A passionate love for music can give birth to the most radiant of artists, but it's an obsession with music's mystifying potential to inspire which keeps only a few artists thriving and intensifying. Emm Gryner is one of those artists. Gryner makes no effort to hide her animated duality. Her songs are as unique as the way she makes her records. One moment she might deliver the dark and maddened diary entries of a restless twenty-something, and the next she might sing an optimistic triumph of summer melody.
Fearless and uncompromising, Emm Gryner's songs speak to the lonely, the devilish and the daydreamers.
In 1983, just outside Forest, Ontario (pop. 2800) a quiet revolution was being forged. Raised on a strict diet of classical piano lessons and creative writing, eight year-old Gryner made a formidable discovery that year - pop music. Radio stations beamed across the St. Clair River from Detroit and changed the landscape of quiet rural life and two years later, Gryner wrote her first song.
Gryner spent her teenage years playing bass in garage bands, writing songs and learning to use a four-track. By 16, she had recorded her first demos, and only a few years later, she won the top prize in Standard Broadcasting Radio's National Songwriting Competition. With this money, she recorded her first album "The Original Leap Year" released on her own label, Dead Daisy Records.
"The Original Leap Year" caught the attention of Violent Femmes producer Warren Bruleigh, who passed it on to Mercury Records, and in 1997 the label offered Gryner a worldwide record deal. Inspired by Brit-pop bands The Stone Roses and The Verve, Gryner recorded "Public", a lush re-interpretation of "The Original Leap Year," produced by Warne Livesey (The The, Midnight Oil, Talk Talk) and recorded in London. Gryner embarked on tours with The Cardigans, Alanis Morissette, Sarah McLachlan and Bernard Butler, with whom she opened the first show at New York's City Bowery Ballroom in 1998.
When Universal bought Mercury's parent company, Polygram, Gryner and hundreds of other artists lost their staff and record deals. However, Gryner turned corporate takeover into creative opportunity and rejuvenated her own Dead Daisy Records. Inspired by her fans who hoped she might release an album that echoed the intensity of her live solo performances, Gryner produced and recorded an album on her eight-track recorder, called "Science Fair". eye Magazine called "Science Fair" "the best album of her career."
Meanwhile, a Toronto fan launched emmgryner.com, introducing the internet to Gryner, allowing her to interact with her fans on a highly personal level. Gryner began an on-line diary, which continues to this day, offering an uncensored daily look into her career, with stories from the road, the studio and day-to-day life in music and beyond.
In 1999, Gryner launched a series of living room shows in the homes of her fans, many of whom were too young to frequent bars to see live music. The tour took Gryner across North America and as far as Ireland, offering an acutely personal concert experience that made many music lovers Emm Gryner fans for life.
In 2000, Gryner released "Girl Versions", an album of songs by Nick Cave, The Clash, Stone Temple Pilots, Blur and others. The album featured unexpected and sparse ballad arrangements of beloved anthems such as Fugazi's "Waiting Room" and Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me." "Girl Versions" surprised listeners with its often fervid "female interpretation" of male lyrics and was a subtle, tongue-in-cheek response to the growing notion of "women in music" as a genre, a phenomenon that seemed to infuse the record industry following the history-making all-female festival, "Lilith Fair". "Girl Versions" was nominated for Best Pop Album of the Year at the Juno Awards.
Emm yearned to record a summery collection of pop songs. This gave birth to 2002's "Asianblue." Inspired by a hybrid of lo-fi indie rock and mainstream pop, Emm worked with producer Wally Gagel (Folk Implosion, Eels, Superchunk). "Asianblue" yielded two singles, which garnered widespread national radio play in Canada, a considerable feat when mainstream radio catered solely to major label releases. The video for "Beautiful Things" went Top 10 at MuchMoreMusic, and the album was nominated for Best Pop Album of the Year at the Juno Awards.
You might call Emm Gryner the poster girl for the do-it-yourself rebellion. Her unjaded, answer-to-no-one spirit has inspired legions of fans and musicians to create music on their own terms.
Discover for yourself the music of Emm Gryner.
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