Brown Emily

Kathleen Hay
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January 11, 2010

Emily Brown was always intrigued by her late grandmother's Second World War diary while growing up in her Iroquois home. The artist, known to friends and family as Emily Millard, has just released her latest recording In Technicolor which was inspired by the journal. The CD was featured on CBC's Bandwidth for a Remembrance Day program with Amanda Putz.

IROQUOIS - Miss Emily Brown is enjoying a reality that's interspersed with moments of surrealism.

One of Canada's premiere up-and-comers, her debut release Part of You Pours Out of Me was named one of the top 12 albums of 2008 by CBC's Alan Neal. Her tour that October included a performance at Wakefield's famed Black Sheep Inn where she earned a spot on CBC Radio's Concerts on Demand.

Her newest CD, In Technicolor, (which came to fruition through a successful Canada Council for the Arts submission) was featured during a Remembrance Day show
with Amanda Putz on CBC's Bandwidth. It is available for purchase at Melody Music (Cornwall), Ivories, Strings and Things (Iroquois) and online at www.emilybrownmusic.com

A compilation of eight original pieces based on a diary her paternal grandmother kept during the Second World War, In Technicolor is a delightful release that uniquely
blends Brown's ethereal voice and tune-smithing abilities with a bow to social history.

"What's surreal to me is out comes Alan Neal to introduce you as this great up-and-coming artist on the radio, then you're back to daily life where you're trying to make life happen as a performer;" says Brown, who's best known to local folk as Emily Millard, a graduate of Seaway District High School.

"I don't think of myself as the type of person who likes to be the centre of attention. "There's such a huge amount of work to do in this business. You're just doing your job.''

Brown found her inspiration in the diary of Leanora (Ridsdale) Millard, a member of the Canadian Women's Army Corps, when she was only a young teenager . It was right therein the book case," says Brown getting up to peruse the corner of her family's living room.

"There were some old photographs, my grandfather's war medals and a little leather case
that zips up. "The diary was in the case."

The journals was originally meant as a method for her grand mother to keep track of letters sent to her by her husband, Eddie Millard, who was an aircraft fitter on Halifax bombers in England.

"They actually met through her father as Eddie worked with him.'' explained Brown, adding with a laugh. "He would bring boys home to the family for dinner, and actually her sister started dating him first. "Then she decided maybe he's better for you!"

The couple were married in December 1944 in England, but were separated by different postings. The young bride began keeping the diary a month after their wedding, and kept it up for the next six months until the war's end.

The petite writing in the diary chronicles the young bride's anticipation of the daily mail, which sometimes arrived with letters from her beloved, or sometimes not. Entries like "Two letters from Eddie;' or "Bad day today ... no mail" are a window to her emotions, as well as her desire to be reunited with him back in Canada.

Brown, who had been pursuingthe music business in British Columbia, spent six months living in Montreal researching and writing material for the project. "You had to really read between the lines in the diary,'' said Brown. "Sometimes she'd only write a sentence per day and she would number all the letters. She also wrote of different movies she'd seen, where she'd go to dance, like the Hammersmith Palais de Dance.''

Poignant entries like ''100 letters to my darling and I'm still not home" struck a special chord with Brown. "I never met her, she died before I was born.'' she pondered.

"I've always been curious, you wonder where parts of you have come from.'' Her research also led her to another journal which she incorporated into a song, The Diary of Amy Briggs, a nurse who was posted in Leeds, UK." Her journal really caught my
eye.'' she noted. "It was so raw and emotional, a very intense story.

"She had two daughters, worked long shifts and she dreaded her husband coming home on leave.'' The release's title came through a theme the artist saw developing throughout her research. It wasn't intentional, but there it was: the movies.

"Once I'd written all the songs, I sat down and looked at them;' she recalled. "Movies started coming through ... Leanora would write of them, Amy used them as a way to
release all the emotions she was experiencing:'

Brown currently is making her base at home in Iroquois.

Now that the CD is released, she's focusing on marketing it, before heading out in March with some Montreal friends on a tour that will take them from La belle province to Newfoundland. Last fall, she teamed up with fellow songwriter James Lamb for a cross-Canada tour on VIA Rail where they'd perform half-hour sets in each car. "It was great!" she says.
Then there's her neo-folk work with producer Corwin Fox for the duo Morlove. They recently recorded All of My Lakes Lay Frozen Over, in a tiny church in Wells, B.C., and it's set to be released in early 2010.

For Brown, the hectic, demanding schedule is work, hard work, but work she enjoys. There are those moments when it does seem rather surreal, something more than a little unusual for a gal from Iroquois.

"It's funny, you know. People will come up to me and say, 'Things are going really well for you!'' but I never think of it. You don't really sit back and see the big picture. I wouldn't want to be doing anything else,'' Brown said.