AS A teenager in west Belfast, Bap Kennedy was always intent on leading an “interesting life”, but even he might have allowed himself a wry smile at being named a ‘legend’.
The celebrated singer-songwriter, who passed away four years ago this month following a short battle with pancreatic cancer, is being recognised with a Legend Award during the Northern Ireland Music Prize from the Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast tomorrow evening.
The award, in association with Marie Curie, will be made to Bap’s wife, Brenda, by Ralph McLean of BBC Radio Ulster, during a specially produced live stream which is being aired as a YouTube Premiere and includes a number of surprise artists to be revealed on the night.
It comes in recognition of Bap’s enduring legacy, chiefly as solo artist, and earlier with his band Energy Orchard, but the prolific performer who worked with artists including Van Morrison, Nanci Griffith and Mark Knopfler, Steve Earle and Shane Magowan, will always be a legend to his widow for “the genuine man he was”.
“I’m truly delighted with this award because it’s just lovely to have that recognition for his music,” Brenda enthuses down the line from her Holywood home. “The plan is for Ralph to present it to me at the Oh Yeah centre – all socially distanced, of course, with everything that is going on.”
As it happens, though, Mrs Bap Kennedy is doing well in this “Covid madness” and has written songs and recorded a new album of her own – Ten Past Heaven, reflecting her life with Bap – which was just about to be released before the lockdown was announced in March.
Recorded in the studio of long-time collaborator Rod McVey – who worked on the 2018 release of a rediscovered old recording of Bap and Brenda singing the Boudleaux Bryant classic, Love Hurts, as well as on Bap’s final album, Reckless Heart – the project proved an intensive “labour of love”.
“Rod and I produced it together and Anthony Toner did a lot of work on it,” Brenda reveals. “I found it all very therapeutic but then lockdown happened and it hasn’t been released yet. I’m not quite sure now when I will release it; I guess I’ll know when the time is right.”
Timing has always been a serendipitous affair for the former solicitor and author of several books on Asperger syndrome – a condition on the autism spectrum disorder which she and Bap shared and which first brought them together, despite a series of near-misses on the day in question.
It is a heartbreaker of a story that Brenda never tires of telling and one which still imbues her with a sense of grateful incredulity.
“It’s quite a funny story, actually,” she begins, “and it was close-run thing, how we met at all. I used to work for the National Autistic Society and I had been asked to speak at an event run by EAGLE (Embracing Autism through Guidance, Love and Education) which Bap attended – and almost didn’t make himself.
“The day before, I had been out for lunch with my daughter, Christine, and I couldn’t make out what I had scribbled down in my diary. Christine thought it said ‘Earl Grey’ because I like Earl Grey tea, so I bought some on my way home – that’s how bad the writing was!
“Luckily, when I arrived home, I got a call from the girl who was organising the event in Belfast’s Glengall Street who asked if I had everything prepared – so I sat up until 2am doing just that.”
Next day, she gave her talk and was in the middle of it when the door opened and a late-comer arrived. “You can imagine who,” she continues, laughing. “I saw this skinny guy wearing a leather jacket who looked like he didn’t know if he was coming in or going out. It was one of those moments where time stood still.
“Afterwards, when I got to my car, I realised I had forgotten my keys, so I went back for them and bumped into the organiser who wanted to know if I would like to meet someone called Bap Kennedy..…”
Bap, it transpired, was also “not great on details” and had been sitting in the wrong room in the building and was about to go home, when he made his talk-interrupting, belated entrance.
“It was all chance after chance,” recalls Brenda who wrote down the singer’s phone number on a serviette (which she also nearly lost) and decided to call him after finding out he did volunteering work and was “working wonders” through his music with teens who live with Asperger’s.
“I thought he might be able to help Kenneth [her son, who also has Asperger’s], so I rang and we ended up talking for an hour and-a-half. I know, after all that, we were definitely meant to be.”
In a strange way, she says the lockdown has been good for her and she thinks that had Bap still been alive, they would both have enjoyed the solitude together. It’s one of the aspects of her condition that she feels would not have been unduly impacted by the restrictions imposed earlier this year.
“I’m not sure what Bap would have made it all, but I think he and I would have been happy enough in our own wee bubble,” she muses. “We would probably have enjoyed sitting around, binge-watching TV and eating chocolate and putting on about two stone each.
“I have been on my own anyway, since Bap died, but, I have got used to it and I enjoy the time to think and reflect. I was never what you would call an extremely sociable person anyway, so spending time alone works for me.
“Meditation is something I have got into at a deeper level now, so I spend a lot of time doing that and it has helped me learn a lot more about myself. You become very honest with yourself and you think of all the ridiculous mistakes you’ve made in the past, but when you come the other side, you’re a more forgiving person – both of yourself and others.”
Asperger’s affected the couple, who married in 2008, in similar ways – particularly the way they both “were very good at masking it”.
“Bap and I both found social situations extremely difficult,” confides Brenda, who says it was important to her husband to publicly unveil his condition before his death, because it was part of who he was.
“I tend to be a very obsessive person and I get very intensely into things – I can go down a rabbit hole with my own thinking, but Bap understood that. We understood each other well; we understood each other’s difficulties. We also complemented each other and appreciated each other’s sense of humour. It just worked. We just worked.”
:: The event will be a specially produced live stream aired as a YouTube Premiere on Thursday at 8pm.https://nimusicprize.com/
