Emily Maguire already has an amazing story that stretches from the UK to Australia and back again. She has just released her 3rd CD, Believer, which already seems destined for great things. Fatea had the chance to chat with Emily at The Cluny 2 in Newcastle, where the down to earth songstress chatted about shacks, snakes, making cheese, the meaning behind the CD’s title, oh and of course, making music!
EM: Emily Maguire
HM: Helen Mitchell
HM: Hi Emily! It’s so great to see you back in the North East!! How long has it been?
EM: It’s great to be back! It must be over a year ago, at The Sage with Roddy Frame...
HM: Well, this isn’t the Sage, but it’s a great little venue!
EM: I think it’s great.
HM: Well, the new CD is finally here! It’s great.
EM: Thanks so much. I’m so excited. It’s my third CD but the first one I’ve recorded out of the Australian Bush. I’m really happy with it and really proud of it. I had some world class players contribute, too; Geoff Dugmore played drums and has played with Tina Turner. Luke Potashnick has been Katie Melua’s guitarist. Our producer, who is also our manager; Phil Tenant, has worked with The Cure. So it was all very exciting and working with them in the studio was a great learning experience. We had 22 songs to begin with, of which we demo’d 16. 14 were recorded and 10 made the final cut.
HM: Why those ten, then Emily, out of the ones you recorded?
EM: Well I’m very conscious of people downloading, and of course and very happy for people to download individual songs, but I wanted the album to be a thing in itself, in its own right, and to be more than a sum of its parts. Those ten fitted together, almost like a narrative and their dynamics work, they flow right. Unfortunately some songs which people have been asking about at gigs, didn’t make it, but I really believe less is more. I’d rather there be ten songs on there which people will listen to right through and be left wanting more, than 14 songs where people never get to the end as they switch it off in the middle!
HM: I believe there are some exciting things happening with the new CD?
EM: Yeah! Lighthouse Man has been Radio 2 playlisted!
HM: Oh, that’s great!
EM: Yeah and Greenpeace have chosen Woke Up to use as the song for their climate change campaign! I wrote it after watching a film on climate change after our running water ran out at the shack when we had had no rain. I’m really happy as the song fits their campaign perfectly.
HM: That’s great news!
EM: Yeah and it’s been great this week playing it to people now the CD is released. I’ve had to try to practice patience for so long, and not very successfully! It frustrates me sometimes that the business side of music gets in the way of playing songs. The CD was finished and recorded at the beginning of the beginning of the year but we had to figure out how to release it. In the end it is out on our own label, Shaktu, the same as the other two, but it is distributed through Universal. It’s funny, we were burgled in London and they took my minidisc player which basically had 5 years worth of songs. At the time I just wanted to go back to Australia. Then it happened again as I had a minidsic problem and it wasn’t backed up. I learned a lesson from that! At the time I was gutted, especially as I have a bad memory, but it was almost as if it cleared the decks, so to speak, and made space for new songs to come through.
HM: Are you excited to be back on the road?
EM: Definitely. I’m so proud of the CD, but you know, people can copy CDs. You can’t copy a live gig; it’s totally different. Going to see a gig is such a unique experience as two will never be the same. Sometimes I play with a full band and sometimes just as a duo with Christian Dunham. Also, as I write the string arrangements, I love it when I get to hear them played live.
HM: Oh yes, you played the cello and violin on the CD and on the video for Lighthouse Man, didn’t you?
EM: I love writing string parts. I just get carried away!
HM: You started playing very young, right?
EM: Yeah, I was brought up playing classical music, we didn’t have a television, so we played lots of music. I learned to read music at the same time I learned to read the ABC. I learned to play the piano at 4, the cello at 7 and the flute at 11. Then I l learned guitar at 21.
HM: how does the guitar differ?
EM: Well, the guitar is what made me start songwriting. This album was different in that I played piano and Luke played electric guitar. I taught myself to play a guitar I got for my twenty first birthday. I’d been ill for a long time and it helped me pass the time. You know it’s funny; at the time it was awful, but it became such a blessing, as I had all this free time to write songs. I started out playing Bob Marley Songs – Time Won’t Tell was first as it only has 2 chords! I started songwriting when a friend suggested it. I guess the biggest difference is that the guitar is portable! I’ve always loved the sound of a guitar.
