My husband, Rich McMahon, who has taken his own life aged 42, was a songwriter and performer who managed to pack a lot into his life, performing countless live gigs, recording a number of albums, contributing to soundtracks and using his music to enhance the lives of others.
Rich released his first album, Rest Awhile, in the late 90s, and his second, The Sky Is Getting Higher, in 2007, the same year he scored the music for the soundtrack to Veiled Existence, an independent film, premiered at Cannes, about a young Indian woman who flees an arranged marriage. In 2010 he released Last Orders at the Journey’s End, followed by a live album recorded in Ireland in 2012 called Live at Croc an Oir.
His final release, Songs of Exile, Love & Dissent, came out this year, and was well received. His music showed traces of Christy Moore, Van Morrison and the Northern Irish band the Divine Comedy, but he had a style and voice that was unmistakably his own.
Born in Coventry to Irish parents, Patrick and Ann (nee Behan), Rich moved to Ireland aged 10 when his parents eventually returned to their home country. He was educated at Carnew secondary school in County Wicklow, and we met each other in 1991 while we were studying as 18-year-olds at the Institute of Technology Carlow. Rich hadn’t even picked up a guitar in any serious way at that point, but was just on the brink of discovering literature and music.
He qualified in accountancy and we moved together to Birmingham in 1995 to look for employment. He subsequently worked in finance positions for British Gas and Cadbury, as well as on a number of contract jobs, and was employed in a finance role at a sawdust factory when he finally decided to try music full-time in his 30s.
Driven by a passion to write, play and share his music, it was his dream to make a living from doing so, and happily it was something he managed with great success. As an added bonus, his musical career also gave him the time to gain a first-class degree in English literature from the Open University.
Rich’s songs addressed themes of identity and borders, the personal and the political, the mythical and the real. His mixed-media shows, The Imagined Nation and Beyond Borders, garnered praise for their variety, insight and humour. But it was as a live performer that Rich really came into his own, and he found himself bridging the generations, sharing a stage over the years with upcoming performers such as The Young Folk, Dan Walsh and Bellowhead’s Sam Sweeney, as well as veterans such as Davey Arthur, Martin Stephenson and the Dubliners’ Seán Cannon.
He also used his music to help others, often playing for free in aid of organisations such as Shelter, Crisis, the Moseley Day Centre and the Irish mental health charity Shine. Rich himself had been managing his mental health for most of his adult life, something that came as a surprise to people who knew him mainly as a fun-loving, outgoing performer. Rich was in his usual good form right up to the end, doing a storming support slot for Police Dog Hogan in Birmingham shortly before his death.
He is survived by myself, by his three sisters, Sam, Sarah and Laura, and by his mother and father.
