Emily Maguire

Listing influences from Bob Marley to Bach, South London-born Emily started out as a classically trained cellist and that shines through in her poised, hear-a pin-drop performances of her thought provoking acoustic guitar songs - often soft, subtle and tear making but sometimes punchy and powerful with razor sharp staccato lyrics as she focuses on her view of the “pre-paid and packaged” world, asking “they buy a pager, fax and mobile phone –don’t they ever want to be alone?”

Emily’s songwriting was born from adversity in her 20s when she was diagnosed with Fybromyalgia Pain Syndrome, a disease which attacks the nervous system and which kept her hospitalised and housebound for years. She says: “ It may sound odd but I don’t think the illness was necessarily a negative thing because it gave me the space to discover songwriting and the time to learn guitar from Bob Marley songbooks!”

When she was on the road to recovery she was invited out to Queensland for a holiday by a friend she had met in London and has now been there four years, having recently married that friend – her skilled bass player Christian Dunham.

They have a recording studio at their shack – a state-of-the-art antithesis to the shack itself with its walls made of rendered potato sacks and a bathroom floor of river pebbles not to mention mice in the piano, enormous spiders, bats and the odd snake that wanders in to send shivers down her spine!

But from there they have produced two fine albums - her debut album Stranger Place and the latest Keep Walking- the upbeat title track of which has been playlisted by ABC across Australia.

In the unpredictable nature of the music business, Emily, after completing a steady three month tour in her native UK, has landed the sort of offer you don’t turn down – an out of the blue support slot on the UK and Ireland tour by legendary US singer songwriter Don McLean of American Pie and Vincent fame – his biggest overseas tour since 1991.

Her signature song on the debut album, written in a North London hospital, is a simple but beautiful and affecting song called Falling on my Feet. With some of the UK’s top venues now beckoning and a tour with a music industry legend – it seems she may have done just that!

Just days ago she was playing a mixed bag of pubs and clubs from Sheffield to Hayling Island with audiences ranging from a handful of people in a beach bar to 50 people at a folk club – now she’s swapping that for huge audiences in key cities like Cardiff, Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and Belfast with a London finale of a 5,000 strong Royal Albert Hall crowd.

Emily says: “I was supposed to be flying back home to Australia this week after playing 32 UK gigs in three months on the road, but now I've cancelled my plane ticket and am heading off to Ireland to play the first of 16 October dates supporting Don McLean. I might miss the shack and the sunshine but I don’t mind staying for that!”.

Jane Brace