Hello Emma Swift

Hey Emma, how the devil are you?

Hi Max, I am doing well, thanks for asking.

So, where are you right now? And what are you up to today?

I am in London at the moment, madly trying to get my life in order before I head to Australia for a tour in June. Usually, I’m based in Nashville, but the pandemic has thrown everything into a bit of a spin. It’s all a bit confusing! I’m Australian, I usually live in America, my partner is English. We’ve just spent lockdown in the UK and we’ll be based here more or less until the end of the year.

I normally do a mini intro piece in interviews, but if you were introducing yourself in a paragraph what would you say?

I’m a singer-songwriter inspired by Sandy Denny, Marianne Faithfull, Joni Mitchell and a plethora of dead poets. My new album Blonde on the Tracks is all Bob Dylan songs, which I guess suggests a certain amount of OCD. I’m easily obsessed, easily distracted, easily amused, easily confused and at my happiest near a beach or a record shop. I’m quite fiery, I love a pint and I’m a little bit of a hoarder of beautiful, tactile things: LPs, cassettes, vintage books, magazines.

I interviewed someone last week who covered a Bob Dylan song and I told them they were brave, you’ve done an entire album of Dylan covers! What on earth possessed you to do that?

The record came about because I had a bad case of depression and I needed a project to inspire me to get out of bed. I’d reached a point where, for one reason or another, my own feelings were getting harder and harder to excavate. Some people can write their way out of sadness, but I’m useless if I’m in a depressed state of mind, my own words and melodies evade me. And so I turned to Mr Dylan. 

How easy/difficult is Dylan to cover? Does it depend on the song?

I’m not sure I know the answer to this, except to say if I thought covering Dylan was easy I probably wouldn’t have done it.

Blonde On The Tracks is a very good name for the album. Did you have any alternatives?

No, the album was always going to be called Blonde on the Tracks.

There are so many Dylan songs to choose from, what was your process for choosing?

My song choices were very much driven by instinct and love for the material, over and above any other concerns. Whether I sing them well is not for me to decide, but I certainly enjoyed singing them and I loved the challenge of making the record. If I made the album today, I’d probably choose entirely different material, as my go-to Dylan songs shift over time. That said, ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ is my forever favourite Bob Dylan song. It’s the most beautiful love letter ever committed to tape. I adore it. I’m a romantic, how could I not?

They’re obviously all great songs but personally I love ‘I Contain Multitudes’ and ‘Queen Jane Approximately’ the most. Why those songs?

I fell in love with both these songs on first listen, but for different reasons. ‘Multitudes’ feels very spiritual to me, almost a hymn. I’ve searched for the meaning of life on the pages of poetry books my entire existence, and to me this song is the best description of how that feels, the quest for self-knowledge through the love of art, from Whitman to Poe to Piaf to the Stones.

For ‘Queen Jane’, the opening verse resonated very much with where I was at when I went to record it.

What is it about Dylan that makes him so enduring as an artist?

He shows up.

How surprised were you at the critical reaction to the album? You got very glowing reviews.

I don’t think anyone goes into making a record thinking about how it will be received. At least, I didn’t. I’m very heartened that people like it though.

How has the last year been for you personally?

It’s been a bit of a reckoning: moments of joy and delight, as well as moments of deep sorrow and loneliness. Isolation has magnified all my best and worst traits, and that’s been confronting. I’m grateful for my health, my cats, Line of Duty, therapy, Bob Dylan songs.

You’re from Australia originally, how did you end up in Nashville?

I took a plane. 

And what’s Nashville really like as a town?

My relationship to it feels a bit like an open marriage: it’s a city I love being in, but I get off on leaving it as well.

What can we expect from you for the rest of 2021?

I don’t really know. I’m writing songs and recording demos at the moment.

If you could recommend one artist to hear this week, who would it be?

Tristen writes beautiful, smart, psychedelic pop. Check her out.

Finally, how do you take your coffee?

Goth: Black coffee, no sugar.

To find out more about Emma you can visit her website, or check out what she’s up to on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Her album, Blonde On The Tracks, is out now and available to buy on Bandcamp, or stream/buy on Qobuz, or stream on Tidal, Spotify, or Apple Music.