Events

Since releasing her latest album The Great Escape this past spring, Canadian singer/songwriter Emily Triggs has seen it hit the #1 spot on the prestigious CKUA Top 30, as well as crack the Alt.Country Specialty Chart. The album has also earned glowing features in the Calgary Herald, and at Wildfire Music and Roots Music Canada.

Emily recently kicked off her Canadian tour in support of The Great Escape, and this July will find her performing in Toronto, Montreal, Kingston (Wolfe Island) and Peterborough, along with special appearances in her birthplace, Hemmingford QC.

The Great Escape is an expansive 13-song collection that displays Emily’s wide-ranging talent in a whole new way, with songs that reflect her fascination with different aspects of North American culture in relation to her personal experiences, such as the album’s first single “Summer In Nevada.”

The Great Escape was produced by longtime Neko Case collaborator Paul Rigby, who also played a multitude of instruments on the album. Other contributors to the sessions in Vancouver were engineer/multi-instrumentalist Dave Carswell (Destroyer, The Evaporators), bassist Darren Paris (Frazey Ford), drummer Geoff Hicks (Colin James) and engineer Erik Nielsen (City and Colour).

Emily says, “My last album Middletown was about resilience, but sometimes you don’t need to be resilient, you need to change. You don’t have to leave a place, it can be metaphoric; you just have to leave a past version of yourself behind.”

That strength is evident from the first notes of the opening track “London 1969,” inspired by a friend’s story of watching the Apollo 11 moon landing on television as a small child. The song sets a nostalgic tone similar to “Summer In Nevada,” while songs like the unyielding “Rough In The Ring” dish out hopeful metaphors to anyone trying to fight back against life’s struggles. There are plenty of purely poetic moments on The Great Escape as well, from the gorgeous “Beautiful August” and “Ask The Birds” to the Irish-tinged “My Son” and closing track “Water Tower.”

Emily’s aforementioned album Middletown was nominated for a Folk Music Canada Award and a Western Canadian Music Award in 2021, setting the stage for The Great Escape to expand her audience even further, with its clear picture of an artist coming into her own through songs that encompass the full range of emotions, from tenacious to transcendent.

Emily Triggs is available for interviews and on-air appearances.