05/11/2010
It’s not often that Alastair McMillan, the highly experienced sound engineer for Van Morrison and U2, gets excited about a voice he hears on the radio but this time he had to call Radio Foyle to discover more. “I heard this girl singing on the Gerry Anderson Show,” he said to the receptionist, “do you know who she is?” “Actually,” said the receptionist, “it’s me”. For Derry singer songwriter Eilidh Patterson the call was the beginning of an important relationship that would lead ultimately to her just released CD, When The Time Comes, which is already receiving rave reviews.
Velvet and air
"Eilidh Patterson's voice is velvet and air. The richness of her sound and her songs is something beautiful to behold and she is definitely an artist to watch!"
It’s not just Alastair McMillan. When artists of the calibre of Beth Nielsen Chapman, writer of countless hits for the stars of country and folk, talk like this you can be sure it’s somebody special. Raised in Derry the prodigiously talented Eilidh, who just returned from a sell out UK tour with the American singer songwriter, is already making waves on the music scene soon after starting out. She’s also performed with the likes of Nanci Griffith and Kimmie Rhodes and played at top US festivals.
Ray of sunshine
Eilidh (the name is Scots-Gaelic for ‘ray of sunshine’) grew up in a typical Derry home, with regular sessions of singing around the piano. She did have one advantage, father Don is an accomplished singer and songwriter himself and Eilidh and her two sisters were encouraged to play piano, guitar and learn harmony singing. “We sang gospel songs, Irish and Scottish songs”, Eilidh says. “We all loved harmony singing and when we decided to go on the road, when I was in my late teens, the inspiration was the Bill Gaither Vocal Band, Southern gospel singers who are huge in the US. We’d sing three part harmony gospel and also some of my dad’s songs, which are a mixture of gospel and ballads”.
When outside pressures forced the family outfit to quit after three years, Eilidh decided to go solo. In preparation, endless hours were spent carefully listening and playing along to CDs, “making sure I got the inflections and tone just right, constantly learning from artists I admired, like Alison Krauss and Steve Earle”.
The first song
Even though Eilidh wrote her first song (the gospel influenced, You are There, the last track on her album) at the tender age of 18, she was actually the last in the family to start writing. “All the others wrote songs and my mother is a great poet”, she says. “The family are my most honest critics, which is what you need, especially now it’s my career. They’re an important sounding board for me and will always tell me the truth. They won’t let me away with a bad line.”
Foyle Folk Club
One of the most important formative musical experiences for Eilidh was when her mother took her along to the Foyle Folk Club, which was run by Chris Devlin every fourth Sunday at the Verbal Arts Centre. By far the youngest, most others were in the forties and over, it was an initially intimidating experience for the teenager. “It was the first time I’d played in public on my own and I was shaking life a leaf”, she recalls. “But it was a gradual introduction and a way of playing new songs. They were so encouraging, everyone enjoying each other’s music”.
Radio days
At this time Eilidh was working as a receptionist at Radio Foyle, where she would get talking to the many singers and songwriters coming through the door. She didn’t, however, tell the others at the station about her musical talents. Luckily Derry’s Channel Nine TV station saw her at the Foyle Folk Club and filmed her as part of a series on Derry singers. “Two DJs at the station, Colum Arbuckle and Mark Patterson (no relation), saw me on the series and began to give me odd spots on their programmes,” she says. “I didn’t have many songs of my own at that stage but it gave me a platform and got me used to playing live radio. Again, I was shaking a lot at first but they were very supportive. They’re a great bunch of people there.”
Then came the fateful day Gerry Anderson’s guest didn’t show up and Eilidh was told, “Go home and get your guitar”. She recalls answering the phone to Alastair McMillan vividly. “After laughing at the idea of me being the singer he’d heard, he told me he really liked the quality of my voice and was interested in doing some recording with me”.
Getting live
In the event it would be another two years before the recording would materialise but, though disappointed at the delay, Eilidh now had time to develop her song writing and gain invaluable experience performing live. “I was playing support, maybe doing five or six songs before the main act, usually at Sandino’s. It was a huge help. I was getting to understand how things worked, it became less scary and I was feeling more confident. Performing is a real buzz, you feel very vulnerable but it’s a great release too. I always knew I wanted to do something with music and this felt right”.
