Music

Emily Wells wants fans to take their time listening to “Promise”

New York City-based artist Emily Wells might be widely known as a violinist, but her arsenal extends well beyond the fiddle. In addition to the myriad instruments she plays, she is also a producer and composer and is launching her own imprint Thesis & Instinct with the release of her new full-length album, Promise, out January 29th.

photos by Shervin Lainez

Emily’s thoughtful and intentional method of creation is obvious even on a first listen through the album. While certainly not pop, Emily’s deeply layered baroque sound has the earworm quality of the best bubblegum. There’s a push and pull to the music that evince a relatable struggle. We all have our unique ways of getting through our days, our meditations and compromises.

On Promise, Emily has provided her audience with a lens into her own inner dialogue. There’s an incredibly intimate vulnerability in that and a softness that comes with that she embraces fully, trusting her audience with herself.

We caught up with Emily while she’s back home in New York hard at work arranging her upcoming tour.

AfterEllen.com: As a multi-instrumentalist and vocalist, can you walk me through how a song comes together for you?

Emily Wells: It varies. You have the knowledge that you might one day have to perform this thing. For me, that’s been part of my subconscious for the last several years when writing songs because I am a solo performer who’s trying to convey ideas of production through my performance. I tried really hard on this last album not to let that affect the writing itself-so if I wanted to write a seven-minute song and veer off to be more compositional, I went for it on this album in a way that I wasn’t quite allowing myself to do in the past records.

Essentially, now, I have a lot of work to do in the next six weeks on a few songs figuring out how to convey them live. But with any work of art, I think the thing that often sparks it is something very simple. It could be a conversation, even in passing. It could be something you overhear. It could be something you read; a cheesy line in a movie-anything could really move you. The song develops around that thing that’s what makes the specific and the general come together.

AE: What does it mean to you to be releasing Promise on your own label, Thesis & Instinct?

EW: I hope that Thesis & Instinct can become more of a collective than just a mechanism to put out albums. I have a couple of solo artists in mind whose work I’d like to release. I don’t believe in other people owning the copyrights of the originator of the work. For me that was a big part of it, wanting to hold the copyright. My best friend had a great analogy for me because it felt kind of dirty being so conscious putting out an album and all the mechanisms that you have to go through, how you promote it and where you spend money and all of these things. She said it’s really more honest-it’s like killing the chicken instead of buying it at the supermarket. In short, putting out my own album is me killing the chicken. It feels great.

I think being a solo artist is weird. It’s really weird, and we really long for bandmates, but we don’t have them. I would love for this to be a way to be like almost having a band through helping other people release albums and thinking of great tours that feel like a curated night as opposed to just throwing on an opener.

AE: How should Promise be consumed, whatever your take on consumption might be?

EW: I definitely tried to consider the album as a whole. I thought a lot about it when I was putting the songs in order, I didn’t write it as a concept album or anything. I also didn’t write it in the order it’s presented, but I did eliminate many songs from the album in order to give it the roundness it has. It’s not a pop record, nor is it necessarily an easy record. I definitely tried to allow myself to be brave when I made it, to trust the audience to take their time with it. I guess that’s all I would ask is that you take your time when you listen to it in whatever way it works best for you to do that. If that’s one song at a time or the whole record. For me I got really into running like three or four years ago, so making this record I was running the whole time so for me that’s another good way to listen-running.

AE: Can you tell me a bit about the album cover?

EW: There’s a pair of Spanish artists called Cabello/Carceller who are incredible. They’ve done a lot of work on gender, on being queer and female and feminism. They’re just total badasses. I didn’t know their work until I saw what is now the album cover in a book and was just like I love this, I love this so much. Then I read about what the picture was about. It’s from an installation in 1998 depicting when they had gone to San Francisco. These two queer, cute, cuties from Spain being like, “Let’s go check out this mecca.” And they got there and they were really disappointed. They thought it was going to be this queer bliss thing and instead it was just San Francisco in the late ’90s. They ended up taking all these photographs of the work of this architect named Julia Morgan, who was one of the first female architects in California to ever be certified. She was often hired because she was incredibly talented, but also because she was cheap because she was a woman. She got to work on the Hearst Castle and all these other great projects in California.

