Every now and then, an artist emerges and takes your breath away with their ability and their craft. Emily Scott Robinson is one such artist. I can remember the first time I heard her sing and the way in which she captured my attention to listen more intently to the wisdom in her words. Not only does Emily sing like an angel, but she also possesses the natural talent to observe the human condition in all its flaws, finding both empathy and understanding in the daily push to endure, and to believe that we matter. I see a bright future ahead for this superb songsmith and it was a pleasure to sit down with her for a brief conversation before her Irish stage debut at the Cellar venue in Dublin.
Welcome to Dublin! Your first concert on Irish soil and thank you for coming over. You grew up in North Carolina and you reflected that Dar Williams was one of your early influences?
Yes, I just love her and I got to go on tour and open for her last December. They say that you should never meet your heroes as they are just ordinary people too but she was so gracious and kind and that really meant a lot to me. I have not found a lot of female musicians who would mentor me and take me out on the road, so it was really special. She is very generous of spirit.
Were your parents very influential regarding music as you were growing up?
I grew up with a piano in the house and we all grew up taking various musical lessons. I was classically trained on the clarinet, which I played for about twelve years, from age eleven through university. I also sang in the church choir. I taught myself how to play guitar, playing along to records by Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Dar Williams, Indigo Girls.
What was it like performing in public for the first time?
I was in high school and I had been working up some Joni Mitchell covers, like Both Sides Now and California, songs I really loved ... I played at an open mic night and was very nervous, but got that first hit of the drug of performing for people. Discovering that I had a voice that was very clear and unique, like a high soprano ... It was a very gentle introduction into performing.
When did you first start writing your own songs?
I didn’t start until I was into my twenties. Up to then it was mostly learning cover songs, sitting around the campfire at Summer camp, and for my friends. At college I would perform in local coffee shops, and play a lot of covers. Lots of Nanci Griffith, who I know was loved in Ireland. She was actually the inspiration for my first song. I saw her in my home town in 2007 and was so inspired by her that I went straight home and wrote my first song. That was the only time that I got to see her play live and she was a really big influence on me. I recently found the original programme from the concert in my keepsakes too.
If we jump forward to 2016 and the recording of your debut album, MAGNOLIA QUEEN. Self-produced by you and very much based around your acoustic guitar and the songs?
If I’m honest, that set of songs weren’t even mastered. I had won eight hours of studio time in a local studio where I was living at the time, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The engineer there, Bret Nolan, had the common sense to set me up with just a guitar mic and my vocals. No click tracks, no overdubbing, no production – just simply me and my songs.
And that is the real joy of the album. There is a simplicity and an honesty to it. Your command of language and turn of phrase are superb. For someone so young to have such insight into what can happen in relationships and to capture such complexity was something quite special.
Thank you for saying that. I do a lot of character writing and settle into and embody a character. A lot of my characters are speaking from a much older age and looking back on their lives. I have always been a person who just picked up on other peoples’ emotions very easily - really empathetic and intuitive.
Perhaps there is no such thing as character writing, without having a little bit of you wrapped up in there too?
Yes, always. I was talking to Gretchen Peters, on Twitter, about this and I said that character writing is like a way of exploring all the rooms in the house of my psyche – there is always some of me in all of those characters and those songs. I think it’s very Jungian in that way! (laughs) …
If we move forward three years to 2019 and your second album. What was the shift for you over that period of time when you look back?
That album, TRAVELLING MERCIES, every one of those songs was written while I was living in an RV trailer, on the road with my husband. I started doing music full time in the Spring of 2016 and that record has a lot of the fabric of our travels around America and my experiences as a touring musician and stories from that era of my life. It was my first album with a full band in the studio and I asked a lot of friends and musicians; “Who do you recommend working with?” So, I was looking for a producer who could guide me through the experience of making a full-blown record in the studio. I heard a lot of stories coming out of Nashville about producers who had different styles and where the songwriter would be buried by the band or the production. I wanted the production to elevate the song-writing and the solo artist at the centre.
