
In life and music, Emma Tricca is an explorer. Just as Davey Graham set sail for Morocco and Vashti Bunyan for the Outer Hebrides in search of their elusive muse, Rome-raised singer-songwriter Tricca has journeyed to London, New York, Texas and further afield to seek the heart of her own music. And like those renowned voyagers, she’s returned with a set of songs that refresh the tired old folk form. Tricca’s new album St Peter – created with a cast of supporting artists including global icon Judy Collins, Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley and Dream Syndicate guitarist Jason Victor – takes a bracing plunge into the unknown, leaving the folksinger tag far behind with a rolling collection of reverie-inducing raw diamonds.
It was encouragement from Pentangle legend John Renbourn that started Tricca on her lifelong path. An aspiring young player, she met Renbourn after a solo gig in Rome and impressed him with her fresh-cut songs. A move to the UK was inevitable, gigging around folk clubs first in Oxford and later in London, honing her craft as a songwriter and a fingerstyle guitarist. Extended stays in New York and Texas followed, before Tricca returned to London to begin work on her first melancholic masterpiece, 2009’s crystalline long-player Minor White.
The album was released on Bird Records, an offshoot of Finders Keepers run by husband and wife team Jane Weaver and Andy Votel, who’d been thrilled by Tricca’s talent (and her Italian leather boots) at the Green Man Festival in 2006. They secured her a show at Jarvis Cocker’s Meltdown Festival in London, ensuring international exposure, a major European tour and a run of shows with her old friend Renbourn.
Five years later Tricca released Relic, an album even more poised and precise than its predecessor. Scoring rave reviews across the board – 4 stars in Record Collector and Mojo, 5 in Time Out – the album added gentle percussion and plaintive orchestration to the established pattern of hushed guitar and heartfelt vocals. A collaboration with longtime friend and guitar wizard Jason McNiff led to 2017’s sparkling Southern Star EP, while a song on the soundtrack of Patrick Stewart-starring US indie film Match raised her profile. But encouraged by Weaver – who urged her to ‘explore the weirdness’ in her music – Emma Tricca was hungry for a new challenge.
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