Emily Mercer Interview
Emily Mercer: Oh baby when you touch me, for the first time, I thought that was it. I thought that I would never find another way to live. But how wrong I’ve been not to see the things that you could do.
Nick Cody: Hi, this is Nick from Music for the Head and Hearts, and I’m with Emily Mercer here today. Well, welcome to the platform and I wanted to start it off by asking what do you love about music?
Emily Mercer: What I love about music is how it brings people together I guess, which is why this project is so good as well. Just as a way of connecting with people that personally maybe I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do without music. I think it’s just the community aspect of it is my favourite part of it.
Nick Cody: And I know you play key, is it mostly keyboards you play?
Emily Mercer: Yeah, pretty much exclusively keyboards. Yeah. Which is heavy and annoying. But …
Nick Cody: And how long have you been involved in playing or writing music?
Emily Mercer: I think I started playing piano, sort of classical lessons when I was about 12 so how old am I? I don’t even know. So that’s about 12 years ago and writing songs probably shortly after, maybe since I was about 14 or 15. And I’ve just kind of been at it ever since. So about 10 years.
Nick Cody: Do you remember the first few things that you wrote?
Emily Mercer: Oh yeah. It was some pretty horrific stuff on guitar actually, which I never really committed to learning. So there’s quite some interesting old songs that we’ve got hidden away.
Nick Cody: And when you’re writing things, what’s your writing process? Do you get an idea for a melody or for a lyric or how do things tend to transpire and manifest?
Emily Mercer: Yeah, people ask me that sometimes and I don’t really have a set process. It could be anything from playing around with some chords on the piano to just a melodic idea that pops into my head. But yeah, it’s sort of lots of different bits coming from loads of different angles. And then I kind of just put them together and it’s quite painstakingly slow process for me. I can’t write songs quickly.
Nick Cody: So in terms of playing, what sort of venues or locations do you tend to be playing?
Emily Mercer: At the moment it tends to be cafes and bars that I might sort of events and nights that they put on, which is, it’s quite nice. It tends to be a few of us at the moment. I haven’t played headline gig yet. But it’s nice because it tends to be three or four of us coming together to put on an evening. You get the variety. I do enjoy doing that kind of gig at the moment.
Nick Cody: And one of the questions we like to ask people on the platform is what’s one of your most favourite times that you played and then one of the either strangest or wackiest times where you’ve played?
Emily Mercer: Okay. Favourite. It’s gotta be what, because I said earlier about how you know, community is really important when it comes to the music scene. I think Leeds has a really great music scene and community. I had a really great gig actually at Inkwell Art Centre back in last October I think. And it was, there were about seven or eight artists. So it wasn’t a super long set or anything, but it was just great. It was all for a good cause for mental health charities as well and just everyone came together and the atmosphere was wonderful. Everyone played fantastically. But overall, aside from music it’s just that kind of feel that everyone’s there for a common cause.
Nick Cody: Yeah. And a notable, a memorable one that was a bit stranger a bit odd or you thought maybe, what am I doing here?
Emily Mercer: I quite often wonder what I’m doing there. But as the strangest one, I’ve been quite lucky really. I haven’t had any disasters yet. I played one back in, I think about March at the Lending Room and there was a massive power cut, just before we were about to play. So everyone else went ahead and played acoustically because they were all guitarists so they could. And we all held torches and it was really great and it was very strange. So instead of sort of getting down to play, like I was meant to, I was shining the torch on a guitar and it was, it was quite sort of quirky. And by the time I got to play about two hours later, everyone had left. So I kind of played to my friends that stuck around. So that was the strangest situation so far.
Nick Cody: So Emily, who has inspired you or who do you love in terms of artists that you’ve come across?
Emily Mercer: A lot of my influences are quite old jazz artists. So couple of my favourites, Billy Holiday, I absolutely love. Chet Baker as well. Just the sort of low-
Nick Cody: Oh the classics.
Emily Mercer: Jazzy. All the classics. Absolutely. But in terms of more modern things, it’s, I guess my music taste is fairly predictable for what I do. So I love female piano players. So Fiona Apple is one of my absolute favourites. Toriana [Amos 00:05:14], Amanda Palmer, absolutely love that kind of thing. Yeah, it’s all about the female singer/songwriter for me.
Nick Cody: Well there have been some great ones over the years. I mean, originally obviously guitarists like Joni Mitchell.
Emily Mercer: Oh yeah.
Nick Cody: Tori Amos, favourite. I remember the first time she came out. What is it about Billy holiday that you like?
Emily Mercer: I think it’s mainly her voice. It’s just so, distinct. I know all the jazz singers have their own distinctive style, but it’s so like, especially the later recordings, are so mournful and sad and it’s just the depth to her voice that I absolutely love. And Yeah, just I try to incorporate that I guess. Although of course I never quite manage to do that.
Nick Cody: And if there was any song that you could’ve written that you’ve heard over the years, that you think, “I’d loved to have written that.” What springs to mind?
Emily Mercer: Oh, I think it’s going to be my favourite song. I’ve had a lot of favourite songs but my all time favourite song is by a band called the Dresden Dolls, and it’s called Backstabber, and it’s just so powerful and angry and I love it. And it just sounds really fun to play as well. So it would have to be that.
Nick Cody: Well thanks very much for dropping by and in a second we’re gonna get you play a couple of things for us, but thanks for coming by on the platform.
Emily Mercer: Great. Thank you.
Nick Cody: Hi. So Emily, what are you going to play for us?
Emily Mercer: I’m going to play one of my own songs and this one is called Trust Me.
Nick Cody: So Emily what are you going to play for us now?
Emily Mercer: This is one of my originals and it’s called The Count.
Check out Emily here