Biography
Cindy Emch sings old school country music in the tradition of the Carter Family, Hazel Dickens, Pete Seeger, and Hank Williams. She uses her unique & nuanced voice to tell her deeply personal tales of heartbreak, traveling, and playing music. Her experience growing up far left-of-center in the conservative wilds of fly-over America keeps her rooted in tradition while her stints in New Orleans, San Francisco & Oakland have imbued her material with a sense of adventure & a sympathetic view of the sinners, the gamblers, the rogues, the good-time girls & the losers that populate her songs. It is clear that she inhabits these archetypes & loves the lure of the open road from the way she makes them spring to life in her words. She has the ability to be equally at home playing the part of the leaving lover or the one done wrong because she has lived those roles rather than read about them. She sees both sides but always knows which is which. Songs pour forth in a voice that is 49% heartbreak and 51% fury yet is never devoid of humor & self-awareness.
Emch's music is informed by the musical tradition handed down by Stephen Foster, W.C. Handy, George Gershwin, Bessie Smith, Hank Williams & Patsy Cline but is very much her own. She is descended from this canon but not of it; she has distilled her approach from within rather than infusing it with external influences. Her lyrics are direct but never simplistic, to the point yet subtle. Emchy gives voice to the beauty & danger alive in America.
She has been writing songs and founding bands since 2005. She has recorded albums with Rhubarb Whiskey, Vagabondage, Sinner's Tonic, Oakland Wine Drinkers Union, The Secret Emchy Society, and Feral.
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