So, I worked with Neilson Hubbard who has produced songwriters like Mary Gauthier, Amy Speace, and Ben Glover. Everything that moves in the orbit around Nielson is really beautiful. He is just a very authentic artist, and like a midwife of music – helping to bring music and birth it out into the world. He’s amazing.
You are touring a lot at this stage, in 2019, and building on your success to date?
Yes, this was the time when I first got a booking agent. Up until then I had been doing all the bookings myself since 2014 and playing anywhere that I could make it work - house concerts, backyards, breweries, restaurants, theatres.
You were also starting to see the arc of your career climb with the confidence of a studio album behind you?
It was my first national and international press and my first placements in the streaming world happened. It was pretty wild and I was just going up, up, up and up – until Covid hit.
So, what did you do during Covid shutdown? Did you go back to the basics, questioning what it’s all about, or did you throw yourself more into song-writing as a release?
I threw myself more into song-writing as there was little else to do. Also, I did get back to the basics of living my life, cooking, hiking, mountain biking, taking care of myself. Reflecting on what is important. Everything mattered to me before Covid. There was a death in my family in late 2019, and the song Hometown Hero is about that. And with the pandemic hitting, both events just washed me clean of worrying about things that really didn’t matter in life. It kind of rinsed me, and I feel really grateful that I’m not spending any energy worrying about things that just don’t really matter.
Amid all these challenges and upsets, along comes Oh Boy records. How this this come about?
Apparently, they had been watching my career and I had no idea they were interested. I had always watched what they were doing, but never met with John Prine, or Fiona and Jody. Kelsey (Waldon) and I were just talking about this and of course she had a profound friendship with John. He was like a second father and took her out on the road and loved her like a daughter. His death had a profound effect on us all in different ways. I had written this song, The Time For Flowers, during the height of the pandemic and right after John died.
So, six months after I had released it, I got a phone message from Jody at Oh Boy records, who said that he had just listened to the song and it really moved him in what had been a difficult year. He said that they would like to work with me and I had no idea that they were paying attention to young, up and coming artists. I was so excited and so surprised. It came out of left field and there was no part of me that was expecting that. So, Jody and I spent about a month having conversations over zoom calls and discussed the label. I met the team and discovered that we had a lot of common ground in our values about what matters in the music business and why we make music; and how John had built his career and how I am building mine. It is all about the personal connection with the fans; the music and our relationship with the people. It’s all about artistic integrity, creative control, being fun and funky and heartfelt and weird; and being true to who you are.
In April 2021, we ended up making a new record, AMERICAN SIREN. Jason Richmond was the producer and I liked the way that he pushed me out of my comfort zone sonically. We did the record with almost all North Carolina artists. So, Neilson has my Nashville crew and Jason is my North Carolina crew. The sounds and the aesthetics coming out from each are all different. It was a magical experience and also a challenging project as we were all just coming out Covid and had access to the vaccine. Everyone was just coming out of our caves wondering if it was safe to be in a room with each other again. Steep Canyon Rangers played on a couple of songs and they are a pretty famous bluegrass band over from where I’m from.
If I was to go back to that young girl in Greensboro, North Carolina; growing up, playing open mic nights and learning her craft - and I bring you forward to who you are now, an artist, living in Colorado and seeing your success build. What would the older self say to the younger self?
I would say ‘trust me,’ because there are a lot of things about who I am now and what I’ve done that I had to find the courage to do in my life and career as a musician, in those moments, that just took every ounce of courage and faith that I had – and more. I sometimes think that the woman I have become is so powerful and free and honest; that she would really scare the girl that I was. The girl that I was would see me now grown into the fullness of who I am. There were just a lot of things that I wanted, when I was younger, to be wrapped up neatly with a bow, as young people want. The fullness of my life and my song-writing has been embracing the fact that you just can’t do that. We exist with all the messiness and beauty and hardship and grief and joy. It cannot be tied together. I think that she would be a little scared of me, but also a little proud and in awe of her older self. ‘You get to do what?’
Finally, have you been pleased with the response to the new album internationally?
I had been told that my music was reaching people across the ocean, across different cultures and language. It has been one of the greatest joys of my career. To experience this heartfelt connection and shared understanding of the human experience through my songs. I have been floored!
Interview by Paul McGee