards (while getting my CD purchases signed) and she couldn’t recall, except the last was Lark In The Morning. An Irish man in the line told me it was Kerry’s Polka at the start. I think these sort of lively tunes are a mix and partly improvised. During it the stomping started in the audience … Jon Boden uses an amplified foot board for these party reels. The stomping started right away, and the risers the seats are on are percussive. It was get up and dance stuff, not that we did.

It was back to the piano for Edith Piaf and a rousing Milord, sung entirely in French.

The closer was Only A Woman’s Heart which is where her career originally took off in a duet with Mary Black in 1992. The album with six Irish female singers was a massive seller in Ireland. Electric guitar.

The encore was from The Thomas Moore Project from 2017. Moore was an early 19th century Irish author, and then songwriter / lyricist. Much of it was setting lyrics to old Irish melodies. The Moore collection include The Last Rose of Summer, The Minstrel Boy, Oft In The Stilly Night. Eleanor McEvoy’s versions are definitive. I have always loved The Minstrel Boy and she did it best. Anyway, here was Oh! Breathe Not His Name. Earlier, she mentioned that some considered her not to be a folk singer because she used electric guitar. We could add piano. Adrian McNally, who plays piano with The Unthanks, has rightly pointed out that nearly every 19th century pub had a piano, so folk songs were sung around it. However, the purists around Ewan MacColl in the 1960s took against instruments which required too much technology, so too expensive and complicated for your sturdy peasantry. Anyway, Ewan MaColl would have been totalled thrilled by this rendition. She took two matchboxes, emptied out half the contents and used them as percussion shakers while she sang the song with no other accompaniment. That’s back to basics, Ewan! The recorded version has much more complex percussion.

The second encore was a prelude to her forthcoming American tour. Sting’s An Englishman in New York. We all sang along to the end: I’m an alien, a legal alien. Sting’s ending, Be yourself no matter what they say has never resonated so strongly.

The set list is down to what works with one instrument, which is why my favourite song of hers, I’d Rather Go Blonde wouldn’t work.

So far, the best musical evening this year. Just think, you could see her six times for the cost of my Bob Dylan ticket two weeks ago. You’ll enjoy her more.

This was only the third date of the tour. Bad luck for those in London and Cardiff. Gone, but upcoming are Southampton, Bath, Shoreham, Corsham, Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Lichfield, Sheffield, Glasgow, Irvine, Edinburgh, Sunderland, Bury, Selby, Barton-upon-Humber, Liverpool. See the dates on the flier repeated here. I’d recommend it if you can possibly get to one of the shows.