Artist Interviews

Q&A: Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo

By | Published on Tuesday 8 February 2011

Emily Barker

Originally hailing from Bridgetown, Australia, Emily Barker came to the UK aged nineteen and formed The Low Country with guitarist Rob Jackson in 2002. Having released two well-received albums as part of the duo, Emily embarked on a solo venture, the result of which was 2007’s critically acclaimed ‘Photos. Fires. Fables.’

She then founded rootsy folk quartet The Red Clay Halo, who released their debut album, ‘Despite The Snow’, in 2008 on Emily’s own Everyone Sang label. Lead album track ‘Nostalgia’ was chosen as the opening song for BAFTA-winning BBC series ‘Wallander’, and later honoured with a Royal Television Award for best theme.

New album, ‘Almanac’, is out this week, and represents a collection of stories touched by love and heartbreak, the light and shade of which are played out in Emily’s expansive yet frail vocals, and augmented by engaging group harmonies. They are now set to headline a series of UK dates beginning on 9 Feb in Leicester. In the relative lull before the tour, we caught up with Emily to get her thoughts on our Same Six.

Q1 How did you start out making music?
I’ve been singing from a very early age thanks to my mum who used to sit us four kids down and sing us songs whilst playing guitar. She taught us how to harmonise and we’d all join in on the old country and folk tunes. I started to play piano when I was fifteen and then picked up an acoustic guitar when I was eighteen and immediately started writing songs.

Q2 What inspired your latest album?
Musically the album is inspired by Neil Young, Carol King, Laura Veirs, Johnny Flynn, Peter Broderick, Joanna Newsom, Joni Mitchell… the list goes on and on! Lyrically, inspiration comes from renewal, cycles in life, love and loss, darkness and light, the importance of community, indigenous Australians, our relationship to the earth and a woman who was accused of being a witch.

Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
It really varies, sometimes I sit and write a track almost in its entirety, other times it’s bits and pieces, some lyrics whilst sitting on a bus, a melody when I should be sleeping, some chords when sitting on the couch. Mostly I like solitude and winter to write in, I turn off my phone, shut down my computer, close the curtains, make a cuppa and experiment until I come up with something I’m happy with. The Red Clay Halo and I arrange all the songs together. I play the girls the song and we have a very open and fluid way of experimenting with arrangement ideas. It’s one of our favourite aspects of playing together …the sitting and arranging a song.

Q4 Which artists influence your work?
Neil Young is forever a huge influence. Also Low, Laura Veirs, Ted Barnes, Nick Cave, Sun Kil Moon, Grizzly Bear, Calexico, Gillian Welch, Aretha Franklin, Rikki Lee Jones…

Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Find a quiet-ish moment to listen to the album in. Maybe an armchair, your favourite tipple, a fire place etc and please do have a look at the booklet with the lyrics and beautiful artwork by Daniela Terrazzini – she’s so talented. One of my mates says he loves to cook to this album!

Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
Well, we all hope it’s received really well by press and radio. We hope we have a great tour in February and sell lots of records whilst out there. We hope for festivals in the summer time, a tour in Europe at some point in the year, another tour in the UK, a tour in Australia, plus many more things! But mostly we hope people like what we’ve created. For the future, we’ve been building our profile for about four years now, it’s been steadily increasing cottage-industry style. We’d like to see this continue with the new album and to be able to create a sustainable, long-lived career as a band and as individual musicians/composers/arrangers.

MORE>> www.emily-barker.com



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