Travelling troubadour comes home
Katherine Harding

After interviewing Emm Gryner all I could think was, "What have I been doing with my time?" Gryner has been extremely busy in her short 23-year life.

She formed her own indie record label (Dead Daisy Records) at the age of 21, has played three Lilith Fair shows, and in 1997 she signed on with US-based Mercury Records label. Last year she released her debut full-length album - Public.

Despite Gryner’s accomplishments you still might not have heard of her but you definitely have heard her single Summerlong that was released last summer.

Don’t dismiss Gryner as a one-hit wonder though. This up and coming Canadian singer/songwriter/producer is undeniably talented.

Music has been in this Forest, Ontario native’s (pop. 2800) blood from a young age. She wrote her first song at the tender age of ten and soon after formed a band with her two older brothers.

In high school Gryner began recording her own songs at home on a four-track when she wasn’t playing in cover bands.

"Growing up I listened to pop 80’s stuff and you know what that was like," she joked. "Then I went through a scary hard rock phase and now I’m here."

"At twenty, I moved to Toronto and a year later formed my own indie label called Dead Daisy Records," she said. "To survive, I took day jobs in offices so that at night and on the weekends, I could play in clubs and promote my records."

For two years, Gryner studied recording and production. She also produced the records on her label and worked closely with producer Warne Livesey (Midnight Oil, Julian Cope) on Public.

To record Public, Gryner persuaded Mercury to send her to London, England.

While in London she had considerable talents like cellist Caroline Lavelle (Peter Gabriel, Massive Attack, Radiohead) and strings from the London Session Orchestra contribute to the album.

"London definitely provided me with a lot more creative juice than I would have gotten if I had have stayed at home… it is an incredible city," she said. "There is also something about getting away from home."

The finished product was well worth the jaunt over ‘the pond.’ Gryner, who wrote the majority of the songs between the ages of 18-22, describes the album as, "very personal."

"Public features songs I wrote to heal myself… Some songs are born as a result of my strangling disability to say exactly what I feel in conversation," she explains. "I liken some of the songs to diary entries."

Gryner concedes that several of the songs candidly centre around a "momumental break-up" she went through.

What’s next for this Canadian ingenue? She has already begun writing material for her next album. When Gryner opens for Big Wreck February 6 at the Turret, she plans to test out some of her new songs.

As far as a release date: "I don’t want to rush anything but it will be out soon… probably sometime in the next millennium," she quipped.