Event Info
Emily Triggs
Montreal born, Calgary-based Americana singer/songwriter
7:00pm - 10:00pm
By Donation
Event Description
Emily Triggs
We’re pleased to welcome Emily Triggs back to the Hotel Wolfe Island!
There are a few specific reasons why Emily Triggs titled her new album The Great Escape, the main one being that the 13-song collection represents a break from old ways of thinking that the Montreal born, Calgary-based Americana singer/songwriter says have held her back both artistically and personally. With her new material, Triggs set out to challenge herself by ignoring any genre restrictions, and the result is her most honest and empowering album to date.
The Great Escape was produced by longtime Neko Case collaborator Paul Rigby, who also played a multitude of instruments on the album. Also contributing to the sessions in Vancouver were engineer/multi-instrumentalist Dave Carswell (Destroyer, The Evaporators), bassist Darren Paris (Frazey Ford), drummer Geoff Hicks (Colin James) and engineer Erik Nielsen (City and Colour). By coincidence, one of the studios where they recorded, Afterlife, was near where Triggs’ father Stanley recorded traditional folk songs on a houseboat in the early 1960s, which have since been released as a 3-disc set entitled The False Creek Tapes.
“Paul Rigby and I met when he played on my last album, Middletown, which I recorded in Calgary with Lorrie Matheson,” Emily says. “We connected then in the studio and there was a musical feel we stumbled upon as we were playing together that I wanted to follow. Paul was my first choice of producer to follow this idea for The Great Escape, and we both agreed on what kind of direction to take, which turned out to be the rock and roll album I’d always wanted to make. Rigby is super creative and able to look further ahead with a song than I am able to. We each brought our individual strengths to this project.”
Those strengths are evident from the first notes of the opening track “London 1969,” inspired by a friend’s story of watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on television as a small child. The song sets a nostalgic tone in some respects, along with Triggs’ explorations of American culture, as on “Summer In Nevada,” a power pop gem dedicated to the atomic soldiers who experienced nuclear weapons testing around Las Vegas in the 1950s and ‘60s. Meanwhile, the unyielding “Rough In The Ring” dishes out metaphors to offer hope to anyone trying to fight back against life’s struggles.
There are plenty of purely poetic moments on The Great Escape as well, from the gorgeous “Beautiful August” and “Ask The Birds” to the Irish-tinged “My Son” and closing track “Water Tower.” She explains, “Writing is a compulsion for me so I always have songs I am working on, some finished and ready to record and some still in pieces. I am also really into other art forms, but I’m mostly inspired by art made by people I know. The greats are great but I have a fetish for artists who create when it is not easy for them.”
Although The Great Escape is only Emily’s third solo release since 2014, she played in various bands up to 2019 and continues to perform as a duo with Lorrie Matheson called The Rosellas. Going out on her own eventually became the most practical move in terms of touring, but it also helped Emily reconnect with the folk music passed down from her parents, and immerse herself in the sounds of Appalachia in West Virginia. That inherited wanderlust has taken her from her from Montreal to nearly every region of Canada, all of which she continues to visit as often as possible through her busy touring schedule. Emily’s aforementioned album Middletown was nominated for a Folk Music Canada Award and a Western Canadian Music Award in 2021, setting the stage for The Great Escape to expand her audience even further. Describing Emily’s sound in No Depression, Gillian Turnbull wrote, “Her originality continues through song themes that challenge the dominant singer-songwriter narratives so often employed by her colleagues.” And in the words of the Calgary Herald’s Eric Volmers, “While hardly a traditional folk performer, Triggs does have a knack for timeless melodies and crafting seemingly simple lines that nevertheless possess a good deal of gravity.”
It adds up to The Great Escape offering a clear picture of an artist coming into her own with songs that encompass the full range of emotions, from tenacious to transcendent. As Emily says, “My last album was about resilience, but sometimes you don’t need to be resilient, you need to change. You don’t have to leave a place, it can be metaphoric; you just have to leave a past version of yourself behind.”
In-Person Event
Wed. July 3rd 2024 + Add to Calendar
Hotel Wolfe Island
