JUNO-nominated and Maple Blues Award winning Miss Emily returns with The Medicine, her latest album, due on 7th November from Gypsy Soul Records.
Blending soul, blues and roots, and featuring an all-star cast of musicians at the top of their game. Produced by Grammy winner Colin Linden (Keb’ Mo’, Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, Gregg Allman, Diana Krall) and including players from Bob Dylan and Keb’ Mo’s bands, the new album pairs Miss Emily’s thunderous voice with songs of truth and resilience, channelled through two decades of raw experience into music that heals and uplifts.
Out now, ‘Solid Ground’ her second single taken from her upcoming studio album.
“’Solid Ground’ is one of the oldest songs on my new album,” admitted Miss Emily. “This song was written during an extremely vulnerable time when my daughter was incredibly young. We were very poor; I had no financial support and no close family living nearby. There was so much I couldn’t give my daughter during that time, but I knew I had all the love in the world for her and somehow, I would find a way to make her feel secure. This song is that promise to her.”
The single is available on all streaming platforms here. You can check out the lyric video here at RAMzine.
Mellow and reflective while looking to a brighter future, country not shmaltzy, Miss Emily’s new single ‘Solid Ground’ is the kind of number that soon holds the listener snug and warm.
Possessing a voice that demands attention and is never predictable, Miss Emily values community above all else. For more than 20 years she has channelled those principles in her songwriting and performance, never shying away from an open conversation with her audience about the struggles she has faced.
Whether it was domestic violence or being a musical road-warrior and a single mother at the same time, she has opened her heart in a communal invitation to share, heal and celebrate.
During the writing process for The Medicine that commitment was tested. “I wasn’t in a great head space,” she recalled, her voice cracking under the emotional weight of the memory. “Like so many of us, sometimes life brings you down. In one of my darker moments, I wrote an angry song. Then, as I continued prepping the songs, I realised I didn’t want anger to be a prominent theme on my new album. I wanted to celebrate community. I wanted to record music that made people feel better.”
The Medicine is just that; a collection of soul and Americana-inspired blues. As previously mentioned, the new album is produced by multiple JUNO and Grammy winner Colin Linden – celebrated Canadian guitarist and producer who resides in Nashville. The album features a hand-picked team of celebrated musicians including Linden on slide and electric guitar, Keb Mo’s keyboardist, Michael Hicks, on the Hammond B3 and George Receli; a drummer who Keith Richards lists as one of his favourites, and whose resume includes 20 years as Bob Dylans’s drummer.
“Miss Emily is a tremendously passionate and supple singer, with a deep well of emotion, said Linden. “She is a truth teller. Working with her was pure joy.”
That inclination towards joyful truth was cultivated over more than two decades of playing night after night in bars and nightclubs along the busy Canadian highway corridor between Toronto and Montreal. Along with exhilarating, heart-wrenching performances, Miss Emily developed a work ethic that drew the attention of promoters at regional theatres and festivals. In 2019 she won three Canadian Maple Blues awards: Female Vocalist of the year, Newcomer of the year and Video of the Year. In 2022, she was nominated for a JUNO for Blues Album of the Year and won Maple Blues Female Vocalist of the year in 2021 and 2023.
Brad Wheeler of Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe And Mail put it aptly , “She’s got a voice on her like big velvet thunder.”
Her thunderous voice is highlighted on the soulful, anthemic first single ‘Stand Together, Band Together’, a celebration and reflection of community and humanity. These are the cornerstones of everything Miss Emily has been doing for more than two decades. At some point every night, on every tour, in every venue, she will open her arms wide and invite the people to join her in song. It’s a momentary risk but as the voices fill the room in unison and celebration, it’s an affirmation that, in this unpredictable world, the communal celebration of music is the medicine that binds us together.
In the 1990s, 12-year-old Emily Fennell from Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada, got an early education on the power of community. She spent the summer competing in and winning dozens of county fair singing contests. While the other competitors chose standards like ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ or ‘I Will Always Love You’, she apparently stunned audiences into silent amazement with K.D. Lang’s version of the Patsy Cline song ‘Three Cigarettes In An Ashtray’.
That song choice, her performance of it, and the venues in which she chose to display her talents, is everything one might need to know about the woman who would become Miss Emily.
Tracks featured on The Medicine are: ‘My Freedom’, ‘Stand Together, Band Together’, ‘The Medicine’, ‘Maybe’, ‘You Make Believe’, ‘Running Again’, ‘Solid Ground’, ‘Smith’s Bay Drowning’ and ‘Remember This Song’ – It can be ordered here.
Delivering social commentary by way of a sensual sound and superior vocal delivery is what made the work of Curtis Mayfield and similarly soul-imbued acts of years gone by so profound. Canadian singer Miss Emily repurposed that subtle agenda for the modern world on ‘Stand Together, Band Together’, the first single taken from The Medicine.
‘Stand Together, Band Together’ is available on all streaming platforms here and you can check out the official live video above, here at RAMzine.