HM: Did songwriting come immediately, then?
EM: Yeah, the first time I tried, I wrote a song, You Do, which ended up on my first CD. A friend showed me four chords, went away on holiday, came back a week later and I’d written that song. To me, songwriting was like living in a house forever, then finding a new door to a beautiful room you’d never known was there.
HM: Wow, what a lovely analogy.
EM: Can I share a few other thoughts about the new CD?
HM: Yeah, sure, that’d be great!
EM: Well, I think you already know this, but I have practiced Buddhism for about ten years now and that is reflected in some of the songs on the album. Start Over Again, which is my producer’s favourite, is literally my life story in 3.24 minutes!
HM: That’s one of my favourites...
EM: Great. You know, it’s a universal thing, isn’t it? We all have crises, and we all reach cross roads where we have to make a choice to move in one direction or the other. You just have to pick yourself up and start over again.
HM: You know, what you just said there reminds me of a book by Susan Jeffers called Feel the Fear and do it Anyway. That’s all about those crossroads and which road we take. She thinks it doesn’t really matter as either leads to the same place eventually.
EM: Oh I’ve heard of that book – I’ll have to read it.
HM: It’s interesting. So, if you had to pick a favourite song on the new album, which would it be?
EM: Oh, wow, that’s too hard! The last one is closest to my heart though as it is about me
HM: Is it harder writing personal songs?
EM: I don’t set out to write something specific. Sometimes I start something and it ends up being about someone or something entirely different from what it was in the beginning. I guess we’re all similar. The human condition is to be happy and content; they are the common desires that bind us. Sometimes I feel that songs come through me not from me. For example, after I read a book called The Bridges of Madison County, the song Somewhere in the Blue literally fell out of my head in five minutes. I don’t know where it comes from but it is a wonderful thing.
HM: Do they ever come along at awkward times?
EM: (laughs) I’ve learned to carry a notebook with me everywhere I go. I could be anywhere when a line comes to me.
HM: is it hard to go back to something you’ve written down?
EM: I have to work at them and craft them. Some songs I might work on for months. Songs are all about the lyrics, to me, so they have to be right.
HM: I agree about the lyrics. It’s amazing when you hear a song and think ‘Wow, that’s exactly how I feel.’
EM: Exactly. You can say things in a song that you wouldn’t in everyday life. That’s why they are so powerful. To be able to describe someone’s feelings for them is amazing – people do have great feelings and don’t always know what they are until they hear a song. The songs become theirs as they can think ‘That song is about me.’ All of my favourite songs are about me!
HM: That’s funny, Gretchen Peters says that, about the songs becoming the listener’s.
EM: Absolutely. I’ve just thought, one of the songs on the new CD, Believer, isn’t intended to be religious. Believer is a word associated with Christianity, or maybe Islam, don’t you think?
HM: I hadn’t picked it up that way at all. I didn’t think it was related to religion. I think the word ‘believer’ has so much wider a meaning – like believing in yourself and in others. Having faith, perhaps, not necessarily in a religious sense.
EM: Oh, that’s interesting and I’m glad you didn’t take it that way. To me Believer is about having faith, hope and belief in the future. After all the first line on the whole CD is ‘If I have faith...’ There are so mnay things we can’t see, Helen, but we have to believe; that things will be okay, and how they e meant to be. I’m a great believer in the power of positive thought – I spend an hour and a half each day meditating which reminds me that it is all about potential – we have to believe that we have potential within ourselves and potential out in the universe – after all that’s what we all want at the end of the day.
HM: Yeah, I guess it is what we all want, what we’re all searching for in a way...part of that greater purpose...
EM: Yeah.
HM: Emily, can I ask if you are missing Australia?
EM: I’m a little homesick. When the weather turns to Autumn here it’s spring there – but then I remember that spring means snakes!
HM: Oh, yes, how is Dudley?
EM: (laughs) Dudley is still there at the shack - he moved into the house and sits on the table, lording it up! You can see a picture on my blog on the website.
HM: tell us about the shack.
