“I listen to a wide variety of music and have gone through phases of being really into different styles, but it always comes back to folk. Folk music, to me, feels like it lives at the core of my humanity… It feels ancestral.”
Ezmay Grace, her guitar poised in a state of readiness and with her long fingers feeling for the reassuring touch of it’s strings, appears to smoothly blend the traditions of folk music with the probing, perceptive elements of an alternative scene taking root in the here and now.
“Reimagining Folk”, it has been boldly proclaimed of an artist still so young, but Ezmay’s interpretation of the Blues, her descriptive and often wrenching lyrics beautifully woven into wistful stories purposefully, beautifully delivered, is still fresh and imaginative, familiar and ageless, coaxed into being by a guitar that cajoles her soulful melodies, yet mindful of the storytellers who have travelled this long road before.
“I love the history of traditional folk and pondering the lives of the people who originally wrote each song,’ Ezmay tells me. “I love the storytelling element, how it hooks you in from start to finish. I also love the instrumentation in more traditional folk, there’s no filler,” she says quickly, with a sense of wonder. “Each instrument is played so masterfully and makes up an integral part of the song. Folk just feels so much more genuine and human than any other genre, in my opinion, and I think that allows me to connect with it more deeply.”
Following on from her 2017 E.P., The Sailor’s Mistress, Ezmay Grace has become the distinctive voice in the local music scene, and something of an inspiration to new writers and performers tentatively finding their feet.
“The main feedback I get at live shows is that I make people cry,” she laughs, “so I’ve always wondered whether that gives me a good or bad reputation,” she wonders for a moment. “I absolutely adore playing live. I always feel I sound my best when I have an audience’s energy to bounce off. I’m braver with my vocal decoration,” she admits to me, “and push myself to the max when I’ve got a good crowd watching and listening. It sometimes makes me feel like I’m floating above myself, without wanting to sound too woo-woo!” she quickly adds.
Her eagerly-awaited debut album, Lien Gwerin, will only enhance her fast growing reputation for evocative songwriting and perceptive delivery: her lyrics intimately personal, private reflections that could have been lifted from the pages of a diary, now laid-bare. Modern takes on oft-told themes, made relevant by that soft voice of a young, disarmingly pretty storyteller and the gently strummed strings of an ever-loyal guitar.
“Lien Gwerin came about quite organically, which is part of what I love about it. I had started writing more traditional, story-based folk songs in my early twenties, Sailor’s Mistress for example,” she suddenly adds, “and I found I had a real affinity for it. I could fabricate a whole world for a story, and tap into that old-timey vocabulary and traditional folk song structure. I really fell in love with writing in this way and amassed a solid collection of songs in this style over the course of my twenties. Sometime in 2023,” she continues, “I decided I had enough for a concept album… an album of folk tales. Thus, Lien Gwerin was born.
“I’m very proud to say that I recorded the entirety of the album myself at home in my little studio space in Bude,” Ezmay reveals. “I think I did this as an exercise in proving to myself that I could. The strings were recorded remotely by Severn Duo, and then I mixed them into the tracks. Once the album was ‘finished’ on my end, I knew I wanted it to be mixed and mastered professionally, as I could admit to myself that was beyond my skill set.
I knew of James’s [producer James Bragg] work through a mutual friend and reached out to him. He took the tracks and turned them into something I could never have dreamed they’d become… They went from mediocre to completely professional, and I was mind-blown. Needless to say, I’ll be recording the next album with him from scratch!”
So, what was the recording process like? How did she find it?
“It’s not something that comes naturally to me. I perform my best with an audience, so singing into a microphone while staring at a wall is a challenge!” she readily admits. “It feels like a very robotic process at first,” she adds, after a moment’s thought. “Set up the kit! Record some guide tracks! Do a thousand takes of my vocals! Judge myself harshly! Go again…” she laughs. “But eventually I settle in and find a creative flow. It just takes me some time to access, as recording isn’t something I’m as familiar with as playing live.”
Why that title though? Where does that come from?
“Lien Gwerin is Kernowek [Cornish] for ‘folk tales’. Originally, I’d wanted to call the album Folklore, until I discovered, much to my dismay, that Taylor Swift had beaten me to it!” Oh, the humanity! “I thought about the inspiration for so many of the songs on the album, and how my surroundings had shaped so many of the tracks, and decided to pay homage to my home by using the Cornish translation of ‘folk tales’ instead.”
Can she lead us through each track?
“Absolutely… Track 1 – The Blackbird. This song took me years to write… Maybe about ten years in total? When I lived at home, we had a bathroom fan that was particularly noisy, and whenever I was in there, I used it as a drone and would sing one specific melody over it all the time. I desperately wanted to write a song to that tune, but it took time to come to me.
On my mum’s side, I have Romani heritage and wanted to try and connect a little to that by writing a song about a Traveller. I sat down in the bathroom with the fan on and drafted some lyrics. Over the years, they finally became The Blackbird.
“Meandering River, is one of the older songs on the album, but it’s a firm favourite of mine and my listeners and was the first single I released ahead of the album. It’s based on My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” a small portion of which is sung at the end. “I love the classic folk trope of lovers being separated by the ocean, and the determination to be together across such a vast obstacle.
“Joan is a true story, a very sad one,” Ezmay continues quickly. “Joan Wytte was a white witch who lived in Bodmin around 200 years ago. She had a horrible life, a horrible death, and was mistreated for many years afterwards before finally being properly laid to rest in Boscastle in the 1990s. I stumbled upon her gravestone one day, fell headfirst into researching her life, and decided to honour her with a song.
