EMILIE MOVER plays an in-store at Soundscapes (572 College) tonight (Friday, April 26) at 7 p.m. Free. And The Drake Hotel Underground (1150 Queen West) with Callan Furlong, Friday (May 3) at 8 p.m. $10. 416-531-5042. See listing.
Few artists have as much a claim to being from both Toronto and New York as singer/songwriter Emilie Mover, who is based out of Toronto (again) after subletting her Brooklyn apartment on the border of Williamsburg and Bushwick.
“I’ve been moving back and forth since I was 14,” she tells me over a beer at the Tranzac (her father, Bob, and six-year-old sister, Anya, live in New York City, and her mother lives here).
Regardless of city, she has a great sense of music. She recently signed to Nevado for her fourth album (or fifth, depending on how you count them) Mighty Time, and last week, picked up her first Juno for her work on the children’s album Stella And Sam.
Congratulations on winning a JUNO! How did you end up working on Stella And Sam?
I was at Silent Joe studio – probably in the midst of recording [2010’s] Seems So Long – and they just said, “We’re working on a theme song for a TV show based on these books by Marie-Louise Gay do you want to sing on the demo for it?”
After [the theme song] was on the air for about a year they asked us to do some seasons songs, so we wrote four seasons songs and then about a year later I was living in New York and they flew me [into Toronto] to write the album. We had a month or two to make the record [but] we sat down and wrote all the songs in two days.
To be honest, making Stella and Sam was the most fun I’ve ever had. Ever. There’s a certain element of taking yourself seriously that just gets eliminated right away and you have really good intentions: you want to make children happy, so you feel good about yourself.
What are some of the similarities and differences between writing music for kids versus adults?
The main similarity is that when you’re writing a song, you develop a love affair with the melody and the lyrics.
The only real difference is that we were working within the parametres of Stella and Sam, and you have to think of what’s appropriate, you have to be gentler.
What other projects do you have going on?
I’m in the final stages of making a Peggy Lee record. It’s a vanity project – I pretty much spent the money I made on commercials making this record.
Why Peggy Lee?
She tried to cross genres. She was an amazing jazz singer, I’m not really that hip to her big bandy stuff but when I was 16, my dad gave me a record of her singing with her husband Dave Barbour and I hadn’t liked anything like that since Billie Holliday.
You‘ve chosen a different but similar life to your father, [jazz musician] Bob Mover – how does he feel about that? What does that mean for your relationship now that you’re an adult and you’re a musician, too?
Every single musician has an ego and of course there have been moments of that being a thing. And my dad is ever-childlike and he’s certainly had his moments where he feels like I’ve done something to slight him, but that’s over now, especially after we [worked on] the Peggy Lee album together.
If I could sneak into his relationship with music I would be happy forever. He’s the kind of musician that just breathes it, lives it, forever. That’s all there is to it.
Why did you choose to cover Timber Timbre’s We’ll Find Out when you did NOW’s 50:50 video?
I picked that song because I listened to that record and I love it. I’d listened to the whole record but I’d be on the subway and I’d find myself singing that one to myself.
Check out Emilie Mover’s cover of We’ll Find Out.
