Emma Walsh on Her Album “Girl with the Flower Shoes”
Cover art for Emma Walsh's new album "Girl With The Flower Shoes" illustrated by Gretchen Walsh
The following is transcribed from an audio recording of our conversation in a local Bloomington coffee shop on September 29. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Abe Plaut: Who are you, where are we, and what are we talking about?
Emma Walsh: My name is Emma Walsh, we’re at a coffee shop in Bloomington and we’re talking about my album! My new album GIRL WITH THE FLOWER SHOES comes out October 9th.
Abe: If you had to describe the vibes and musical stylings on this album, what would you call it?
Emma: It’s kind of like folk-rock.
Abe: Are there creative influences you were drawing from, or teachers and mentors whose wisdom you relied on while working on this project?
Emma: Norah Jones is always an influence. Neil Young and Elvis Presley are always an influence. I don’t think I would have written some of the tracks if I hadn’t gone to Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas, Texas, and didn’t have the resources I had there. There’s a percussionist Ivan Trevino who did vocals with marimba and mallet instruments, and that’s been a big inspiration too.
Photo of Emma Walsh mid-performance at her Album Release concert. Image courtesy of Emma Walsh.
Abe: So how many tracks are there, and is it mostly a solo project? Are there people you played with?
Emma: So there are seven tracks. It’s mostly not a solo project, although it is an Emma Walsh thing and not in the name of a band, I had a whole bunch of people help me on this album. It was going to be longer, I had something like 16 songs ready to be recorded, but I’d only gotten 7 of them recorded and I just got impatient and decided that I was going to do two sister albums. So this is the first of the two sister albums.
Abe: Will the titles [of the albums] be related to each other?
Emma: In my mind, yes, but to everyone else not really. This first one is called GIRL WITH THE FLOWER SHOES because of my shoes that I wear, my Docs, my flower Docs. That song, the title song, is about me. I say it’s an autobiographical song because it’s about me as a child and growing up. It’s how I view myself.
Abe: Is “Girl with The Flower Shoes” something anybody has called you before?
Emma: Yeah, you know Miró?
Abe: The trombonist?
Miró Henry Sobrer is a trombonist, bandleader, and graduate of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. The author (me, Abe) played trumpet in the horn section alongside him in the Indiana University Latin Jazz Ensemble. Small world lol!
Emma: Yeah! I didn’t really know him very well, but we had mutual friends and I had seen him like three separate times and every time I had my flower shoes on. And then he saw me at the Latin Jazz Ensemble concert, and he was like “Oh, girl with the flower shoes!” and I was like “Yeah, that’s me!” So that’s where that’s from.
Abe: I have not been privy to any early release listening session before our conversation, but even without that could you still talk through your album track by track? Explaining a little bit of the creative process, people who worked with you on this, the story of each song?
Emma: The first song is called “Coffee on a Rainy Day” which you actually helped me write Abe, like sophomore year or something –
Abe: Aha!
(Laughter)
Emma: – Which is funny, I forgot about that. You helped me come up with like, two chords and it made the song.
Abe: So that would have been [in a dorm basement practice room with] you and a composition major…
Emma: Anne, it was my friend Anne, yeah! So the order of the songs is done by the order they were written or one of them I wrote in high school, but it’s kind of a political song so I put it in place with how last summer felt. The first song is “Coffee on a Rainy Day”. Playing on the track is me, Galen Morris on bass and David Curtis on drums. That song was a love song written about two different people. Grace Leckey and Kelley McGrew recorded it.
(Laughter)
Emma: I started writing about one person and then I didn’t finish the song, and I finished writing it about a different person. It’s about people who just make you feel good. It’s not really about a love triangle or anything like that, but it’s a kind of funny backstory to the song! It’s just a good love song.
The second song is called “What If” and I wrote it in my room. “What If” was recorded in my basement in Bloomington by Oli Jung and Grace Leckey helped produce. I played all the instruments. Guitar, ukulele, cajon and tambourine. The song is about trying to make sense of the day-to-day. The opening line is “When your eyes are dry from crying and your pillow soaked up all the tears” and so it’s trying to make sense of all the things that happen in life.
The next song is “All the Ways” and I first started out by writing it on guitar. Then I started writing songs on vibraphone and wanted to figure out a vibraphone part. So on the recording it’s me playing vibes, Charlie playing guitar, Galen playing bass and David on cajon. “All the Ways” is also a love song – I write a lot of love songs – and it’s about not being able to get someone out of your head. You know when you really like someone and they’re all you can think about, and you try to not think about them so you can get other stuff done, but they keep coming back to your brain? It’s like they found all the ways to stay in your head. That one was recorded by Oli.
The fourth track is called “Somewhere Skies Are Blue” and that song is about this past year when I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and general anxiety disorder and I’ve been working through that for the past couple of years. So that’s what this song is about. It’s about finding a better place to be, a happier place to be, somewhere skies are blue. I kind of wrote it about my mom. One of the last lines goes something like “Hope we find somewhere skies are blue, and I hope you’re there too” and that part is kind of about my mom because when things are hard she is there for me. Kelley McGrew recorded it, and it’s me on guitar, Robbie Darling on marimba, Lucy Ritter on drums and Galen Morris on bass.
Emma Walsh, left, poses with band members at the "Girl With The Flower Shoes" album release concert. Image courtesy of Emma Walsh.
Emma: The next track is “One”. I wrote in high school when Trump was first elected. It’s about coming together because, at that moment, divisions between people became so volatile and exposed. There was such a rift, and it felt like so many people were unwilling to listen to someone different than them. I made it a percussion ensemble piece. Marimba, vibes, chimes, bells, even trashcan! Robbie Darling, Lucy Ritter and Sebastian Moneyron played alongside me. Oli Jung recorded it.
Now the 6th track is “Girl With The Flower Shoes” and so it came to be when I was in a therapy session and my therapist asked if I ever wrote any songs about myself. I answered yes, of course I had. Then he asked if I ever wrote a completely positive song about myself, and that’s what “Girl With The Flower Shoes” became. It was me trying to write a positive song about myself, and I talk about when I was 5, when I was 10, 15 and 20. Grace Leckey recorded it. It’s me on guitar, me on cajon, and then Kelley McGrew on bass.
The very last song is a voice memo of a song I just wrote. I wanted to end it with a little sweet voice memo, so I just recorded it in my room with me on guitar singing. It’s called “I Feel Fine” and it’s about getting better mental health wise and it’s kind of funny because I use the metaphor of the sky clearing up and things getting better but it’s also kind of about the guy I’m dating now. And that’s the album!
It was mostly Oli, Grace and I who were working on the process of getting everything recorded. One track was recorded back in fall 2018. And even though I wasn’t in school over the past year, Oli and Kelley were and they had class projects so some of these tracks were part of their schoolwork in a way during the 2020-21 school year. And then “I Feel Fine” was recorded just a week ago!
For now, GIRL WITH THE FLOWER SHOES will be out on streaming platforms and I’ll also be selling t-shirts and merch!
Abe: Are there other things you’d like people to know about you or this project?
Emma: I just want people to know that this is really special to me. It’s special to me because all the people who helped me do it are really special to me, and all the songs are very close to my heart. It took a lot of emotion to write and to record. That’s why I want people to listen to it so they can hear that emotion, understand it, and maybe reconcile something with it.
Listen to GIRL WITH THE FLOWER SHOES below or wherever you stream music, and follow Emma Walsh on Instagram at @EmmaWalshMusic
