Eddi’s career built on integrity and loyalty

With a voice and stage presence that make her concerts essential, Eddi Reader comes to the Town Hall Theatre next Wednesday, February 10. The show is part of an Irish tour to mark the release of a Best Of celebrating the work of the Scottish singer. How did Eddi pick the songs from a career that has spanned almost 30 years?

“Well, it was a suggestion by Tom Rhodes from Reveal Records,” she says. “He’s been a real stalwart of mine. I’m not very good at celebrating anything I’ve done, I like to just get on with it and say ‘what’s the next thing?’ At the moment I’m caught up trying to write a book and I’ve not being going into the studio as much.

“Tom said ‘I’ll just select everything that I think represents all your changes and shifts and the way you’re able to sing in multiple genres’. I said ‘oh, away you go’ and he came back with a list of these ones he thought would show me off in the best light.”

Having had a chance to listen over it, how does Eddi feel about the two-CD collection?

“I’m very proud of it,” she says.  “If I was another person, and I was female, and I was looking at a lassie who’d done that all the way from 18 until now, trying to do something musical and not get caught up in the celebrity lifestyle – just do the work. I felt like I’d achieved that.

“It’s good for people who don’t have all the albums, or who have just one or two,” she says about the Best Of. “It’s a good little sampler for people, you’ve got the [Robert] Burns, Fairground Attraction and all the other solo things I’ve done, and wee extra things I sing at gigs but don’t necessarily put on albums.”

In response to a question about the book she’s working on, Eddi gives an answer that outlasts an average interview. The book will examine Scotland’s links to the 1916 Rising, something she learned about following the death of an 87-year-old relation in Dublin.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.