Emily Maguire (singer)

Emily Maguire

Emily Maguire performing at The Brook, Southampton, England in June 2008
Background information
Birth name Emily Lucy Maguire
Born (1975-03-08) 8 March 1975
Origin London, UK
Genres Alternative / Acoustic / Indie rock
Occupation(s) Singer-Songwriter
Instruments singing, acoustic guitar, cello, piano, recorder, flute
Years active 2003-present
Labels Shaktu Records ( Self Released )
Website EmilyMaguire.com

Emily Lucy Maguire (born 8 March 1975) is an independent English singer songwriter. She has released three albums to date which are distributed through Universal by Active Media. All the songs are written and composed by Maguire. She runs her own record label Shaktu Records with her partner Christian Dunham.

Biography

Maguire was born in South London, but most of her childhood was spent in Cambridge, England. She grew up without a TV at home and developed a passion for books and music and learnt to play the cello, piano, flute and recorder from a very early age. Her father initially got her playing the piano which led to a love for classical music. She was raised with the music of Bach and Mozart. At aged 12 Maguire looked destined to become a professional cellist. She played in competitions, attended courses on chamber music, and took a master class with world-famous cellist Paul Tortelier. [1]

Some years later she started to listen to other kinds of music and became obsessed with the songs of Bob Marley. When she was 17, she was involved in a car crash and a whiplash injury triggered fibromyalgia, a condition that affects the nervous system and results in chronic pain. The condition affected her mobility for several years and by the time she was 21 she had to give up her job and was on walking sticks, sometimes completely housebound.[2]

During this difficult period to pass the time and a distraction from the pain she taught herself to play Bob Marley songs on the guitar and started writing her own songs inspired by his music. With her passion for poetry, song writing perfectly cemented her love of words and music and she wrote hundreds of songs in her bedroom and purchased a ProTools Studio to start recording them at home on a computer.[1] By her mid 20s, her health had improved and she moved back to London, and started working again doing office jobs. To begin with, Emily never saw herself as a performer, but then she got up the courage to start singing her songs in open-mic clubs.

In 2003 she received a phone call out of the blue which resulted in a trip to Australia for a four-week holiday to speed her recovery with Maguire’s illness being partly affected by the dull English weather. She went to stay with an old friend on his family’s goat farm situated in the Obi Obi valley up in the hills behind the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. That friend was Christian Dunham who plays bass guitar and was a member of an Australian rock band.[3] He later became her husband and the farm her home. Together they produced her album in a recording studio he had built next to their house, called shack no.2 on the farm. The shack has no heating, just basic electricity and was built from old bits of timber and metal with walls made from rendered potato sacks. The shack is a delicate eco system, it has wild life, with mice, which live in Maguire’s piano and Huntsman spiders living in the bathroom. Maguire dealt with this by giving the creatures names. She overcame a snake phobia by calling a 7 ft python Dudley who moved into the shack from neighbouring farmland.[2]

Together with her Australian husband, producer and bass player Maguire recorded her debut album Stranger Place over 14 days and nights in an old farmhouse in the middle of a forest in Queensland. They set up their own record label, called Shaktu Records, named after their home.[1] Maguire and her husband took over the family cheese-making business, in between running their record label in order to fund the album independently. Proceeds were raised by the manufacture and selling of goats cheese. Emily's husband encouraged and advised her to go out and play her songs live to promote the album.

In 2006, after completing another tour of the UK, Emily and Christian returned to Australia to record her second album Keep Walking. In July 2007 they returned to the UK to play the Cambridge Folk Festival and embark on a 3-month tour of pubs and clubs before heading back to life on the farm.

On 9 September 2007 she was featured as a Sunday Spotlight artist on Aled Jones with Good Morning Sunday on BBC Radio 2 and her song Back Home was played from the album Keep Walking. The manager of The Waterboys happened to be listening, he contacted the programme and they passed on her contact details. A week before she was due to fly back to Australia, Maguire got a phone call from him asking if she would be prepared to cancel her ticket back and fly instead to Ireland to start a 16-date tour with American singer Don McLean.

From playing to 50 people in clubs she found herself performing to 2,000 people in concert halls around the UK, culminating in a show at the Royal Albert Hall which ended the tour. This story lead to several articles appearing in the press including The Guardian on 21 November 2007 titled My Wildlife, The Sydney Morning Herald Thursday 15 November 2007, titled Valley girl seduces London as well as several live radio interviews on National Radio in the UK.