“The Lighthouse,” track 4, “is special to me. My lovely friend Jeff Sacree, of Dirtbox Guitars, sent me these words as a poem and asked if I wanted to do something with them. A small amount of tinkering later, and The Lighthouse was reborn as a song. He’s happy with the outcome, I think!” Ezmay says with a hopeful smile. “Jeff custom-made me a banjo, which I used on the track to further honour his contribution.
“Moonbeam is a very light-hearted track, as far as my writing goes! I spent some time on a canal boat in 2018 called Moonbeam and absolutely fell in love with the lifestyle. I missed it so much when I got home that I wrote a love song for her. I still miss her to this day!
“Faina is the oldest track on the album by a long shot,” Ezmay reveals. “I was only 18 when I wrote it after reading Eowyn Ivey’s novel The Snow Child, Faina being the name of the main character. I’ve always been an avid reader, but this was the first book I ever read that stuck with me so profoundly that I felt I needed to get it back out of my head and onto paper to fully process it. Hence, Faina was born!
“Koswick…” another nod to the Cornish language, meaning, “forest”, as Ezmay quickly informs me. “I wanted to play around with the idea of sirens on land, living in the shadowy places we all have an instinctual fear of, such as a forest. I envisioned an old Cornish village on the coast, surrounded by an ancient, eerie forest, and wanted to touch on the idea of mass hysteria – how, when enough people believe something, it can become real.
“Which leads us to Siren Song. The youngest track on the album and the second single I released from it, Siren Song is just that, a song about sirens, obviously playing on the weapon best used by a siren: it’s voice!
“I wanted to write about a ship,” Ezmay continues, “and touch on the superstitions and beliefs of sailors of old, as a nod to, The Sailor’s Mistress, and what better creature of folklore to write a song about than the songstresses of the deep themselves? The chorus of this track came out better than I ever thought it would,” she reveals, somewhat surprised, “thanks to the production skills of James Bragg,” she graciously admits. “It’s a swirling, sparkling blend of layered vocals that wraps you up and drags you into the deep.”
I ask Ezmay about her favourite song from Lien Gwerin, and she ponders on this for a while… admitting that she is finding it a, “really hard”, question to answer.
“To play live, I think Siren Song,” she eventually tells me. “I love the chorus and feel it shows off my vocal range and agility. As a recorded track… I’d say Koswick, it feels so haunting and cinematic, and I love what it has become! But Faina definitely holds a high place in the ranking too,” she quickly adds. “It has come so far from what it was when I first wrote it at 18,” she says rather proudly.
So how does her songwriting process work, and how do her songs take shape?
“Honestly, it changes with every song,” she admits. “Sometimes I’ll sit down to write, like with Siren Song, and produce the finished product in two or three sessions. Other times, it will take shape gradually, like with The Blackbird. More often than not though, I’ll be singing nonsense to myself while doing chores and a good line will come up.
I’ll make a voice note on my phone and take it from there! I’m very inspired by the music I listen to and often think, ‘Right, I want to write a song with that vibe, I love that,’ and then I’ll think of a topic that feels right with the sound. I don’t think I’ve ever written two songs in exactly the same way.”
How did she get started in music, and who were Ezmay Grace’s early influences?
“I was introduced to vocal and instrumental lessons at an early age,” she replies. “My parents noticed I had an affinity for singing and for learning songs by ear on the piano. I began piano lessons at six and quickly became hooked, and I started singing lessons at nine with a wonderful, inspiring teacher who introduced me to folk music. She was a big Joni Mitchell fan, so when I began learning with her, I started listening to Joni too.
She definitely shaped my singing and songwriting style from very early on,” Ezmay admits. “I also branched out into other female artists of a similar ilk, such as Eva Cassidy and Stevie Nicks, as well as some big male names in folk, like Dylan and John Denver.” The guitar came a little later though, she says, “at twelve, but I am mostly self-taught on the guitar!”
How does she think she’s evolved as a songwriter and a musician?
“I’m proud to say that I’ve gone from writing for who I thought I wanted to approve of my music, to writing for me and my own soul… I feel I’m already moving in a different direction for my next album, and that’s the beauty of being a musician. Your sound changes with the seasons of your life. Ever changing and ever evolving is how I want to remain.”
So, what does the future hold for Ezmay Grace?
“I know what I hope it holds, whether that will come to fruition, we’ll have to wait and see… But I hope the inspiration and drive I’ve found in releasing this album into the world will continue to push me to create and release, create and release. I hope people hear my music and love it, and then tell their friends, and then more people will hear it and love it too.
“I just want to be heard and for my music to mean something to people. There’s just too much in it for me to hold it all within myself, so I have to share it. In an ideal world,” Ezmay tells me with eyes wide, “I’d love to play my music live on every continent, and if I keep pushing, maybe I’ll manage to tick off a few! I’ve already had some decent airtime in Australia, so watch this space.”
Soulful and atmospheric, with deep acoustic roots and a strong, beating chronicler’s heart, Ezmay Grace is a singer, songwriter with a modern perception that absorbs everything around her: willing to pay her dues to the legacy that folk music has gifted her but determined to forge her own path towards a contemporary, independent alternative scene that will inspire the minds of the emerging generation, especially those emanating from the south west!
“It feels like we’re in an exciting time down here for live music,” she ends by telling me. “More and more venues are hosting gigs, and the quality of musicians just seems to keep improving. We already have a fantastic array of music festivals that provide opportunities for musicians to be launched into the public eye, and our local BBC Introducing, DJ, Daniel Pasco, is brilliant, showcasing all sorts of new music across all genres. It just feels like everyone down here is in tune, and the scene is buzzing so harmoniously!”
Lien Gwerin was released on the 12th August
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Find Meandering River on our New Indie Music and Lazy Indie Morning playlists.
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