{"id":33072,"date":"2020-11-01T15:36:33","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T20:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=33072"},"modified":"2024-07-09T15:39:06","modified_gmt":"2024-07-09T19:39:06","slug":"the-song-flows-through-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/the-song-flows-through-her\/","title":{"rendered":"The Song Flows Through Her"},"content":{"rendered":"

THANKS TO HER CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED 2019 ALBUM \u201cTRAVELING MERCIES,\u201d\u00a0the Emily Scott Robinson \u201909 has made a name for herself in the music world. So does that mean it\u2019s time for the 2009 Furman graduate to add a high school band throwback to her repertoire?<\/p>\n

Maybe not quite yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy friends were like, \u2018Now that Lizzo has gotten really popular playing the flute, you should play the clarinet,\u2019\u201d Robinson says of the hip-hop star with a laugh. \u201cI don\u2019t know if it would be as cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Lizzo\u2019s fame grew, she began incorporating the instrument she learned as a child into her shows. Robinson\u2019s clarinet prowess earned a scholarship from Furman and was on display for four years in the Furman Wind Ensemble. But don\u2019t expect any tinkering with the recipe of gentle guitar, beautiful voice and heartfelt lyrics that prompted Rolling Stone to include \u201cTraveling Mercies\u201d in its list of\u00a0Top 40 Country and Americana Albums of 2019<\/a>\u00a0and Stereogum to laud it as one of\u00a0The 10 Best Country Albums of 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince I was really young, I was drawn to women who were singer-songwriters who could just get on the stage with the guitar and fill a room and captivate an audience,\u201d says Robinson, a native of Greensboro, North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Rolling Stone raved that Robinson is \u201ca writer who could evoke the empathy of Patty Griffin\u201d and included \u201cThe Dress,\u201d the eighth track on \u201cTraveling Mercies,\u201d among the\u00a025 Best Country and Americana Songs of 2019<\/a>. The Furman community got a taste of what all the fuss was about when Robinson performed a live-stream concert on May 9 as part of the university\u2019s graduation celebration, marking an unexpected full circle for someone who was sure her future wouldn\u2019t include music in any significant way after her own graduation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I\u2019d be a social worker or working in the nonprofit world,\u201d says Robinson, who double-majored in history and Spanish. To that end, she signed up for AmeriCorps and traveled around Central America before moving to Colorado to work with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.<\/p>\n

The job was emotionally draining, however, and looking for a way to recharge she decided \u201con a whim\u201d to sign up for a songwriting camp at Planet Bluegrass in Lyons, Colorado. The experience changed everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had written one or two songs, but writing was hard. And I thought because it was hard that I wasn\u2019t good at it,\u201d Robinson says. \u201cI had this idea that when Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell wrote, it came out perfect, which seems so ridiculous now \u2026 I got into this environment where there were a bunch of aspiring musicians and musicians who are actually doing it, and I saw that it was possible to actually do this for a living.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2016, Robinson recorded her first full-length album, \u201cMagnolia Queen,\u201d and she and her husband, Rouslan Haracherev, have never looked back. It became much more difficult to do it for a living, however, when the COVID-19 pandemic canceled a big chunk of what was supposed to be a world tour. But she made ends meet by embracing live-stream shows.<\/p>\n

Robinson also used the extra time at her home in Flagstaff, Arizona, to work on a new album, often finding herself as surprised as anyone by what she creates.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiterally all the time I go, \u2018How did that come out of my head?\u2019\u201d Robinson says. \u201cI think the answer to that is it\u2019s not coming out of me so much as it\u2019s coming through me \u2026 And if I make myself cry when I\u2019m singing, I know there\u2019s something deep and true about that song.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emily Scott Robinson \u201909 is making all the right lists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":33073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2895,2892,1963],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-class-notes-fall-2020","category-fall-2020","category-furman-magazine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33072"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33075,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33072\/revisions\/33075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}