Eleanor McEvoy alone at Oswestry Ironworks

Acclaimed Irish singer-songwriter Eleanor McEvoy was not even aware she was recording her new album when she put down the tracks to the new release, Alone.

And when the resulting songs made their way to music executives she didn't really want it to go any further.

As it is, the resulting album, featuring just McEvoy's pure voice and whatever instrument she had to hand at the time, has had music critics purring with delight.

Now the singer is on the road to promote the new release, her ninth album, and calling in at The Ironworks venue in Oswestry and Birmingham's Glee Club.

McEvoy takes up how the album came about.

"It sort of came about by accident. I had a bit of a hole in the last English tour I did and there were five days off I hadn't expected and rather than just fly home and come back again I just thought, well, rather than go to another hotel or a B&B I rang a studio I do quite a lot of work at in Norfolk, and said, look rather than paying for a B&B or a hotel can I just throw you a few quid for a few nights and can I stay in one of your cottages?

"When I got there the studio was empty so the guy who runs the place said 'If you want just go in and play your stuff . . .' So while I was doing that the engineer was doing nothing and said 'Do you mind if I record?' I said OK, so he did and that was it. I just spent a few days with no plan of doing anything and I left and I didn't even take a tape with me.

"Behind my back the guy who had done the recording called up Mick, who runs the record company, my partner, and said 'Look, she's got to release this. You've got to listen to it.' Behind my back again they played it to the English distributor who also said 'You've got to release it'."

With just McEvoy in the recording booth, the album features her voice and one instrument on each track, a mixture of McEvoy favourites of old like A Woman's Heart and You'll Hear Better Songs (Than This) and some new songs, like the beautiful Harbour, plus her take on P.F. Sloan's Eve of Destruction.

"It's mostly electric guitar but there's piano as well. And I play bass on one number actually - What's Her Name? - just because it was there and I had just written the song. It's not something you'd ever do for a recording. You wouldn't just pick up a bass, sing a song over it and then put it out on a record."

But she agrees that there is a direct freshness about the mostly one-take recordings.

"Well I hope so. I can't quite get my head around it," she says. "I'm really shocked by the reviews because it's almost against my better judgment that it's been brought out, you know? But I'm delighted, obviously."

Although she is mostly identified as a folk artist (more of which later), McEvoy insists she has a wide taste in music, from traditional Irish to rock and classical, having been a session and orchestral violinist.

"I was always into a big variety of music but I grew up in an odd kind of situation where I was educated in Gaelic," she explains. "I was very much into traditional Irish music from a very early age but my sister was substantially older than me and was into Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and people like that and my brother, who was older than me as well was into Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin and all of that and my dad was a bit of a Mahler freak.

"So I had Mahler in one room, Joni Mitchell in another, Led Zeppelin in another and then I was interested in pop, so I was listening to Slade and Sweet and people like that."

So how would she define her own sound?

"I say folk. But the folk DJs won't play me because I'm not folk enough. Some of the folk festivals won't book me because I'm not folk enough. I think it's because of the electric guitar, they see that and say 'Oh, it's not folk'.

"But I'm singing about real life. We don't have dowries, we don't all wear shawls. It's 2011, I'm writing about meeting people on the internet, about people with eating disorders, about anorexia. I write about stuff that's real and relevant, and isn't that folk music?"

We end by talking about one particular memory she has of playing the Midlands.

"I better not say the venue in Birmingham but you might gather it was an upmarket sort of place. They made me sign a form, first of all that I wouldn't take any water on to the stage, then they made me sign a form to say I wouldn't make use of a naked flame and also that there would be no nudity during my performance. That's the first time I've ever had to sign one of those."

So is she not tempted to break all three rules this time round?

"Oh this time I might just do it!" she laughs.

By Ian Harvey

• Eleanor McEvoy’s new album Alone is out now.

• She plays the Birmingham Glee club on Wednesday, September 21, 2011, and Oswestry Ironworks on Thursday, October 6, 2011.

• For tickets and further info visit www.eleanormcevoy.com