With her forthcoming album Traveling Mercies, Emily Scott Robinson offers a complex, thoughtful portrait of a real itinerant artist, one who carries the lessons of her past as she searches for a hopeful future. She and her husband live full time in a motorhome and spend long stretches on the road, turning chance encounters with strangers into stirring folk meditations on the human condition.
Though this is Robinson's first proper studio release (having already released a full-length album, Magnolia Queen, and a live EP), it's by no means her first introduction to the songwriting community.
In 2015, she won American Songwriter's May/June lyric contest for Magnolia Queen cut "Marriage Ain't the End of Being Lonely." She followed that award with two more, notching a Kerrville New Folk Winner trophy in 2016 and a Wildflower Performing Songwriter Contest win in 2017. In an early nod to Traveling Mercies, AmericanaFest announced Robinson as an Official Showcasing Artist for the 2018 lineup in Nashville this September.
With Traveling Mercies, Robinson has announced herself as one of our important emerging voices in Americana and roots music. Beyond that, she's given us a beautiful album, a balm for trying times which shows, through intricately crafted melodies and hard-earned wisdom, that we all have the same struggles at our core, and there's no better time than now to take that to heart.
We asked Emily some questions:
Favorite ice cream? Mint Chocolate Chip
First job? Summer Camp Counselor -- I started singing and playing around campfires and learning Indigo Girls and Cat Stevens songs!
Currently reading? "Eudora Welty: A Biography" and Isabel Allende's "In the Midst of Winter"
What do you love most about Telluride? The creative community! Telluride Theater, Telluride Arts, Telluride Music Company (constantly drooling over guitars there) and my musician friends, the Ah Haa, Burlesque, the community of poets that Art Goodtimes and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer nourish, Wilkinson Public Library, and the big-hearted and visionary people who live here!
Spirit animal? Salmon.
Recent dream? I've been working on my new album release, so I keep having anxiety dreams about forgetting a deadline!
Who/what is your musical inspiration? My very first musical inspiration was Joni Mitchell. I was given her album "Blue" at age 16 and I felt like I'd discovered a new language.
Favorite part about RV life? Exploring the beautiful and wild places of America
Favorite RV memory so far? Parking it on Sunshine Mesa and inviting our Telluride friends over for a dinner party and to watch the sunset over the Wilsons!
What’s next? The first single "Better With Time" from my new album drops on August 3rd! It's an homage to falling in love with my husband in Telluride. On August 17th, I'm a finalist in the Songwriter Showcase competition at Folks Fest put on by Planet Bluegrass! In September, I'm headed to Nashville to showcase my new album Traveling Mercies at AmericanaFest!