Emily Long

With crimson lips, fiery locks coiffed in the most unique up-do and one intense stare, Emily Long is striking. She has pipes on par with Cyndi Lauper or Pat Benatar, fulfilling her mezzo-soprano contribution to female rockdom, and at the end of it all, she’s one nice—and very bad-ass—chick. The Tucson-Ariz. native, who now resides in Williamsburg, released her debut When I Was in Love With last fall and is gearing up to unleash her sophomore album, Dirty Face, later this year but not before she rocks the hell out of CMJ tonight at Crash Mansion.

New York Press: Describe the dynamic producer Chris Bittner (Coheed & Cambria) brought to the production of Dirty Face?


Emily Long: First of all, Chris Bittner is kind. It helped us to play our best being around someone who is encouraging and excited about what we’re doing. Musically, he’s incredible. He is a multi-instrumentalist, a real player, and he listens to our performances with those ears. He paid close attention to the feel in all our playing and kept the most powerful takes.

How was it recording in Woodstock, NY?
Recording at Applehead Studio was otherworldly. Owner, Michael Birnbaum, built out his barn with 30-foot ceilings and filled it with every amp and mic you could imagine. It’s all located on a farm. Every morning we went out to pet goats and horses. Me, Dan, Bret, Nik and Zach went up for 10 straight days and literally slept, ate and worked in the studio. It was the best experience of my life. I am going back up to put the finishing touches on the album next week.


You said that you take your experiences into a “fantasy world” with your lyrics. What were some of the experiences-turned-fantasy that inspired the new album?

For me, living in New York is a concentrated version of a normal life. I’ve seen things here that exist everywhere, but it just seems to happen twice as fast and twice as often. We commute close to each other, live close to each other and dance close to each other. There is sex, drugs and fighting. You can’t help but be a part of everyone else’s situation, whether it’s bad or good, and you definitely take it home with you. It can be as equally wonderful as it can be depressing and I’m just telling versions of those stories.

Describe the title song “Dirty Face.” Were there some tracks that surprised you in terms of how they evolved once you recorded them?


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nypressnew yorkcmjemily longThe song “Dirty Face” is meant to be a fun anthem of sorts. It talks about people out in New York bars trying to reel in their conquests. We played tons of shows last year and saw a lot of this, but a “dirty face” means a lot of things and in different contexts. It made sense for the subject matter of every song, which is why the album is titled after it. For the most part, the songs are coming out just as we hoped, if not better. It’s always incredible to hear them recorded to their best potential. It’s like building a house, finishing it and getting to move in. We're almost, almost ready to move in.


For When I Was in Love With you wrote most songs in Arizona. This time around, were most, or all, of the Dirty Face tracks written in New York? If so, is the album reflective of this?


All the songs for Dirty Face were written in New York. I wrote about 20 or 30 songs last year, and we kept the best 11. Daniel Ryan Espy and I co-wrote two of those, and he brings a different perspective to the table. Everyone in the band was involved in making these songs sound the best they could, and that was the benefit to making this record here. We could all more easily be involved. As far as a New York vibe, it is absolutely heavier, sexier and more brutal. The songs are just more dynamic.

You successfully raised most of your funds for the new album via Kickstarter. Was it difficult giving up your 1968 SG guitar to pay for more studio time?


Raising the funds for this record on Kickstarter.com was a total leap of faith. You basically sell album and T-shirt pre-orders and that money, in turn, pays for the recording process. We raised way over our goal and it was amazing to see our fans come through for us in that aspect. I sold my 1968 SG beforehand just in case. It was tough, but that pretty guitar helped record songs I wanted so badly and for that I am not sorry.

This is your first CMJ festival. What do you have planned for your NYC audience?
We are so excited to be part of CMJ. We’re playing Friday at Crash Mansion for Rethink Pop Music, who have been very good to us over the last year. They put on great shows, and we’re glad to be part of this one. We'll be debuting new tunes off Dirty Face and playing some old favorites too. We do plan on rocking faces.

