A contemporary folk artist whose emotive songs and spellbinding live performances have won her fans across the globe, British singer-songwriter, composer and poet Emily Maguire has released six albums, played the Royal Albert Hall with Don McLean, performed over 50 shows with Dr Hook, played Glastonbury Festival and toured with Eric Bibb.
Now based on a goat farm in the Australian bush where she recorded her seventh album ‘A Light To Follow’, Emily has been featured many times in playlists and interviews on BBC national radio and her hauntingly beautiful voice has been heard in prisons and psychiatric hospitals as well as concert halls and theatres across the UK.
Open about her struggles with bipolar disorder, Emily is an award-winning mental health advocate who writes songs ‘bathed in raw, emotional power’ (Guitarist Magazine), her thought-provoking lyrics influenced both by her Buddhist practice over many years and by her desire to uplift, comfort and inspire her listeners.
Emily started writing songs after getting a guitar for her 21st birthday when she was stuck at home disabled with fibromyalgia pain syndrome. She didn’t record her first album until 7 years later when, following a psychotic episode, she came to Australia in 2003 to see an old friend Christian Dunham for a 3-week holiday that changed her life.
Emily has released all her albums independently on Shaktu Records, the record label she set up with Christian in 2004 which they originally financed by making and selling goats cheese on the family farm in Australia. In 2007, they married and left Australia for what was supposed to be a 3 month tour of the UK. They didn’t return until 2019 when, deeply disillusioned by Brexit, they moved back to the farm and started work on a new record.
Emily’s seventh album ‘A Light To Follow’ was co-produced by Christian and Emily and recorded by Christian at Shaktu (shack no.2 on the farm), the wooden house that had replaced the original wood, tin and potato sack shack where they used to live. Recording on a farm in the Australian bush was a challenge, trying to avoid the sounds of cockatoos, crows, kookaburras, bi-planes, tractors and the endless flies landing on microphones.
After the multi-layered studio production of Emily’s previous two albums ‘Bird Inside A Cage’ and ‘A Bit Of Blue’ (both produced by Nigel Butler), the intention with this seventh album ‘A Light To Follow’ was to record real instruments – violin, viola, cello, guitars, pianos, bass and drums. To record the vocals, Christian built a Tardis in their double-height living room out of mattresses and the gobos he had made out of old bookshelves and insulation padding. Emily sang inside a black hole with a camping light for the lyrics.
A classically trained multi-instrumentalist and composer, Emily wrote all the string arrangements for ‘A Light To Follow’ and recorded the piano, keys, guitar and cello parts. Christian put down the basslines with drummer Shane Nesic in 40 degree heat with all the doors and windows of the house closed. Dan Lyons played his lap steel and violinist Sarah King recorded the endless violin and viola parts.
Many of the songs on ‘A Light To Follow’ were written by Emily when the 2020 lockdown in Australia triggered an intensely creative manic episode. She tells the story of the album in a book ‘A Light To Follow’, published alongside the CD release, which includes behind the scenes photographs and sleeve notes on each song.
She says: “There is no ‘theme’ to this album, only my desire to inspire, uplift and comfort the people listening. If I can do that, then it was all worthwhile.”
‘A Light To Follow’ is out 28.02.23.
Contact: Emily Maguire
Email: emily[at]emilymaguire.com