Emily Maguire (singer)


Emily Lucy Maguire is an independent English singer songwriter. She has released five albums to date which are distributed through Universal by Active Media. All the songs apart from one cover version are written and composed by Maguire. She has also released two books, containing a mix of poetry, prose, song lyrics and diary entries. Maguire runs her own record label Shaktu Records with her husband 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, learning 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 age 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.
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.
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, songwriting perfectly cemented her love of words and music. She wrote hundreds of songs in her bedroom and purchased a ProTools Studio to start recording them at home on a computer. 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. 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 ecosystem, with wildlife, including 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.
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 – Shaktu Records, named after Shack Number 2 at their home in Australia. 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 three-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' Good Morning Sunday show 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 to end the tour. This story led to several articles appearing in the press, including one in The Guardian on 21 November 2007, titled "My Wildlife", and one in The Sydney Morning Herald, 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 albums are dedicated to her teacher Lama Jampa Thaye
Maguire released her first book titled Start Over Again on 1 October 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". It includes her poetry, prose, song lyrics and personal diary entries that offer an insight into the creativity of a manic depressive mind. Emily has endured a tough battle with chronic depression and bi-polar disorder throughout her life, and wrote openly in her book about the mental illness.
On 15 July 2013 she released her fourth studio album, Bird Inside a Cage.
After a period of 18 months where she was unable to play her instruments due to chronic tendonitis, Emily started touring again in late 2016, and in February 2017 released her fifth studio album, ''A Bit of Blue'. This album was once again part-financed through a fan-funding campaign, and was launched at a special gig at St Pancras Old Church, London on 24 February 2017.

Musical career

''Stranger Place''

This is 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. 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 Times 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".

''A Bit of Blue''

Maguire's fifth studio album was produced by Nigel Butler and released in February 2017. The album launch took place at a gig in St Pancras Old Church in London on Friday 24 February 2017. Maguire then embarked on a 12 date UK tour, with additional charity gigs and sessions in mental health hospitals.

Singles

Festivals