Emmeline is an extraordinarily gifted musician and songwriter from Dallas, Texas. Her credits include a large number of songs and performances, commercial radio work, hosting a weekly open mic at the Crown and Harp pub, and the EP's Early Morning Hours and Someone To Be. Both CD releases have received favorable reviews in the Dallas Morning News and are available online as well as in physical form. Emmeline can be seen performing regularly in and around the Dallas area and beyond.
Emmeline: The floor is yours, my friend.
PAO Productions: Okay, the floor is mine. Let me start by saying I appreciate you agreeing to speak with me.
EM: Of course.
PAO: Let's begin with your most recent success, the "Someone To Be" CD release. How did that night feel for you?
EM: It was incredible. It was . . . It's so rare in life that things work out the way you imagine them in your head. And listening to the record, it was something that worked out the way I imagined it in my head. But the CD release was better than I could've ever pictured. I mean, to come back to the venue where I first played, way back when when I started playing open mics, which, you know, we won't talk about how long ago that was, but . . . I played to three people, one of whom is a friend who . . . we're strangers at the time, and I was shaking, like I was petrified. I didn't want to play at all. But it was something that I felt like I had to do, so I got up there and I did it. And to be able to come back three years later and play to . . . I mean there was standing room only, like people couldn't find chairs, I was freaking out. I expected to be worried about how many people were gonna come at all, and to be worried about making sure that everybody had a seat was an incredible blessing. It will never cease to amaze me how gracious the people that are kind enough to listen to my music have been. Just the fact that I had . . . that . . . you know they were nice enough to show up - it was just amazing! It was really cool, and to see them all singing the words, it was just . . . it was nuts. It was a dream come true in so many ways.
I mean, things like that . . . When you do something that you're proud of, when you're little you put it on the fridge (laughs). No, but I mean, when you do something that you're really proud of, when you're little you wanna put it on the fridge, like you want your parents to put it on the fridge with a magnet and you wanna share it with everyone, you want them to show everybody, and to be able to share something like that with everybody that I care about was really, really cool. It was a great night.
PAO: I like the way the CD sounds . . .
EM: Thank you!
PAO: Especially the fact that the CD was actually mixed and mastered at an appropriate level. You can clearly understand everything in the mix. You can hear everything and it sounds full and vibrant instead of flat and lifeless.
EM: Thank you.
PAO: Real musical power and impact comes from the music, not from how loud it's made to sound on the CD. On your CD's, musical dynamics take precedence over sheer volume. Martin Baird produced your CD's?
EM: Yes, Martin Baird produced both of the CD's at a place called Verge Music Works.
PAO: Where did you meet him?
EM: At a show, actually. He was . . . He came to the Girls Rock!!! show at Poor David's Pub that I played with Suzanne Kimbrell and at the time he was recording stuff for her, and he came up to me afterwards and he was like, "I really like the song 'I Could Be Good,' it's a good little pop song, I like it. Have you thought about doing some studio time?" And you know this, I'm instantly enamored with anybody who likes anything that I do, so I was thrilled to bits and pieces that he came up and told me that he liked the song and that he said he wanted to record some stuff. I was like, "That's perfect 'cause he's enthusiastic about it."
I think the two of us work really well together. We have the same sense of humor, we're both grammar nerds, we crack a bunch of jokes, and he's very honest with me about what works and what doesn't, and I'm very honest with him about what I like and what I don't like, and he's not frustrated by the fact that I wanna maintain creative control of a project. A lot of producers are like, "Actually, you're wrong, the song should really sound like this," and I'm like, "Really? 'Cause I wrote it" (laughs). "Are you sure you know what it should sound like?" But the two of us, it's a very collaborative effort, and that's a cool thing. And he, like you said, is very in tune with the necessity of volume control and subtlety and how much those things say.
PAO: How did you decide to name the CD Someone To Be?
EM: You know initially it was gonna be called Hope, the whole project, and I felt like that was a little too Hallmark card. Um . . .
PAO: I would say you made the right decision.
EM: Well thanks! (laughs). Um I had been talking to a lot of friends about the journey of self-discovery, and we'd been talking specifically about how scary it is to finish your education and be thrust into this world where you have to figure out what you're gonna do with your life and, are you gonna do the right thing? Are you gonna do the wrong thing? Is it practical? Can you make money? All important questions to consider, but I spent a lot of time trying to deny that this was what I wanted to do, and trying to find a different, more practical way to live my life, and it kept coming back to music. And I think that a lot of people take that journey, where they feel like they have to do something that is going to be practical and stable and that's gonna put money in the bank and food on the table, and somewhere along the way we lose the belief in possibility that we had when we were little. And I wanted to try and recapture that on a record and let people take that journey over the course of the songs, and "someone to be" just kind of seemed like an important idea that resonated throughout each of the songs that I picked. I swore to myself when I started this that I would never, ever, ever do that thing where you name a record after a song, this just seemed so lazy. But nothing else seemed to fit quite as well as that did, so there you have it.
PAO: You've done this before.
EM: What, interview? (laughs) Not really, I just . . . Well okay, I'm gonna break for a second and tell you something stupid. I learned a long time ago that being super professional is overrated. You have to be real first. It's the most important thing. It has to fall into place. When I was little, I really wanted to do this. And I watched interviews with my favorite artists, so I used to sit down and pretend I was being interviewed. So it's like you sit there in the shower and you grab the bottle of shampoo and you pretend that you're accepting a Grammy. And it doesn't matter how many times you practice the speech, I guarantee you if I ever, ever, ever am blessed enough to get on that stage, all the words will pfffft!. There'll just be a giant pile of ahhhhhhh!, which is essentially what the CD release was, but you know, it works out.
