Nashville-based songwriter Emily Hines announces her debut album These Days, out August 1 via Keeled Scales. Today she shares the lead single "My Own Way."
"This is the last song I wrote for the record. I wrote it on my porch in Nashville. I felt stuck in place and needed to sing myself out of it," Hines says. "This recording ended up playing an important role in shaping the sound of the album. At first, we weren’t planning to track any live drums on the record. We enjoyed playing with drum machines, and the cassette presented some challenges to recording live drums. But we got in an experimental mood one day and asked our friend John-Ruben Medina to play on it for us. We were so happy with how it sounded that it inspired us to record live drums on some of the other songs as well."
"My Own Way" follows "Cowgirl Suit," released in February.
A self-described chronically-sincere farm girl, Hines grew up on a farm in rural Ohio before moving to Nashville where she played in other songwriters’ projects before recording her own songs on a 4-track cassette recorder.
Hines worked with producer Henry Park. Together they drew inspiration from acts like Duster, Laura Marling, and Karen Dalton to record simply and add layers one at a time.
Hines will embark on a Midwest tour next month with an album release show in Nashville in August.