Tonka Tate & Lyle Truck for @KevinFMcDermott?

Absent Voices is made up of eight very different visual artists and musicians who are currently working as artists-in-residence at Greenock's historic A-listed Sugar Sheds.

Thanks to funding from The Heritage Lottery Fund, Inverclyde Council and regeneration body, Riverside Inverclyde, this group of artists have been given carte blanche to excavate the layers which made up the sugar industry.

They are all in the middle of various projects which will conspire to tell the story of Greenock's connection to sugar, which spanned 252 years.

The project culminates in November 2014 with an exhibition at The McLean Gallery in Greenock, but before this, all the participating artists are taking part in various community-based events and gigs.

One of the Absent Voices artists-in-residence is Glasgow-born singer songwriter, Kevin McDermott, who has been making sweet music for more than 25 years now.

Kevin just sent this photograph of a Tonka toy Tate & Lyle truck over to SugarSheds1 central. It was given to him by a fan as a well-wishing gift as he embarks on creating a new album of songs inspired by the sugar sheds project.

You couldn't get an App which is as touchy-feely as this toy...

We're all really looking forward to seeing how Kevin's new body of work – much of it inspired by the 'darker' side of the sugar trade, comes together.

Together with his group, The Kevin McDermott Orchestra, Kevin has released eight albums since 1989.

His first album, Mother Natures Kitchen, has a firm place in the hearts of many people who came of age in the early 1990s.

Ranked by the Daily Record newspaper as 'one of the finest songwriters and performers of his time', Kevin recently performed a sell-out gig at Glasgow's Celtic Connections Festival with ex-Pretenders guitarist, Robbie McIntosh, wowing the crowd at Oran Mor with a cherry-picked set covering both his Kevin McDermott Orchestra oeuvre and more recent solo work.