PCL Blues Miss Emily: Why Miss Emily is breaking out of her Ontario bubble

“I like to say that I’m 107 years old in musician years,” says Miss Emily with a smile. “I’m actually 39, which I normally wouldn’t say but it's an important piece of the puzzle.” Kingston, Ontario native and best new blueswoman on the block has been performing her evocative music for over 16 years, but Miss Emily says even Toronto musicians and blues appreciators alike (just two hours down the road from Kingston) acted like she just sort of dropped out of the sky, to their surprise.

“For many years now, I’ve played around 200 shows a year, mostly in and around Kingston area. The idea of travelling was just not a reality.”

That's about to change, and Albertans are about to know without a doubt who Miss Emily is. Her concert in the Jack Singer Concert Hall, along with Rooster Davis and Tim Williams: Conversations in Blue will be aired on CKUA’s Friday Night Blues Party throughout the month of September to conclude the 2020-21 season of Arts Commons Presents the PCL Blues series.

The reason for her aversion to travel in the past is quite simple. As a single mom of a now 15-year-old daughter, the life of a travelling blues performer wasn’t a feasible proposition. Of course, now that her daughter is well into her teens, Miss Emily has been able to perform outside of her hometown, in Toronto, across Canada, and even for short stints overseas.

“It’s been kind of fun to re-enter the music world in many ways, because it’s a different level for me, and I’ve had no problem having a super modest career because it still paid the bills," says Miss Emily. “I’ve been able to perform my own music for the most part in recent years, and support myself and my daughter, and have a mortgage and do all these things that I think a lot of full-time artists in this country don’t get to do full-time. They have to have a side hustle, and I knew that having a side hustle was just not my jam.”

Triple Maple Blues Winner
In late 2019, Emily received the news that she was nominated for not one, but three Maple Blues Awards, including Best New Artist. She then went on to win in all three categories, a huge boost to both her reputation, and musical drive.

"I didn’t think that mattered to me, but when found out a year ago that I was nominated for the blues awards, I was over the moon ecstatic," says Emily. “I think it might be top three greatest moments of my life. Not winning the awards, but finding out I was nominated, just to be recognized.”

Emily had planned to record a studio album in late March of 2020, but as widespread lockdowns hit most of Canada, her plans had to change. Instead, she approached her friend who is technical director at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts in Kingston. With her habit of sticking close to home, she’d performed six shows there in the past two and a half years.

Emily asked, “what we have for board recordings?” She sifted through everything there and sent out a selection to some of her closest music colleagues, who helped her whittle it down to 15 tracks which would make-up her new live album.

You can listen to that live album here: https://open.spotify.com/album/7I6IpJK1romWfh9i35N8ry

Holding Back the River
One of Miss Emily’s nominations at the 2020 Maple Blues Awards was for the Sapphire Award, recognizing her music video Hold Back the River. The song itself is a powerful declaration of independence and strength, but what really sets it apart is the music video that sets the song in the now defunct Kingston Penitentiary.

“When I filmed Hold Back the River, it wasn’t meant to be about the ‘Me Too’ movement,” says Emily. The idea to film in the penitentiary actually came from a friend of Emily’s who had worked on some of her other videos in the past. He mentioned the idea, and that got Emily’s gear turning.

“I thought, wait a second, what if this song that I wrote, and I didn’t really know what I was writing it for several years ago, was actually written as an anthem of hope which could mean many things to many different groups, but specifically for women,” says Emily. “So, I took the idea of using the prison and it grew into this huge operation. I arranged for 100 women to be there, without giving any information, just as a Facebook open call.

“I’m going to get a bit emotional here, but we had a tonne of sexual assault survivors [come out] who decided that this was going to be a part of their story and healing as all of this stuff had come back up for them because of the ‘Me Too’ movement. There was tears and emotion, and it was a life altering event for me.”

Always Moving Forward
So where is Miss Emily planning to go from here? Well, if it demonstrates Miss Emily’s strength of character at all, the COVID-19 pandemic has barely put a damper on her enthusiasm.

“It’s been a crazy awesome year, and not being nominated for the Maple Blues Awards this year, I’m like, whatever. I’m still flying high from the last blues awards. And I just released a new album, so it’s just always moving forward, and redefining what that means.

“I feel like being positive has helped me. I’ve gotten creative. I’ve reached out extensively to my fanbase all over the world…It’s like I planted these seeds, and it allowed me to continue what I was already doing. It could have been a lot worse, and I know it was for a lot of artists. So, I’m grateful.”

Blues lovers and audiophiles alike will get a chance to enjoy these live concert recordings captured in the Jack Singer Concert Hall on CKUA’s Friday Night Blues Party at 9 p.m. on the following dates:

Tim Williams: Conversations in Blue – Friday, September 3

Miss Emily – Friday, September 10

Rooster Davis – Friday, September 17

To learn more about Arts Commons Presents’ PCL Blues series, visit artscommons.ca/pclblues.