On 16 October 2008 Maguire played her first major headline gig at The Bush Hall in London performing her songs with an all-girl string trio from The Royal Academy Of Music plus Damon Wilson, the drummer from The Waterboys. Her third album Believer was released in November 2009. Emily puts her classical training and cello-playing to use writing and recording all the string arrangements for all her albums. On her MySpace page she cites Bach, Bob Marley and Buddha as her influences. A practising Buddhist for over 10 years, her 3 albums are all dedicated to her teacher Lama Jampa Thaye[4]

Maguire released a book titled "Start Over Again" on 1 Oct 2010. She revealed the story behind her songs, her journeys into psychosis and depression and the hope that emerges from the other side. It contains a brief autobiography and is based on the verses of her song '"Start Over Again" (from her third album Believer). It includes her poetry, prose, song lyrics and personal diary entries that offer an insight into the creativity of a manic depressive mind. Emily endured a tough battle with Chronic Depression and Bi-Polar disorder throughout her life, and wrote openly about the mental illness. [5]

On 15 July 2013 she released her fourth studio album Bird Inside a Cage

Musical career

Stranger Place

Maguire's self-produced acoustic folk-pop debut album. It contains 12 tracks, ten of which were recorded at Pix Records in Queensland and two at Goldcrest studios in London, it was released in 2004. An album made up of questioning lyrics and musical imagery, with dark tones on album opener "The Real World" to lighter shades on "Stranger Place". On "Falling On My Feet" she sings of devotion and on "I Turned On The News" about the slow decay of society. "The Real World" secured her an invitation to perform at the 2005 Singer-Songwriter Festival at The Borderline in London, where she opened for David Bowie’s renowned bassist Gail Ann Dorsey.

Keep Walking

Released in 2007, Maguire's 12 track second album combines her love of classical music with a passion for beats, bass lines and acoustic guitar.[3] The title track was released as a single and gained a place on the BBC Radio 2 playlist during May and June in 2008.

Believer

Maguire's third album was recorded at Kore Studios, Chiswick, London in January 2009 and released on 16 November 2009. This included two new singles "Lighthouse Man" and "I'd Rather Be". Both were playlisted on BBC Radio 2, the former appearing on the "C" list and the latter securing a "B" list placing for 5 weeks. The third single released was "Anything You Do".

Bird Inside a Cage

Maguire's fourth studio album was produced by Nigel Butler and released on Monday 15 July 2013. The album launch took place with a concert held at Hoxton Hall in London on Friday 12 July 2013. The fan funded 10 track project contains the first single "Beautiful". The title track "Bird Inside A Cage" was written about The Time Magazine columnist Melanie Reid who broke her neck and back after falling from a horse in April 2010. Emily was inspired by an article Reid had written in 2011, on the first anniversary of her accident. Emily was a studio guest and was interviewed by Clare Balding on BBC Radio 2’s Good Morning Sunday show on 14 July 2013. The first single was played and she performed a live acoustic version of her love song "North and South".[6] [7][8]

Singles

Year Single Peak positions Album
Official UK Singles Chart
2008 "Keep Walking" "Keep Walking"
2009 "Lighthouse Man" "Believer"
2010 "I'd Rather Be"
2010 "Anything You Do"
2013 "Beautiful" "Bird Inside A Cage"
"—" denotes releases that did not chart

Festivals

Tours

Live radio appearances

Quotes

External links

References

Notes
  1. 1 2 3 Emily Press Pack bio
  2. 1 2 The Guardian "My wildlife", Interview with Emine Saner retrieved 30 July 2013, first published 21 Nov 2007
  3. 1 2 Maverick Magazine (Issue 60, July 2007; 3 page feature "Spider & Snakes Girl")
  4. Lama Jampa Thaye webpage
  5. Start Over Again Book and EPK Retrieved on 2013-07-30
  6. 1 2 3 Interview with Clare Balding BBC Radio 2, 14 July 2013 Retrieved on 2013-07-14
  7. The Times Magazine Spinal Column article Retrieved on 2013-07-30, first published 13 July 2013
  8. Emily Maguire Website: Melanie Reid Article Retrieved on 2013-07-30
  9. Emily Maguire: Interview with Aled Jones Good Morning Sunday,BBC Radio 2: 28 October 2007: retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0084j7q on 8 September 2010
  10. Interview with Jane Garvey BBC Radio 4, 17 December 2007: retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/02/2007_51_mon.shtml on 8 September 2010
  11. Emily Maguire: Interview with Aled Jones Good Morning Sunday,BBC Radio 2: 25 May 2008: retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00bqdl0 on 8 September 2010
  12. Emily Maguire interview on Loose Ends, BBC Radio 4, 6 July, retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cd3gl on 8 September 2010
  13. Emily Maguire: Interview with Aled Jones Good Morning Sunday,BBC Radio 2: 31 January 2010: retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qfy7r on 8 September 2010
  14. Emily Maguire: BBC Radio 2 play on 4 January 2010: retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pk9yn on 8 September 2010
  15. Emily Maguire: BBC Radio 2 play on 12 January 2010: retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pqg9m on 8 September 2010
  16. Emily Maguire: BBC Radio 2 play on Tuesday 26 January 2010: retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00q95f2 on 8 September 2010
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