EM: Well, the shack is made from recycled materials, built around three massive tree trunks, with tin on the roof and the walls are potato sacks. There is no heating and I love it. We get lots of creatures; there’s a family of hairy spiders and I have a snake that sleeps by the bed; we evicted it once and it came back. I still can’t believe I’ve gone from so snake phobic I couldn’t look at one on TV, to having one by the bed! We have a goat farm by the shack – it’s like living on a different planet. You know, one of the strange laws in Queensland is that you can’t use a mobile phone on horseback.
HM: (laughs) How bizarre. There is a state in the USA, I forget which, where you can’t drive with ice cream in your back pocket.
EM: Wow, that’s mad. Who would want to?!
HM: I know! There was a book where this guy went out to the States and tried to break all of the silly laws. I forget the name now...
HM: Do they still have rodeos out there?
EM: Yes, the Kennilworth Rodeo is still a big event.
HM: Don’t you think it’s cruel?
EM: I think there is a huge amount of cruelty to animals all over the world. I heard the other day that there are only 3,800 tigers in the whole world, according to the WWF. Imagine that, if there were no more tigers.
HM: That’s pretty scary. So, tell me about making cheese.
EM: Yes, I was a cheesemaker, back in Australia, to pay for my last album, Keep Walking.
HM: Or Keep Miliking?!
EM: (laughs) It’s funny, I went from being a bad cook to being a great cheesemaker. It’s all about perfection. I made a great Feta – the best in Australia. I can say that now as no one can dispute me, here!
HM: What do you prefer, singing or cheesemaking?
EM: I’d rather play guitar than stir milk for a living!
HM: (laughs) You know, I heard somewhere that She Knows was inspired by a cat?
EM: Kind of. It was bereavement inspired, by a cat who was dying. That was another one I thought was about someone else, then it turned out to be about me. 3 weeks later I had my heart broken. It was like a weird premonition.
HM: The song resonated with me very differently right before a job I loved came to an end.
EM: Yeah, it is essentially about that sense of loss, which could be anything. The thing with grief is that we are so powerless around it. Things change. You want to take it away. As a friend, you want to take it away but you have to just let time heal. I think maybe the reason time heals, is that things change. Things move on which helps you to get past the grief. You just wish you could press fast forward and get the person through it to that point in time.
HM: That is so absolutely true, I’ve never thought of it like that before. I guess that’s what Wanting Time is saying too, in a way.
EM: Right.
HM: So, let’s see. Tell me about the people you’ve been touring with recently.
EM: Well, we’ve just been out with Glenn Tilbrook. He was such a laugh, he and is band are great people, very cool. We did about ten or fifteen gigs with them.
HM: Wow, I didn’t realise it was that many!
EM: yeah! Then, as you know, you saw us when we opened for Eric Bibb and for Roddy Frame. He’s a lovely guy.
HM: Then of course there was Don MacLean...
EM: Opening for Don MacLean was amazing. Our last gig had been to 20 people in a club in Bioshop Stortford, then Back Home was played on radio 2 and the Waterboys’ manager happened to be listening. He called and we cancelled our tickets back to Australia. The only way I did any of that, especially in front of 4000 people at The Royal Albert Hall, was hypnosis!
HM: Really? Yet at the City Hall you looked totally at ease, like you belonged on that stage.
EM: really? Thanks. That was a great venue, too. The hypnosis was like he flicked a switch within me and I went from an anxious state to, yeah, I guess feeling like I belonged there – it was an amazing feeling.
HM: Okay, I’m going to let you go and get ready, but first, is there anything else you’d like to share?
EM: Well, the new album, Believer, is available from Townsend records, play.com, itunes – all of the links are on the website – www.emilymaguire.com. There are videos there, and you can sign up to the mailing list. I’m also on Myspace and there is a new fanpage on Facebook!
HM: Great, thankyou so much, Emily. It was lovely to see you again, and to chat. I’ll catch you after the gig.
EM: Great! Thankyou so much, Helen, I really appreciate it!
Helen Mitchell
This is a link to a HIDDEN page on Emily's website: http://www.emilymaguire.com/htm/free-download.htm It contains a FREE download of the opening track from Emily's new album 'Believer' (a song which happens to be called 'Free') plus samples of all the other songs. Please FORWARD this link to your friends to share the free song with them and ask them to forward it on to their friends in turn.
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