Then came another call from Alastair McMillan, who suggested Eilidh, who had recently moved to Belfast, record an EP with him. This garnered a lot of radio plays and raised interest in her music, leading to more high profile gigs.
When The Time Comes
Two years ago, Alastair (currently working on U2’s world tour), rang again. This time he felt it was time for Eilidh’s first CD. “He was working with Van Morrison at Dublin’s Windmill Studios at the time,” Eilidh says, “so we worked the recording around that. He also had loads of great musicians he knew, like Henry McCullough, who played with me”.
Another find was the man who is now Eilidh’s permanent guitarist at her bigger gigs, Finnish-born Esa Taponen, who played on the track Precious Cargo. “The evening after recording the song we had a jam session and he played on every song I had ever written. He was so good, I told him he was my guitar player from now on”.
Still Learning
Describing herself as a contemporary folk singer songwriter, Eilidh says she writes songs with truth in them, “songs people can relate to, songs you can live by, like the quote from Michangelo (Still Learning, on the new album) which went to my heart as well as my head. Some are written from personal experience, others from something I’ve read or heard. I do like sad songs, I’ve always been drawn to melancholy and the sense of loneliness”.
Second home
Over the years Eilidh has formed a close relationship with the home of country music Nashville, Tennessee, spending two weeks at a gospel music summer school there in 2001 and 2002. She returned two years ago and is now a regular visitor. “Nashville is a Mecca for songwriters”, she says. “Someone told me that 75 percent of people there are songwriters. It’s a second home to me now, a community of songwriters. It’s much more than country. There’s blues, Jazz and a great folk scene which I now feel part of. It’s great to be accepted there”.
Creativity Stargazing
It was after attending a song writing music workshop run by Beth Nielsen Chapman in 2008 that Eilidh made one of the most important connections of her career. “I got to know Beth and gave her a copy of my EP. Later I got an email from her asking if I wanted to attend her workshop in Nashville. I booked the flight there and then. The workshop is called Creativity Stargaze and is held in the Dyer observatory there. I have learned so much from Beth, she’s been a great mentor and I’m very grateful to her”.
Sell-out Tour
Eilidh began singing back up vocals for Beth at a concert at the Grand Opera House in Belfast, followed by performances at the Cambridge Festival and Celtic Connections Festival last year. That led to the recent sell-out tour of the UK as part of her band, along with fellow Northern Irish singer songwriter Ruth Trimble. “It was an amazing tour, playing to between 600 and 1200 people every night. Each night Beth would ask Ruth and I to sing one song each in the middle of her set. I sang Do I Ever Cross Your Mind, which had a great response”.
Do I Ever Cross Your Mind was written about going to see Willie Nelson in Texas on a balmy, summer evening, during the period she performed at SxSW (SouthbySouthWest), a huge annual festival in Austin, dedicated to music, film and new technologies, that Eilidh has appeared at for the last three years.
Looking ahead
Eilidh’s future plans include promoting her CD at gigs, the next of which is Songwriters in the Round at Ballymoney Town Hall on November 4th with Paul Casey and Anthony Toner. She’ll also be performing again at the Belfast Nashville Songwriters’ Festival next February and is currently recording demos and writing for her new album.
She’s looking to break new ground with her concerts too, aiming for tours in the UK and the US. Meanwhile she continues to combine her rapidly escalating musical career with her day job as an event organiser for a Christian organisation in Belfast (her faith is very important to her). But with the progress she has made in her musical career, it is surely just a matter of time before that task becomes impossible.
City of culture
“The City of Culture award was fantastic and so well deserved. The city has been bursting with arts and culture and now they have a platform until 2013 and beyond. I hope that all those people who have been working so hard for the arts for years will now get the funding they need. The arts community there is really buzzing now, everyone is talking about it”.
Find out more about Eilidh, hear her music on www.eilidhpatterson.com
Digital downloads of When The Time Comes are available on ITunes, CD Baby and Amazon. Hard copies are available at HMV and via her website.
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