Showband queen Eileen Reid

Eileen Reid has lived an exciting life touring Ireland with June Carter and Johnny Cash, performing in America when John F Kennedy was shot and featuring on BBC’s Thank Your Lucky Stars beside the Rolling Stones, yet she says she has never been happier than she is now.

Living in the village of Rathowen, Co Westmeath, with her husband Jimmy Day, who played sax for the Cadets while she was the front woman, Eileen has really settled into country life and all the charm it brings with it.

“Jimmy and I moved and lived in La Zenia, Costa Blanca in the south of Spain for eight years, performing, and decided to come back and settle in Ireland two years ago.

“We have three children and they have children so we decided to come home to spend time with them,” Eileen explains.

Growing up in the Liberties in inner city Dublin, Eileen talks fondly of her early years and all the fun she had as a child.

“We lived in the Ivy Buildings on the very top floor. There were 68 steps to our front door and I used to sing as I walked the whole way up,” she enthuses.

It was her love of singing that would bag her a position in Ireland’s newest showband, which she got after John Hardy of the Blue Clavons saw her sing at a concert organised by Jacob’s Factory.

“I joined the football club when I worked in Jacobs and there was an awards night organised by the factory and they asked us to play. John Hardy had recognised me from playing with the Melody Makers – a band I joined when I was 15, we played gigs around Dublin for six shillings and two pence.

“John brought someone along to see me and they asked would I be interested in auditioning for the Cadets. I went along and I was the only female there. I got the job.”

The Cadets were comprised of Noel McGann on bass, Paddy Burns on trumpet, Bat Green and Eileen on vocals, Brendan O’Connell and Jas Fagan on trombone, Willie Devey on drums, and Jimmy Day on sax.

For someone who had only ever travelled to Portmarnock during her summer holidays, Eileen loved going around the country with the Cadets.

“At the beginning, we started off in a mini-van where we all sat in the back facing each other. We drove all around the country and in those days the roads were terrible, full of twists and turns,” Eileen laughs.

“You would get there, have time for your dinner and then perform for five hours with a 15-minute break. We would be playing like that for five or six nights a week.

Then we started to bring in relief bands from the town so local musicians would get some playtime. They would play for two hours and we would play for three. I loved it so much,” Eileen says.

A year into life in the showband, romance blossomed between Eileen and Jimmy.

“We were playing in the Atlantic Ballroom in Tramore at one stage for about two weeks, so we all got to know each other a little bit better,” Eileen divulges.

“Some girls used to fancy him and were asking me about him so I said it to him one night and he said he had no interest in them and I asked why, and he said because I fancy you.

“So we went for a drive and walked into a field full of cows and sat under a tree and kissed.”

That was the beginning of their relationship that would last the test of fame, with Eileen saying she had affairs over the years.

“You were working all the time and it would happen and be over as soon. It was just a fling and there was never any one person. It really didn’t mean anything to me at the time,” she confides.

Religion

In the 1990s when Eileen had been married over 20 years and her children were a little older, she turned to religion.

“I used to do the Gaiety pantos at Christmas and after I would go out for coffee with friends or to the pub,” she says.

One Wednesday night after finishing the Christmas Gaiety panto, Eileen was dying to get out of the house and she decided she would take her sister up on the offer to go to mass.

“Kitty walked me up to the top of the church and if you could imagine me, I had the permed hair and a mini skirt and high heels on, I stood out a mile there,” she says.

“When I left the church, a dark feeling came over me. I was rotten to the core. I investigated what was wrong in my life and what did these people who attend mass have that I didn’t?

“I wondered if there was something missing in my life and I decided to go back to mass every day after that.”

Eileen Reid is one of the acts due to star in Ireland’s Showband, which takes place on Saturday 7 January 2017 and Sunday 8 January 2017 at The Helix, Dublin. The show features Brendan Bowyer (The Royal Showband), Paddy Cole (The Capitol), and Philomena Begley (The Ramblin Men) among many others. Visit www.thehelix.ie for more details. CL