On Appalachiaher new album released on Oh Boy Records, the country-folk singer-songwriter goes through five turbulent years — divorce, bereavement, engagement, becoming a stepmother — while signing a love letter to the mountains of western North Carolina, ravaged by Hurricane Helene in 2024.
If you ask Emily Scott Robinson to summarize her new album in one sentence, she will offer: “Very sad, and yet very bright. »
During this time, Robinson divorced, lost friends and loved ones, got engaged, became a stepmother, and published Appalachiahis latest LP, on Oh Boy Records.
Both a cathartic purge of the heart and soul, and a love letter to western North Carolina after the devastating passage of Hurricane Helene in 2024, the record flows like the ancestral French Broad River: an ample rhythm, made of tones and depths.
Captured by producer Josh Kaufman and recording engineer D. James Goodwin at Dreamland Recording Studios in New York's Catskill Mountains, Appalachia draws its power from a classic of the American genre: timeless, vaporous melodies and sound textures anchored in the eternal.
Raised in Greensboro, North Carolina, Robinson got her deep love of storytelling and the land from her mother, a local journalist. Her introduction to singing dates back to adolescence, around the campfires of a summer camp in Michigan where she covered folk songs. When she returned, she borrowed her mother's guitar and began practicing. She is shod.
A student at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, Robinson regularly crosses the neighboring state border to immerse herself in the musical, artistic and cultural traditions of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She found herself hanging out in many bluegrass and folk circles throughout the Tar Heel State.
With her diploma in hand, Robinson moved to Colorado and became a social worker. At age 26, a friend encouraged her to attend a songwriting retreat. This is where she had the revelation: she is an artist, and a performer. In 2016 his first album was released, Magnolia Queenfollowed by Traveling Mercies (2019) and American Siren (2021), both included in WECB's year-end rankings of the best country and Americana albums.
Robinson has deep ties to the Asheville, North Carolina area; she lived and worked there. She also participated for years in the area's very vibrant music scene, and attended contra dances at Warren Wilson College, in the town of Swannanoa, devastated by the floods.
With Helene, her friends experienced an unimaginable tragedy. In many ways, on AppalachiaRobinson's literary muse focuses on the humanitarian impulses that emerged after the disaster.
Perhaps the most poignant and moving piece ofAppalachia is the final title, “The Fairest View”. The track is dedicated to Robinson's close friend, David Hamilton, who died the week she entered the studio. It features a duet with their mutual friend, singer-songwriter Lizzy Ross.
When Robinson learned of Hamilton's death, she was in concert in Asheville, just outside Fairview, Hamilton's hometown. On the road, she thinks about everything special about her friend. At the time, Hamilton was surveying native Carolina apple varieties and establishing a small orchard on the family farm. Memories of their friendship flash through her head, and this feeling, she says, that “this person seems to belong to another era, and to float in this life in a magnificent way. »
