Bap Kennedy's widow: "We were each other's saviours"
Brenda Kennedy releases EP marking two years since musician's death
The widow of Belfast music legend Bap Kennedy has released an EP, on the second anniversary of his death to raise funds for the Marie Curie hospice where he died.
Brenda and Bap whose real name was Martin, were together for ten years.
The singer songwriter died from pancreatic cancer on November, 1 2016.
Two years on, Brenda has published the special, five track record as an ode to her beloved husband.
She paid a special tribute to the man behind the music:
"For him his music and who he was as a man were very intrinsically linked...
"Everyone would say how lovely he was, it was one of the reasons I wanted to put the EP out was the opportunity to share not only Bap the musician but Bap the man."
The record Love Hurts features a track which the couple recorded together, as well as extracts from old interviews with Bap himself.
It was released on Thursday to mark two years since Bap passed away.
Speaking during a BBC interview on the EP, the former Energy Orchard star said he wanted to leave a lasting music legacy:
"I know that...that catalogue is going to survive, it's going to be kept alive," Bap said.
He added: "I put a huge amount of work into those records, blood, sweat and tears to make those records."
Brenda now volunteers at the hospice where Bap died and said publishing the EP has helped her come to terms with her grief:
"This year I went through a real dark, deep night of the soul myself but I needed to in a sense.
"It's all part of the process it's a natural thing but the thing that I've discovered at the end of it is that it is healing."
The former solicitor said she wanted her late husband to live on through his music:
"Whenever you're in that place, in that dark night of the soul...it's very, very easy to get into despair and just think what' the point and all those things that are...depression but they're a natural depression and you can't short circuit them.
"I've got to a new place where Bap will always be with me."
Bap revealed he had Asperger's syndrome in his last interview before he died.
Brenda said he struggled with the condition all his life but was a very private person:
"Although he didn't ever reveal right up until the very end, he always said to me that he wanted to but it would need to be when the time was right and he would know.
"But it wasn't as if he was hiding it because he says in the interview 'I'm proud that I have Asperger's Syndrome' and he called it the engine of his creativity."
She recalled the moment he told the nurses in the hospice about his condition:
"It was actually the first time that I've ever heard him talking to anybody about his Asperger's Syndrome.
"When he went into Marie Curie and they asked him all these questions 'is there anything you want us to know?'
"That was the first time I ever heard him saying 'you need to know I've got Asperger's Syndrome.
"And the reason he said that was because he found social situations exhausting and he had not hardly the energy for it anymore and he needed a lot of space."
Brenda also told us that Bap suffered a breakdown before she met him, after his band Energy Orchard broke up.
She said she knew he was struggling but let him open up to her in his own time:
"He did...struggle with depression.
"We were able to help each other a lot, we were...each other's saviours in a way because we could understand each other so well but it was very difficult.
"I could see wee things about him...I was picking up clues but I felt if he wasn't opening up about it, it wasn't my business.
"I wasn't going to start probing...but eventually it all came out over time as trust grows with somebody it all comes out, although at the start he didn't actually know, he just knew he was in a really bad way.
"I could see it in him, I could see he was very troubled."
The legendary musician wanted his wife to ensure his music would always be remembered.
Brenda said true to form, Bap told her his wishes in his own unique way:
"He used to say 'I know that you'll take care of the records and I don't mean dusting them.'
"That was the kind of humour that he had, he meant take care of it obviously in treating them with respect and making sure the word gets out.
"That was very important to him."