On the cover of the album you’ll see there’s this architectural room and then there’s also a high dive that’s being projected. Cabello/Carceller took these photographs as kind of an homage to her, but also wanted to take photos of abandoned sites of pleasure. I love this notion of going to this gay mecca and realizing it had changed and why has it changed and the trauma that San Francisco had experienced in the ’80s. It was an incredible piece that they made. And then many years later I saw it in a book and wrote to them, just saying that I loved the picture, and I’d love to use it. They wrote me back a couple of weeks later and said they had connected with my music and gave it to me to use as I wished. There was this camaraderie with us immediately.

AE: From your perspective as a queer woman how have you seen the music industry shift in relation to women and, in particular, gay women?

EW: I think it’s opened up and there’s less assumption, in general, but also specific to being a queer woman. You’re not assumed to be a specific genre if you’re a solo female anymore. As far as the perception of the type of music you would choose to make as a woman has definitely broadened. Now the notion of being able to be a producer, of being able to be a composer, or just not being a woman with a guitar singing songs-which, there’s nothing wrong with, it’s just that that’s not all there is-is recognized. Much of the music industry and art itself is about perception and so if you’re perceived as this specific type of person then your music is either going to be potentially ignored or listened to without full ears. So I’m hoping, it seems like the ears are getting a little more full for queer women, and women in general.

AE: I know you’re headed out for tour in the next few months so what’s your favorite part of being on the road?

EW: It’s a good time to ask that question because I just came back from touring Europe and I had a really, really lovely experience on the road. I would say my favorite part requires the same thing in life where in order to enjoy your life you have to be present and it requires an effort that then becomes effortless, the effort of really seeing, looking, listening, engaging. If you’re on the road and you’re able to do those things then it gives so much to you, but if you’re on the road and you just feel beat or if you’re full of expectations, that’s tough. For me having the opportunity to experience people in all of these places there is such a richness in that and when I can be open in that way it blows me away. Being on the road in a lot of ways is kind of like having your hands tied as an artist in a way because each night you’re performing but then each day you’re thinking about what you want to do next, the future of the work you want to make and you can’t make it. You’re filtering all of these ideas, but since your hands are tied you can’t really make much. But I like that. It’s nice for the mind.

For me having the opportunity to experience people in all of these places there is such a richness in that and when I can be open in that way it blows me away. Being on the road in a lot of ways is kind of like having your hands tied as an artist in a way because each night you’re performing but then each day you’re thinking about what you want to do next, the future of the work you want to make and you can’t make it. You’re filtering all of these ideas, but since your hands are tied you can’t really make much. But I like that. It’s nice for the mind.

AE: How does the way that you connect and interact with these people you meet through your touring change when you’re on stage?

EW: If the performer and if the audience is game for it, it can be so sacred, the thing that’s passing between the two. It’s alive, and you can drop it in the middle of a show, or you can pick it up in the middle of a show, and the ones that are the most sort of spiritual are the ones where everyone is just holding this fragile thing. The good ones contain humor too. As artists we’re all exposing our emotional selves in this way that otherwise you know you don’t do in the middle of a restaurant, you hardly even do with your closest friends. That level of intimate exposure and everyone in the room is getting into the same mode of being, it’s just incredible.

AE: What’s pumping you up right now?

EW: I just got a new book from my best friend by this writer Mary Ruefle called Madness, Rack and Honey. It’s a book of essentially lectures written down. The first chapter is “On Beginnings” and from there it’s like “On Fear” or “On Writing”-like that. I just started reading it, but it’s the perfect thing to be reading right now. I’m also feeling pumped up on traveling. I’d been off the road for a while and I didn’t know how that was going to feel. But I came home kind of new and ready to create a new set and a new show for the tour coming up. Being out there was really doing it for me.

I’m also feeling pumped up on traveling. I’d been off the road for a while and I didn’t know how that was going to feel. But I came home kind of new and ready to create a new set and a new show for the tour coming up. Being out there was really doing it for me.

AE: What’s one thing we wouldn’t be able to find out about you in a deep internet lurk?

EW: OK, I’ll tell you. I think I gave an interview to AfterEllen years ago and said that I used to wear these socks that said I’m Too Sexy and now still to this day people will ask me about these socks. So I have to be really careful about what I say here. I’m not really into astrology or crystals or stones or anything like that, but, of course, being a lesbian, I have a lot people in my life that are.

AE: Of course.

EW: Of course, and I was recently given a small bag of stones by my girlfriend to protect me on the road and I chose one that is a malachite that I keep in my pocket that is the perfect size and feeling to rub your thumb on if you’re feeling nervous or weird or bored.

For more on Emily Wells, her music and tour dates, visit her website.

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