Harking from deepest Cornwall, The Emerald Dawn could just be the prog band that will convert any of the remaining resistance with their timeless keyboard-driven music. We passed their live performance video ( album number four To Touch the Sky ) around the OMM inner circle and the reaction was consistent – once this music hits you, you’re not going to turn it off, so good are they at keeping that Kernow earth-energy flowing. Partners Tree and Ally ( vocals, keyboards, flute, and guitar, sax, respectively ) alongside the faultless groove machine of Tom ( drums ) and David ( bass ), have a good thing going here.
So, having just released their fifth in a series of superb albums – October 2023’s In Time – it is our pleasure to talk with the very talented and hard working visual artist, circus performer and composer Tree Stewart. How on earth does she do it?
Hi Tree, how did the name Emerald Dawn come about?
The name comes from two places. When Ally and I first met we used to stay up til ‘Dawn’ because we loved each others company. We talked and shared music for hours. We originally wanted to call ourselves ‘The Dawn’ but there were too many bands with this name.
We are both environmentalists, so we decided to add ‘Emerald’ to the name to signify a green revolution, which we hoped would happen to save the planet.
You’ve just released your fifth album, ‘In Time‘. Anything different this time around?
In this album all four of us were involved in the compositions much more so than the other albums.
We always explore different themes, so the journey the listeners will be experiencing in this album is time. This is a very different concept to the other albums so the sound and the musical journey reflect this. It also has more of a Fusion element and even a bit of World music thrown in.
Despite its progressive nature, your music has that underlying ancient wisdom to it, with simple structures and motifs upon which the melodies can play, and the balance of these two elements over time means one can just listen to your stuff over and over…not wanting you to divulge too much of the creative magic, but is that balance something that you have to consciously monitor, or does it just happen?
Thank you for the kind words about our music! It really depends on the track. Sometimes things just happen naturally and sometime sections are added to push, simplify or complicate it, or sometimes sections are removed because we finally decide they don’t work for whatever reason. We are very concerned with the theme, mood or story and that is what drives all decisions. We never do anything just for the sake of it. It has to fit the theme or further it.
We’ve interviewed many artists who are talking more freely these days about how misogynist the music scene was/is. Do you have any experiences yourself?
I haven’t experienced much misogyny but this could be because I am a self confessed tom boy and always wanted to play with the boys! The only experience I have really had is that sometimes there is surprise that I do more than just sing for the band. I did do a written interview once where I never met the journalist but he wrote the article as if he had met me. I was called ‘he’ and ‘him’ even though it was VERY clear in the notes to the interview that I am the woman in the band. When I explained this I was told it was too late to change as the magazine had gone to print! I am not sure if it was assumed I was male because most musicians in prog are male or if it was just a mistake!
Outside the band, what is a typical day for you?
I am a circus performer and teacher, visual artist and musician. As well as The Emerald Dawn I am the director of a circus and mindfulness Community Interest Company and I do various art commissions.
A typical day is admin and writing funding applications over coffee, then a quick breakfast smoothie before 1 – 2 hours of physical training with some contact juggling and mindfulness practice thrown in and then an afternoon of music practise or composing for a few hours. I love gardening and walking so I try to do a bit of that every day if I can. If I have a commission then afternoons or evenings have some time dedicated to painting or drawing and if the band needs a video editing then that is also one of my art forms. A typical day will change dramatically when we are recording an album or gigging, other things are dropped or limited to focus on rehearsals, recording or being away.
You highly recommend circus skills for strength and co-ordination. Have you managed to get the other band members on a trapeze yet?
Ha, ha, ha, ha! No way!! Though I think of all three of them I could get David to have a go on the circus rope!
How about the painting for In Time, and your other work?
The painting was started in December 2022 and was completed in May 2023
I always paint the album artwork during the album recording process. This allows me to get fully immersed in the journey and theme of the music. It makes for an epic few months completely living the music and art. Funnily enough something is always happening in my life during that time that seems to correspond to the album theme. That makes the art work some kind of mental and physical processing and or healing of whatever is going on.
There is a lot of symbolism in the art work and it is part of a much larger art work created by joining all of the inside paintings together.
Would you say place informs your art?
I do think that landscape informs my visual art especially in the paintings that go with our music.
Text and poetry also inform my art and music. I think the Cornish landscape inspires the band because it is such a beautiful, wild, rugged place to live and compose.
So, would you consider yourselves romantics?
I think Ally and I would consider ourselves romantics but I seriously doubt that Tom and David (our rhythm section) would!
How do you stay positive, as environmentalists?
It is hard to stay positive when so many people either think that climate change is a hoax or they are so selfish they just don’t care. However, being in nature, gardening and planting trees helps to keep me rooted in nature and hopeful for the future.
Ally has been campaigning for decades and was on the Board of Directors of Friends of the Earth (England, Wales, and Northern Ireland) for nearly a decade, and on the Board of Directors of Friends of the Earth Scotland for about 3 years. I am not sure he is as positive as me, and fair enough.
You are using Bandcamp as your main platform...
Bandcamp is amazing. We also have a number of distributors who help to get CD’s to Europe, America and Japan. We are lucky that we have a home studio and Ally can record, mix and master, and I am a visual artist and can produce album artwork, videos and projections. If we had to go elsewhere to record, pay for engineering and mastering, pay for an artist to create album artwork and pay for a video editor then we would never make any money. In fact, we would be in the red by quite a lot. As it is we do make a small amount of money from selling our CD’s. When we are gigging or touring the CD sales usually cover travel costs. It is really difficult to make any money when playing live.
Have you discovered the modern joys of posting CDs to mainland Europe yet?
We have certainly discovered the modern joys of sending CD’s to mainland Europe! I still hand write the envelopes, but we have to include customs forms now. Some of our CD’s go to Europe through distributors so thankfully they deal with the paperwork. But there is no doubt as a result of import duty that our CD sales to Europe have plummeted since Brexit.
If you could only rescue five pieces of musical equipment from a studio fire, what would they be?
I would rescue Ally’s Gibson and tenor sax, my flute, my Roli Seaboard and one of the Rolands – then we could still create music together.
The Roli Seaboard looks brilliant. How long have you used it and how did you manage before?
The seaboard is a very special midi controller. The sounds it uses come from a very complex synth computer programme. If you think of the difference between a fretted bass and a fretless bass, the seaboard is more like the fretless bass. It does not have keys and you can slide between notes and play real vibrato. I have had used it for about 4 years, it was a 40th birthday present from Ally. I only use it in the studio and don’t take it gigging. It was easy to manage before I had it because you manage with your normal instruments because that is what you know. I could manage without it really but there is something VERY special about this instrument that is so expressive and so much fun.
Favourite inspirational quotes?
“Moment by moment, breath by breath”.
“As within so without”.
Thanks a lot Tree. Say hi to the band! Last words, plans for the band, and for your artistic ventures?
Thanks so much.
The band are already working towards albums 6 and 7. We will continue to expand and explore music together. We would love to tour in Europe, so fingers crossed for that. We have lots of gigs planned in the UK for next year including a Northern tour.
For myself I will be continuing to include music in my circus adventures and looking to perform live music on a trapeze in the next year or so, but not at an Emerald Dawn gig because we have too much equipment to carry around as it is!
https://theemeralddawn.bandcamp.com/music
Old Man's Mettle 