PAO: You were literally jumping up and down for joy that night.
EM: It was . . . insane. I didn't . . . It overwhelms me constantly how supportive people are. It . . . I mean, I don't have a career without people who listen to the music. In a very real sense, I don't have a job if people don't like what I do and if people don't like it enough to follow it. And I . . . through some really incredible stroke of luck I ended up with a lot of really great people in my corner. And I'm . . . there aren't words for how grateful I am for that.
All right. Give me another question, let's go. Before the french fries attack me.
PAO: Does Steve Jackson still host that open mic at Opening Bell?
EM: Yes, he does.
PAO: That was the first place you played in public, wasn't it?
EM: It was. He wasn't the host at the time, actually. Mr. Troll was hosting then, and Steve was just there to play.
PAO: Was he the one who encouraged you to get up and play?
EM: No, um my friend Brent actually encouraged me to go. I had dragged him with me a few times - both of us were big music fans - and he played, actually, before I did, which is funny. He's a classical clarinet performance major, and so he got up and did three Stravinsky clarinet pieces and he was like, "If I can get up there and do Stravinski, you can get up there and play the piano." He's like, that's way more socially acceptable (laughs). So the week after he did that, I got up there and played.
PAO: The song, was it "Give a Damn?"
EM: It was "Give a Damn."
PAO: I think that's the first . . . if not the first, then one of the very first songs I ever heard you play. Any time I think of you playing anywhere I think of you playing that song. Maybe a little bit less now than I used to, because I know a lot more of your material, but that was the first one I remember, the first one everyone remembers. The first one you remember, too!
EM: It is, which is funny. I didn't ever intend to play it for people. I wasn't going to, it was . . . it was a song that acknowledged the worst parts of a relationship that at one point meant a whole lot to me, and the thought of facing that reality, musically, over and over and over again wasn't really a happy thought. But I played it for a voice teacher and she told me she really liked it, and then I recorded it in the studio 'cause I needed a song to record for this demo. And we recorded "I Could Be Good" and we had more time, so he said, "Do you have another song?" and I said sure. And this was a guy who I walked in there and I asked him if I could take my shoes off 'cause I wear these ginormous heels, and he goes "yeah," and I was like, "Kelly Clarkson performs barefoot" - like, word vomit! Word vomit! Justification! Justification! And he goes, "I know, I saw her do it at the Grammies." And I was like, you were there?! (laughs) And I got done with "Give a Damn" and he goes, "That's a really nice song," and I was, like, ready to pee on the floor, I was so excited (laughs). I was like, "Really, you think it's good? Really, really, really? My simple song of love and heartbreak, you like that? Awesome."
Um, and the response to it was so warm, people were so kind, and they . . . What I noticed the most was every time I played it people would come up and tell me about their breakups. They would tell me about a similar situation that they'd had, and that was a defining moment for me, because that sharing that happens when somebody hears a song that really resonates with them, and they feel compelled to come up and share with you something about their life, something personal - that forges a connection that doesn't happen all the time. People don't talk to each other about those things, and to give them the opportunity to talk about it is really important to me.
PAO: A lot of your material has to do with finding yourself, finding your own voice, not losing touch with one’s own identity, or the process of personal growth that comes from moving forward in life during or after relationships, or dealing with loss, or in the case of "Where the Light Is," realizing you can’t save everyone. Would you say [that] as an artist, these are things that you struggle with?
EM: Absolutely. I write songs to make sense of the world. I don't . . . Very rarely do I sit down and try and write ideas, to sit down and try and write something that I think will resonate with people. I usually sit down and write a song as a journal entry. There's something about taking something as ugly as anger or helplessness or frustration or rejection and putting it to pretty words and a melody that makes it a little bit more worth it. Like, I wouldn't wish the situation that inspired "Give a Damn" on anybody. It sucked. In every possible way it sucked. Um, heartbreak sucks. But . . . that song came out of it, and that song essentially launched this, and so I can't regret it. And I think that the beauty of music for me is that it's a manifestation of the idea that everything happens for a reason, like I go through these things for a reason, and I write about them for a reason, and then somebody else will come up to me and tell me that they've gone through something else and I'm like ok great if I can make somebody else feel less alone then maybe these horrible things that I deal with and then write about may not be so terrible after all. Like maybe that's the point, is that we're all in this together. It's like the end of High School Musical. (singing) "We're all in this together."
PAO: What?
EM: It's the end of High School Musical - they do this number, it's called "We're All in This Together" (laughs). Really? You never saw High School Musical?
PAO: The closest I've come to a high school musical is Grease.
EM: Ah, that's a good one.
PAO: Although they let me down a little bit with the ending: Dress like a tramp and you get the guy.
EM: It was the fifties, man. You know. I mean, it works for me.
PAO: Really?
EM: No, not at all ! (laughs).
PAO: Can I quote you on that? (laughs)
EM: No! (laughs) I mean yeah, but it's clearly sarcastic. You'll never find a picture of me baring cleavage, that just won't happen. I've never been interested in that side of the industry.
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This page last updated on 15 December 2011 at 2:23 PM.