Sublime Eddi Reader to showcase new album

A sublime live performer, Eddi Reader plays the Town Hall on Tuesday, February 11 to mark the release of her latest album, the breezy and delightful Vagabond.

 Eddi and a group of musicians and long time collaborators recorded it in a free-flowing way, and then she whittled the album down to 14 tracks.

“I didn’t just leave it the way it was, raw,” says the Scottish singer. “It felt very much like an insular project, even though I had the guys and we recorded over two sessions. But during the late spring and early summer, I really got creative with it, adding things, editing it a bit.”

Making the album, Eddi had to be alert to moments of magic, like when her usual bass player, Ewen Vernal found himself at the piano for the wistful gem that is Baby’s Boat.

“What happened was he was just jamming along, listening to the song,” Eddi says. “I said to the engineer, ‘just grab him because he’s had a few whiskies, and it sounds great!’ I layered it into the sound.”

A song like It’s A Beautiful Night had been part of Eddi’s live show for a while, but for a track like the jazz classic I’ll Never Be The Same she simply gave the musicians some suggestions, then hit record and sang.

“The boys are great at picking up on the energy of what I was doing and they’d make it sound great, make me feel confident about it,” Eddi says.

Eddi Reader is a great interpreter of other people’s work; she likes to toy with a song and make it her own. This is especially apparent on her nuanced version of Declan O’Rourke’s Married To The Sea, which is a lot different to the original.