MAXTRAX: Johnny McEvoy

 

Johnny McEvoy blazed into the charts in the sixties with the monster hit, Muirsheen Durkin, and has stayed ever present in Irish culture since then. This year we mark his eightieth birthday. The singer-songwriter, author and balladeer tells Maxi about songs he feels form the soundtrack to his life, and reveals the stories behind the music that will always be special to him.

 

Your Cheating Heart
Hank Williams
I was always singing, even as a kid, but this song, when I was about fifteen, definitely set a spark inside me. I heard it on Radió Éireann, which was at the time in the year they marked the tenth anniversary of Hank’s death. There is something about his voice and the feeling he puts into this lyric that grabbed me and didn’t let me go. I loved that sound so much that I would sell things I owned at that young age to buy his records. I have every song he has ever sung in my collection now, and I can honestly tell you it was this song that started that passion. It led directly to my learning songs and appreciating the lyrics of great writing. It showed me the way to Desolation Row, which is my next choice.

Desolation Row
Bob Dylan
There are marvellous words and marvellous lines in this song. I love Bob Dylan, so I would have to mention him in this choice. He won the Nobel Prize, and to me, he is the best songwriter in the world. No one can touch him. Anyway, this song takes me back to the early 1960s. I used to sing this at the Embankment, the venue in Tallaght, which was known as the home for balladeers, before I met you, Maxi, in the Gaiety Theatre in 1966 when we performed in concert together.

Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own