May 2020
Creative Power
Artist Emma Hill hails from Alaska and is busy year round with the music she has played with bandmate Bryan Daste. The duo’s recent album titled Denali features upbeat writing and heart felt songs and can be described as folk based music. Hill took time to answer our questions in this interview.
Jupiter Index: What artists did you grow up listening to and do you feel that has made a difference in your own music?
Emma Hill: I didn't have much music around me besides my parent's tape collection. That was primarily 60s and 70s folk and folk rock. It definitely influenced me. I fell in love with lyrics and vocal harmonies. Simon and Garfunkel, Don Mclean, America, Eric Clapton were just a few from that time in my life.
JI: How would you describe your music?
EH: Well the general way we describe it is foik/Americana but that's always so hard, because we put bits of blues, jazz, country, indie and even experimental sounds into my music. Bryan has so much fun in the studio when I say it's okay to step outside the lines. His arrangements are so different depending on the mood and feel of the song.
JI: You have released 10 records so far – can you talk about your songwriting process for you? What rituals have you found which worked well?
EH: I write songs in bursts of inspiration a lot of the time. I follow up with a quick edit, but I usually try to get it all in one go. Sometimes the first half will come and then I won't finish it until much later. I have a song now that I wrote the first half and then finished it almost 3 years later. Whenever I get it to a point of seeming mostly worked out, I email a demo over to Bryan. He starts to play around with the arrangement and emails me back ideas. We've done this for 13 years now.
JI: Tell us about the track Denali and how it came about for you?
EH: I wrote that song after spending time out in Denali National Park. I was thinking about my travels and how lucky I was to get to see so much of the world with playing music, but I just really love coming home. Alaska is the most beautiful place on earth to me. I write songs in bursts of inspiration a lot of the time. I follow up with a quick edit, but I usually try to get it all in one go. Sometimes the first half will come and then I won't finish it until much later. I have a song now that I wrote the first half and then finished it almost 3 years later. Whenever I get it to a point of seeming mostly worked out, I email a demo over to Bryan. He starts to play around with the arrangement and emails me back ideas. We've done this for 13 years now.
JI: On your recent CD, Magnesium Dreams, what was the recording process like for you, and was there a point with one of the songs that was difficult?
EH: We let ourselves get really weird on this album and it was fun but also challenging. We had to play around with different sounds to really set the mood. The whole album is supposed to be a dreamscape, so we knew right away, we had to take folks there sonically. "Give up the Ghost" was difficult because it's actually not a song we do live but I knew it needed to be on the album and actually play this large role of closing it all out. So we were bringing that song to life in a different way as we had not gelled into it live like the other songs.
JI: You’ve been on many tours, but what has the recent one been like for you?
EH: Well we've covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time. We were at Folk Alliance and then played our way up the East Coast in the week after that. We hopped on a plane in New York and flew to Berlin. We played our first show within hours of landing. Now we've been zigzagging around Germany, Austria and Switzerland playing almost every night. We've kept crazy schedules before, but this might be a new level for us.
JI: Would you like to say anything more about your music or to you fans?
EH: We appreciate the continued support from our fans, friends and families. We hope to continue making music for a very long time and you guys make that possible.
by G.M. Burns
Emma Hill: I didn't have much music around me besides my parent's tape collection. That was primarily 60s and 70s folk and folk rock. It definitely influenced me. I fell in love with lyrics and vocal harmonies. Simon and Garfunkel, Don Mclean, America, Eric Clapton were just a few from that time in my life.
JI: How would you describe your music?
EH: Well the general way we describe it is foik/Americana but that's always so hard, because we put bits of blues, jazz, country, indie and even experimental sounds into my music. Bryan has so much fun in the studio when I say it's okay to step outside the lines. His arrangements are so different depending on the mood and feel of the song.
JI: You have released 10 records so far – can you talk about your songwriting process for you? What rituals have you found which worked well?
EH: I write songs in bursts of inspiration a lot of the time. I follow up with a quick edit, but I usually try to get it all in one go. Sometimes the first half will come and then I won't finish it until much later. I have a song now that I wrote the first half and then finished it almost 3 years later. Whenever I get it to a point of seeming mostly worked out, I email a demo over to Bryan. He starts to play around with the arrangement and emails me back ideas. We've done this for 13 years now.
JI: Tell us about the track Denali and how it came about for you?
EH: I wrote that song after spending time out in Denali National Park. I was thinking about my travels and how lucky I was to get to see so much of the world with playing music, but I just really love coming home. Alaska is the most beautiful place on earth to me. I write songs in bursts of inspiration a lot of the time. I follow up with a quick edit, but I usually try to get it all in one go. Sometimes the first half will come and then I won't finish it until much later. I have a song now that I wrote the first half and then finished it almost 3 years later. Whenever I get it to a point of seeming mostly worked out, I email a demo over to Bryan. He starts to play around with the arrangement and emails me back ideas. We've done this for 13 years now.
EH: We let ourselves get really weird on this album and it was fun but also challenging. We had to play around with different sounds to really set the mood. The whole album is supposed to be a dreamscape, so we knew right away, we had to take folks there sonically. "Give up the Ghost" was difficult because it's actually not a song we do live but I knew it needed to be on the album and actually play this large role of closing it all out. So we were bringing that song to life in a different way as we had not gelled into it live like the other songs.
JI: You’ve been on many tours, but what has the recent one been like for you?
EH: Well we've covered a lot of ground in a short amount of time. We were at Folk Alliance and then played our way up the East Coast in the week after that. We hopped on a plane in New York and flew to Berlin. We played our first show within hours of landing. Now we've been zigzagging around Germany, Austria and Switzerland playing almost every night. We've kept crazy schedules before, but this might be a new level for us.
JI: Would you like to say anything more about your music or to you fans?
EH: We appreciate the continued support from our fans, friends and families. We hope to continue making music for a very long time and you guys make that possible.
by G.M. Burns
