Texas-Based
Emily Herring Exults In Her Traditional Country, Honky-Tonk and Western Swing
Roots on Debut CD, Your Mistake, Due May 21 on Turquoise Earring
Records
Emily Will
Celebrate New CD with Album Release Shows on May 16 at the Cheatham Street
Warehouse in San Marcos; and May 24 at the War Horse in
Austin
SAN MARCOS, TX – With a distinctive Texas twang of a voice
that echoes across the plains of her home state, Emily Herring announces the
rival of a new sweetheart of the rodeo with her debut CD release, Your
Mistake, coming May 21 on Turquoise Earring Records. It’s a voice born
and bred in the honky-tonks, dancehalls and roadhouses of the Lone Star State,
bathed in a wash of sweet guitars, dobro and pedal steel, and pushed by a rhythm
section that’s just guaranteed to get feet on the dance floor.
Singer/guitarist Emily Herring will celebrate her new CD with
two area album release shows: May 16 at the Cheatham Street Warehouse in San
Marcos; and May 24 at The War Horse in Austin.
Your Mistake features an even-dozen original
songs that showcase Emily Herring’s wondrous way with words, backed by a
sympathetic band that lays in the grooves and just won’t stop until the CD does.
Recorded in her one-time base of Portland, Oregon, the new album really took
root once Emily returned to her native Texas and set up shop in San Marcos,
where she regularly plays as a solo act and with her touring band, Emily Herring
and Henpecked. She is equally a player and a lyricist, with influences of
traditional country, honky-tonk, western swing and southern
blues.
In turns dazzling and stark, Your Mistake is a
love letter and a warning, with her no-frills lyrics cutting like a knife in one
song, and soothing as a cool mountain stream in another, all the while always
ringing true. That’s evident from the get-go with the opening track, “Austin
(Ain’t Got No) City Limits,” a tip of the hat paean that name-checks a passel of
local landmarks in the “Live Music Capital of the World.” Stretching across
Texas and the new West, the songs on her album recall the last 50 years of
country music in a sound uniquely hers.
“I feel like Your
Mistake as an album is mostly about my realizing that one of the most
important things about who I am is defining myself as a Texan,” Herring says. “I
lived in Oregon for nine years, and in the last few years I really missed my
home. Songs like ‘Turquoise Earrings,’ ‘Terlingua’ and particularly ‘One Sip of
Water’ are deeply about that. But in songs like ‘Your Mistake,’ Wanna Holler’-
and ironically ‘One Sip of Water’ - I outline why living in Texas is also hard
for me. It's very bittersweet, but when I lay it all out, I'd rather relate to
people through music and culture than through politics and mindset. I know that
when I walk into a Texas honky-tonk full of folks I've never met I get a lot of
looks, but if I've got a guitar case in my hand, by the end of the night I'll
make a room full of friends and fans. People here really care about their music,
and they want to see a performer who cares about it just as much as they do, and
that is basically what I live for.”
Born and raised in Texas, Emily
has played at festivals, clubs and showcases all around the country. During her
time in Portland, she played throughout the northwest before moving back to
Texas in 2010 to be closer to the heart of the country music she loves so
much.
“Herring twangs, plucks and
warbles like country singers of yore, gun-slingin’ her guitar with a
clear-headed progressive attitude and the ‘don’t mess with me’ swagger of a true
outlaw,” wrote The Portland Mercury in a review of one of her
local shows. “Emily Herring weaves songs out of a bluesy country fabric that is
so much a part of Central Texas. In a sea of sound-alike singer/songwriters,
Herring demands to be heard,” said Ink 19 Magazine. And City
Beat Cincinnati summed up its review by stating: “Herring is an original
voice doing extraordinary things in the simplest term…A big plate of Texas
Country with a side of Delta Blues.”
To stream “Austin
(Ain’t Got No) City Limits),” click on this link: Emily Herring Song
