Myth #1: Eva’s friends gave a benefit concert at the Bayou to help with her medical bills because she didn’t have health insurance.
FALSE! EVA DID HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE! When she left her job at Behnkes Nursery she joined the musicians union (D.C. Federation of Musicians, Local 161-710), and signed up for group medical insurance through the union. The money raised at the Bayou concert was intended to help with any additional expenses, not the bulk of the medical treatment Eva received. The Bayou concert was deeply meaningful to Eva. It was a tribute, an affirmation, a “big birthday party,” as she told reporters that night. The money itself was not as important. Because she DID have health insurance.
A related myth, that Eva didn’t get follow-up care after she had a malignant mole removed, is also untrue. As her mother Barbara told Alex Lester on the BBC, “She didn’t like doctors, no, but I did push her, and she did go. Several times.”
Myth #2: Although Eva’s music was not heard worldwide until after her death, she was a local celebrity in the Washington DC area.
FALSE! Even in the Washington DC area, Eva was NOT well-known to the public before the flurry of publicity connected with her illness and death. On many occasions I would go to hear her perform and see mostly-empty tables. Her band’s lead guitarist Keith Grimes once observed, “We were beyond obscure.” “We weren’t household names, even in the local scene,” Lenny Williams recalled in the documentary One Night That Changed Everything.
She did get some higher-profile gigs, with larger audiences, and gradually the clubs that booked her for midweek were starting to give her weekend slots. Things were progressing, that last year.
The lesson here is, support your local artists. If all you do is spend big bucks to see the big touring acts, you’re part of the problem.
Myth #3: Eva was “painfully shy.”
Exaggerated. Shy, but not painfully, at least as an adult. If Eva had been painfully shy, believe me, she wouldn’t have been up there singing on some pretty big stages. Her friend and bandmate Chris Biondo told me in a 1999 interview, “A lot of the articles paint Eva as a very shy person, that she was very withdrawn. That was only true until people got to know her. She had a lot to say and an amazing sense of humor, it’s just that if she didn’t know you very well, she would probably let you do most of the talking. She wasn’t some poor thing cringing in the corner all the time being shy. The performance anxiety was starting to go away, too. If she was playing at a place where there was a polite, quiet audience, where people were really listening instead of talking, and if she had a lot of friends there, she didn’t mind it anymore.”
“I don’t like talking, I’d rather sing,” Eva said to the audience at Blues Alley at the CD release concert in May, 1996.
Myth #4: How to pronounce her name. Not precisely a myth, but many people mispronounce Eva’s name, so I am classifying it as one. It is pronounced Eva like the letter E, and rhymes with diva. Not Ava. See the video below, which I created for this specific purpose!
Myth #5: Eva worked with Tupac.
NOPE. Every so often I get questions about Eva’s rumored backup track(s) for the late rapper/actor Tupac Shakur, who died the same year Eva did. Here’s the scoop: Eva did not know Tupac. Eva did not work with Tupac. Eva did work with a number of local rap musicians by recording backup vocals. But not for Tupac. According to Eva’s producer, Chris Biondo: “There was a lot of poaching of [Tupac’s] rap vocals. After he was killed, some people got their hands on raw vocals and were in a mad rush to put together background music with the idea of releasing it as a Tupac recording. One of our local rappers made a backing track and synced up the solo rap tracks and hired Eva to sing backup vocals. I have no idea what happened to that song, if it was ever on an album anywhere. Eva never worked with Tupac.” So there’s the answer.