Photo by Patrick J. Eves



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CMJ Spotlight: Emily Long

Song-writer Emily Long fronts a brutal and sexy self titled rock n’ roll band. Upon first listen you might hear influences of Ronnie Spector and Freddy Mercury in Emily’s voice but the band nods to a more modern T.REX or heavier Cars. Centered around Emily’s towering vocals the line up also includes finger bleeding melody chemist Daniel Ryan Espy as well as the clean and calculated Nik Lokenssgaard on guitars. The band’s rhythm section is carried by amp kicking bassist Bret Ritter and the hard hitting showman Zach Jones on drums.

Emily earned underground success with her debut LP “When I Was In Love With”. After a string of SXSW appearances, placements on The WB’s The Lake and Sorority Forever as well as on Universal Records compilation Bad Girls Don’t Cry alongside Amy Winehouse and Duffy, Emily and her band are back in the studio and hard at work with the follow up record “Dirty Face” due out Christmas 2010. “This work is different from the first in so many ways”, notes Long. “After we released the last album and Zach joined the band it breathed new life into all of us. We knew we wanted to approach this recording differently.”

As a result the band simplified arrangements and kept only the best songs around to see the light of day. After striking the interest of Coheed and Cambria producer Chris Bittner at a show the band called upon him to deliver a competatively spirited sound that would be new to the ears of music fans. “I knew I wanted a record that would rock mean and still be emotional. I knew Chris could do it.” Says Long

The result is a sexually charged set of lyrically driven, dynamic rock n’ roll songs.The title track “Dirty Face” is about capturing a one night conquest written from the female perspective while co-write with Daniel Ryan Espy “All the Way” compares marriage to a murder/suicide. The album winds down with “Good Hurt” which Long wrote as comforting lullaby to soothe the ache of trying at love and failing.

“Lyrics have always been important to me” explains Long. “I believe they deserve as much attention as music or arrangements. These songs are about what’s going on around me but I take those experiences into a fantasy world where I explore what could happen next. I’ve seen things in New York I never thought I would. There is no shortage of inspiration.”

Emily Long and her bands appearance on BETTER TV, and the stellar reviews which called her vocals “big and dramatic” in The Nashville Scene seem to be just a taste of what is to come as they prepare to support the record “Dirty Face” with two debut shows at CMJ festival in New York City. Initial buzz surrounding the record centers on Emily’s best writing to date. See for yourself when the record hits in December.



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Under Creative Commons License: Attribution - The Audio Perv

WRITTEN BY: JAMES SWIGART
Emily Long is an incredibly gifted singer and keyboard player who recently released the breathtaking album When I Was In Love With. When I Was In Love With features her amazing voice backed by a powerful, slow rocking band. Emily’s voice most reminds us of the legendary Martha Davis of the Motels. Her emotive power is similar to that of John Waite, a vocalist so far ahead of his time it isn’t even funny.
Because Emily is as kind as she is talented, she agreed to answer some questions via email for us fortunate ones at CWG. Because we are also kind and talented, we are sharing both the questions and the answers with you. Please dig her vibe as we have. - CWG Magazine

Emily Long, the Brooklyn via Tuscon singer-songwriter, already knows the benefit of placement in the 21st century world of music marketing. She’s had songs featured on TV shows “Sorority Forever,” “The Lake” and “Prom Queen,” and on the compilation album Bad Girls Don’t Cry.

But since I have never seen those shows, she’s new to me.

Long’s voice might best be described as one born as the lovechild of Lita Ford and Johnette Napolitano with a little higher pitch (thanks to Susan for clearing that up). Her debut album, When I Was In Love With, will be released this Spring.

The track below, “Anyone Else” is like a track from 1989 re-recorded in 2010. And I say that in the best possible way. It’s energetic, fun and features Long’s powerful voice. Enjoy.
- Dead Journalist.com

When I Was In Love is the forthcoming full length debut from Arizona-native Emily Long. The album, due out this spring, is a throwback to an era of strong female rockers like Joan Jett and Pat Benatar.

It also serves as a showcase Long's forceful vocals and slick hooks.
- Snobsmusic.net

Sometimes you just want to drive with the windows down and the radio up high. There's a certain type of song that fits that mood. Sunny, bright, a little nostalgic, and totally unselfconscious.

