It’s a first album for Cork singer Effie

YOUNG singer Effie Neill seems to have been successful for a lot longer than her tender years of 22 would suggest with hits such as her duet with Derek Ryan, Batten Down the Hatches, Dance like there’s Nobody Watching, Dixie Road and of course the one that started it all for her Country is the Best.

But it is only now that the talented singer from the furthest point south in this island of Ireland, the Beara Peninsula in Cork, has released her first album appropriately titled Living My Dream which of course was also the title of one of her hit singles.

That one was written by her manager and bandleader Barry Doyle, who also joins her on vocals for another track on her debut album which is the Isla Grant composition Partners in Rhyme.

When asked if the title of her album Living My Dream is autobiographical regarding her hectic life now on the music circuit, Effie leaves nobody in any doubt but this is what she aspired to do ever since she was a child.

“While I always enjoyed working as a solo singer and as a two-piece, what I really wanted to do was to sing with a band of my own. It was always my dream and now I’m living it,” she laughed.

“We have a five-piece band plus a sound and light engineer and lighting crew as well. Even already we are getting in a lot of dates at dances, concerts and festivals for next year and that is just mighty. So, I’m exactly where I wanted to be right now.”

When Effie talked about the debut album, she said there is a mix of originals and cover versions of other people’s songs on it but in reality most of the tracks are originals by either Irish or UK songwriters.

Those include the aforementioned Derek Ryan and Scotland’s Isla Grant as well as Charlie Landsborough and Dave Sherriff from England who penned her hit Dance as if There is Nobody Watching.

In fact, the only covers of well-known hits for other major artists on this album are Back Home Again by the late John Denver, the number one here for Charlie Landsborough What Colour is the Wind, and Dixie Road which was a number one hit in the US Pop and Country charts for Lee Greenwood back in 1985.

This is the first time that I’ve heard a version of those three songs by a female singer and Effie does all of them justice, albeit in her own unique singing style.

But she can alternate with ease from her trademark Country style to a modern Irish Folk ballad such as The Island, written by Paul Brady, which is on this album and has been previously popularised by both Phil Coulter and the late Dolores Keane. Effie gives it her own unique twist in her vocalising here.

Indeed, it is probably that uniqueness in her voice plus her good humour and stage personality of being able to reach out to everyone seated in a concert hall or dancing at a festival or in a hall.

She can even do more than reach out to the audience from the stage, because Effie is known to jump off the stage at times and go out on the dancefloor jiving with some of the punters.

“Aw sure I love to interact with the crowd as best I can and if they want to have a bit of fun on the dancefloor, there is nothing wrong with me going out for a jive or a waltz with them as I’m always up for the craic too,” she said.

Perhaps that is why the inclusion of one of her earlier hits, The Craic Is Always 90, penned by Cork songwriter Neill O’Brien, as the 12th and final track on this album, is so reflective of her live show as it conveys the fun element of her stage performances right up to the last note on this CD which is also available on USB format.