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All Music Guide:
Singer/songwriter Emm Gryner was born in 1975 and raised in rural Forest, Ontario. After studying classical piano throughout her early childhood, she wrote her first song at the age of ten, and soon after formed a band with her two brothers, assuming vocal and bass duties. By her teens, Gryner was recording her own material on four-track, and at the age of 20 she relocated to Toronto, forming her own indie label, Dead Daisy, and issuing the 1995 LP And Distrust It. The Original Leap Year followed in 1996, and in 1998 Gryner signed to Mercury to release her major-label debut, Public. Although Gryner was dropped from the label the following year, she still went on to issue four albums -- Science Fair, Dead Relatives, Girl Versions, and Asianblue -- in that many years on Dead Daisy, the label she had founded in 1996. In 2005 Songs of Love and Death, a collection of old Irish tunes, came out, and that same year Gryner hooked up with New York musician Nathan Larsen to form the political glam rock band Hot One (with Jordan Kern and Kevin March completing the group). 2006 saw the release of Gryner's solo album, The Summer of High Hope, co-produced by Larsen, as well as Hot One's self-titled debut.
Wikipedia:
Emm Gryner (born 8 June 1975, in Sarnia, Ontario) is a Canadian singer-songwriter and occasional actress.
Biography
Gryner's childhood was spent in Forest, Lambton County, Ontario. Her father was of half Irish heritage and her mother was Filipina.
After graduating from Fanshawe College's Music Industry Arts program in 1995, Emm started her music career in Toronto, working office jobs during the day while honing her live show in small, local clubs by night. Gryner entered her original song "Wisdom Bus" in a nationwide songwriting contest sponsored by Standard Broadcasting, and won. With the money from this prize, she recorded an album called The Original Leap Year and released it on her own Dead Daisy Records. The album attracted the attention of Violent Femmes producer, Warren Bruleigh.
Bruleigh passed the album onto an exec at Mercury Records who signed Gryner. The result was Public, a Britpop-inspired album that yielded a hit in Canada called "Summerlong." Several tours followed, with Ron Sexsmith, Bernard Butler, Rufus Wainwright and others.
After Universal Music took over Mercury Records, Gryner was dropped from the label and returned to her own Dead Daisy Records. She released several albums, two of which went on to be nominated for Best Pop Album of the Year at the Juno Awards. During this time, Gryner moved to New York and Los Angeles to write and tour. She also took a job singing and playing keyboards in David Bowie’s band. The gig saw Gryner performing with Bowie at Glastonbury Festival, on Later with Jools Holland and other venues around America and Europe. She appears on Bowie at the Beeb, a live album.
After leaving Bowie’s band, Gryner moved to Montreal and released an album called Songs of Love and Death which was made up of cover versions of Irish songs by The Undertones, The Virgin Prunes, Horslips, Thin Lizzy, The Thrills and others. Recorded in a house she shared with Kate McGarrigle, the album attracted the attention of Irish media. Gryner found a champion in Pat Egan, a legendary promoter and manager based in Dublin, and he set up her first shows.
In 2005, Gryner signed Atlantic Canadian indie band In-Flight Safety. The band went on to receive national acclaim, capture several awards and receive a Juno nomination for Best Video of the Year in 2007. Gryner subsequently signed Toronto songwriter Royal Wood and released his album, A Good Enough Day through Dead Daisy.
In 2006, Gryner released The Summer of High Hopes produced by Nathan Larson. The album was released in Canada and later in Ireland on the heels of a performance at Oxegen Festival.
Collaborations
Gryner also collaborated with Larson in the band Hot One, which released an album that year. She is also a member of the collective The Cake Sale, along with Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol, Bell X1, Josh Ritter and Glen Hansard. The collective is featured on The Cake Sale, a multi-platinum-selling Irish album with proceeds to Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair.
In June 2007, she collaborated with jazz pianist D.D. Jackson for an episode of the CBC Radio concert series Fuse. She also appeared as a guest musician on vitaminsforyou's album The Legend of Bird's Hill.
Other work
Gryner played the angel in the music videos of "The Grace" and "Age of Consent" by Neverending White Lights, and had a small but important role in One Week, a film by director Michael McGowan.
In the summers of 2007 and 2008, Gryner and Danny Michel co-hosted the radio show Under the Covers, a show about cover songs, on CBC Radio One.
Recognition by other musicians
Nelly Furtado named Gryner's album Science Fair one of her desert island discs in a VH1 interview, and David Bowie named Gryner and Godspeed You! Black Emperor his two favourite Canadian acts during a promotional interview for his Reality album. In the November 2006 issue of , celebrating the magazine's 20th anniversary, U2 frontman Bono recognized the track "Almighty Love" from Gryner's album The Summer of High Hopes as one of six songs that he wished he had written from the last twenty years of music. The American indie band +/- covered the song "Summerlong" on the Japanese edition of their EP, Holding Patterns. The song "Angel" by Matt Nathanson is written about her.
Personal life
Gryner, who now lives in St. Marys, Ontario, married visual artist Sean Odell in 2004. They have one child together, a son born in February 2010.
