Eleanor McEvoy

Eleanor McEvoy is one of Ireland's most accomplished contemporary singer/songwriters. McEvoy's life as a musician began at the age of four when she began playing piano. At the age of eight she took up violin. Upon finishing school she attended Trinity College, Dublin where she studied music by day and worked in pit orchestras and music clubs by night. She built up a following in clubs in Dublin with her three piece band, Jim Tate on bass, Noel Eccles on drums and latterly Bill Shanley on guitar. During a solo performance in July 1992, she performed a little known self-penned song, "Only a Woman's Heart." Mary Black, of whose band McEvoy was a member, was in the audience and invited her to add the track to an album of Irish female artists. The 1992 album was subsequently titled A Woman's Heart and the track was released as the lead single. In the same week that A Woman's Heart, the best-selling Irish album in Irish history,was released, Tom Zutaut A & R from Geffen Records, who had previously signed Guns & Roses, Motley Crew, and Edie Brickell, offered McEvoy a worldwide recording deal after watching her perform at The Baggot Inn in Dublin.