Emilia Quinn is a UK Americana singer songwriter who is best known for her powerful vocals and expert lyricism. With a recent announcement of a headline slot at Buckle and Boots festival, Quinn is joining the likes of Kezia Gill and Jade Helliwell as women who are unapologetically taking up space in the UK country scene.
Quinn joined Tea with G over a video call to talk about her recent success, the importance of authenticity and her decision to release live singles this year.
In 2019, at an opening slot early in the day on the small Paddock Stage, Emilia Quinn made her debut at Buckle and Boots festival in Stockport, Manchester. Now, five years later, she has the Friday night headline slot on the main stage and is in the presence of international artists like Canaan Cox and Ian Flanigan.
“It makes me laugh when I think back to that first Buckle and Boots,” she says as she reminisces on the early years of her career, “I really was just joining the country scene at that point…I didn’t have any music out…someone took a chance on me, and I’ll be forever grateful for that.”
“I had no merch, nothing with me, just these little fliers for my launch the next month. I still had people coming and asking me to sign t-shirts and people still came to the meet and greet…it was kind of like, this is where you belong…I found my people.”
Quinn talks about performing on the same night as US country singer Canaan Cox and how she saw sponsored posts from him a while back, wishing there was a scene like that in the UK. Playing at Buckle and Boots gave her an insight into the community and helped her to have faith that she was on the right path.
As an artist that has performed on those ‘less popular’ slots, Quinn is keen to make the most of her time at the festival and go and see as many acts as she can, holding space for those that are fighting their way through the noise. “It’s important to network,” she says about discovering artists, “even if you’re getting bigger slots, and it’s something I want to hold throughout my career. No matter how far I get, I always want to make sure that I stay grounded and remember, everybody else is there to do the same thing.” We talk about the supportive community that is the UK country scene and how, regardless of experience or status, artists are talking to each other and sharing advice.
Growing up with music from The Eagles and Dolly Parton to Meatloaf and Bon Jovi, Quinn has always been drawn to the story telling nature of the genre. “I’m very much about the lyrics and words and being clever with metaphors,” Quinn says, “I absolutely adore writing like that.”
This October, Quinn will go out on tour off the back of her album that was released November 2023, ‘Wanderlust and Breaking Rules’. “I’m kind of letting the album breathe a little bit,” she says about what will be the body of this tour, “I’m going out with my guitarist as a duo – which I actually don’t think I’ve ever done before. We’re going to arrange all of the songs in special arrangements for this kind of duo set up.”
With the time, energy and emotion that goes into making an album, Quinn wants to let her latest work have space and let people immerse in it. But, battling against staying relevant and providing engaging material for fans, Quinn has chosen to put together a string of live tracks from the tour last year and release them as singles throughout this year. “We’re able to relive the tour through it,” she says about the fun they’ve had putting these singles together, “and I just put out a little official tour video to go along with that.” Fans get to see a little bit of behind the scenes and listen to the live music between these tours.
On playing 45 Vinyl Café, York:
It's definitely the UK’s answer to The Bluebird Café, 100%. It's intimate, it's acoustic, it's very… it is just that environment where people listen, and they're super attentive, and when I played there, there were so many moments you could hear a pin drop. It's just so exhilarating to play and know that the audience is hanging on to your words and really absorbing the song. It's not just the music and the show it's the song as well. And they’re really championing that as well by having exclusively original music there, and I think it is definitely becoming a destination for good quality singer songwriters performing their original music in a really beautiful space. And I think with it being a record store as well throughout the day, you have all the records along the walls, and they've got pictures everywhere of artists. It's just got great vibes and they are lovely, lovely people as well. And I think they're really onto something and they've got a really wonderful idea that that they're running with and they're running it very, very well.
On what makes her more nervous – playing to big crowds or intimate audiences:
It’s changing at the moment. I'm starting to find bigger audiences easier because you can't make eye contact with everybody. So, you can kind of look into the distance and it's okay and you can look to the back of the room. And it's a lot easier to do that and with like the band as well - obviously, I can move around interact with the band too, and feel like you've got a bit of backup there. When I played The 45, and when I play some of these really intimate acoustic shows, like I did one at The Underground, they've got an upstairs bar – The Platform Bar – and they do totally unplugged tiny capacity gigs in there. They have a lot of US artists that go through there as well. It's about 15 people and you're pretty much knee to knee with the front like trying to hide behind a microphone. I must have spent about 90% of that gig with my eyes closed because I was so scared, I couldn't make eye contact with every single person in the room 100 times over. And it was terrifying. But it was another one of those shows where it was all about the song and it was pindrop so many moments and they're very intimidating. But they're also so, so rewarding because you know you're getting that engagement from the audience. You know, that really, they're really taking it in and as a songwriter, you know, as well as a performer. That's like, the ultimate goal is to help someone be so attentive and then really hand off the lyrics. So yeah, they're great. They're just very nerve wracking.
Favourite song to play:
I think - at the moment - I think it's a newish song called ‘Mama’. Which I debuted with a band at C2C (Country 2 Country Festival). And it went down really, really well. I had my mum in the front rows on Mother's Day and I was really struggling to hold it. I couldn't look at her. She was like ‘don't look at me, I'm gonna lose it’. But it's got a drop in it that is just really almost euphoric. And it's really exhilarating when we play and everytime we play it in rehearsal, I just end up like shouting, so that's a lot of fun to play, especially with the band because it sounds huge.
Most difficult song to write:
I think the most difficult song to write - if we're going ones that I've released - we're probably looking at something from the Medicate album, because that was very much about mental health and bad mental health and struggling with depression and anxiety. So it would probably be like something like ‘Pretty Pink Pills’ which, granted, I don't play very much anymore. But that was that was quite a heavy song to write. I think even on the record, I was crying when I recorded it because it was so difficult to hold it together and I really felt it at the time. And for my latest album, there's a song called ‘Rosary Beads’. I wrote that the day that we went to my grandfather's apartment in the care home residence complex place that he was staying just after he passed away. And it was one of those songs that clearly had to happen because it just flowed, and it took me like 10 minutes to write it and it just came out the guitar. I usually start with a bit of a line but it all came at once and just straight out, so it was really therapeutic. I think I needed to but it was like everything had been frozen in time, and I was very much looking around and taking in my surroundings and it was a really…it was a tough one to process, but I think writing a song really helped me process it and continuing to play it live kind of keeps that alive, which I think is quite nice.
Quinn is headlining Buckle and Boots festival on Friday 24th May and playing in a writer’s round on the Sunday. Keep up to date with her other festivals and gigs this year, including a one off special for the Black Deer Live series on 4th July. Stay up to date with Emilia Quinn through her website here.
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