This is a song like that. Sounding like it could have come right out of the 80s, "Anyone Else" is nobody's idea of an uber-sophisticated track. But it makes no claims to be. What you will get is a nice little slice of Blondie/Benatar inspired rock and roll.

And sometimes, that's all you really need.
- Hype Machine

Ooh just got this song in the inbox. Brooklyn's Emily Long has been featured on the WB's The Lake. Long claims to be influenced by Ronnie Spector but I hear way more Stevie Nicks and Cyndi Lauper in her voice. So emotional. I'm far from being a teenager but this song wants to make me slit my wrists from having been heartbroken (Give it a few seconds to warm up:) Emily Long Anyone Else mp3 was here.

"You've ruined me for anyone else."
As an old, I can still relate. I feel the way about certain pizza joints. Sob! - Stop Okay Go

“It was less about being a guitar player and more about telling my story,” says rocker Emily Long. When she turned 10, Long asked her dad to show her a few guitar chords. Perhaps a phase, he didn’t think she’d continue playing, but the young Long started penning her own songs, joined a few punk bands in her teens and later played on her own. She never kicked the habit.
“When I was a teen I was listening to Nirvana,” says Long, a Tucson, Ariz. native now residing in Brooklyn. “At one point, I had some fantasy about being in a hardcore rock band. You can’t fight what you become. You develop a sound because you get into bands like T. Rex and other stuff later on, so you just kind of write in that mindset.”
Debut When I Was in Love With, released on Long’s own Tiger Blanket label all happened by accident. She recorded nine songs with her band so they’d have some demo hand outs and soon realized that they had something special. All picked things up and temporarily moved to Tucson to rerecord all the songs at a friend’s studio. “We had been playing them live for a year, and I was just ready to have something to sell, something to put out. I just wanted to put it out myself and start the action. You have a lot of control when you release something yourself. It’s the indie versus major deal. I would love to have a major, but because I don’t, there’s this freedom. I just wanted to get the ball rolling.”
Throughout Love With, it’s more than Long’s strawberry blonde locks that reflects a She’s So Unusual Cyndi Lauper. Like the mezzo-soprano legend, Long’s high-pitched girly pipes mesmerize from opening ballad “Anyone Else” to the gut wrenching track “Cry Some More.” Reared on The Breeders and Liz Phair’s Rid of Me, Long keeps a slice of the era’s girl angst on Love With. Tracks on heartache balance out when Long rocks harder on “Shoulda Run” and “The Truth” channeling a less breathy Transvision Vamp Wendy James and all the smokiness of Concrete Blonde, whom she covers with her version of “Joey.”
Most recently Long offered up her own lyrics to a Hip-Hop beat during an Applehead Studios recording with DJ Dirty Ern and Coheed and Cambria producer Chris Bittner for the Flannel Channel project. More summer shows are on the agenda, and Long is ready to work on the second album, perhaps taking another Tucson trek, where most tracks were written and recorded.
“The desert is gorgeous,” says Long. “I’m very at ease there. I went home and wrote 16 songs in a month and a half and had eight that I really loved. It’s like pictures. Someone can take 1,000 of you and only two can turn out good.” - The Examiner

A lot of female singer-songwriters who grew up during the ‘90s learned the model for doing what they do from the introspective, confessional women who launched Lilith Fair — which, by the way, is being revived this year. Emily Long may fit the first part of the profile, but she seems to take her cues from a different bunch of women — say, Pat Benatar and Blondie and the tough, danceable guitar rock with sex appeal they were making during the early ‘80s. You’d never know Long is from the Southwest — Tucson, Ariz., to be exact. She’s plenty at home in Brooklyn rock clubs now. When I Was In Love With is the fiery, red-haired keyboard player’s debut album, and her band is driven by raw, wiry, new wave guitar playing. But her big, dramatic vocals that tend to burst into a self-possessed vibrato — squarely in the Benatar tradition — are the main event. - The Nashville Scene

Expect a sweaty dance party scene when Emily Long brings the catchy hooks and anthemic melodies of her debut album When I Was In Love With for a couple of shots at SXSW. She opens for Ian McLagan and the Bump Band at the Dog and Duck Pub’s annual St. Patrick’s Day party on Wednesday, then hits the Moose Lodge on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. - 30 Days Out