Song Lore: The Songs that Built Emmy Ryan

I might sound like a cult leader here.

But folk music can change your life in profound ways. Seriously, the number of folkies I've met who describe being trapped until they found folk music.

It's just a genre Erin, not a religion, settle down.

My theory is that folk music feels freeing because it expands us outwards. It's deeper and bigger than just being a "genre" - at least in my definition. It gets to be a verb (Folk Practices, the Folk Process), collective noun (Folk Community) alongside being an adjective ("folky").

You go out into community, tradition and shared repertoire, then come back to your own songs with more company around you, and with a little less ego, perfectionism and commercialism.

Emmy Ryan's Song Lore story got me thinking about all this. How you can start dazzled by the possibilities of musicianship, then end up trapped inside the very systems meant to teach it. And how it’s never too late to fall in love with an instrument and make the music you were hoping to make all along.

Here’s Emmy Ryan’s story, through protest songs, folk community, long roads, heartbreak, and the mandolin that brought the music back.

About our Song Lore series:

In this series, musicians trace their origin story through the songs that shaped them. You get to hear how those threads run through hometowns, heartbreaks, teachers and turning points, before coming together to shape an artist’s sound.

You also gets some excellent music recommendations along the way!

Listen along with the companion playlist on YouTube or Apple Music for the full sensory experience.

The Ordinary World: where Emmy began

I was steeped in Australian rock and folk-country from an early age.

There was always something by Paul Kelly, Men at Work, Jimmy Little or Cold Chisel spinning on the record player when I was a kid in Gundagai on Wiradjuri Country in the 1990's.

As a teenager playing in pub cover bands in the early 2000's, I used to groan every time I had to play "Khe Sanh", but it’s truly stood the test of time, and probably planted the seed of songs about social justice that would bloom decades later.

The Call to Adventure: the moment music hooked her

I was a teenager on Bundjalung Country when Béla Fleck and the Flecktones came out to play at the East Coast Blues & Roots Festival just up the road. A friend’s high school music teacher made us promise not to miss them, and I’ll be forever grateful to them for that, because those shows literally changed my life.

I’m sure it was part of what made me decide to study music at uni.

I remember the tunes "Big Country" and "Stomping Grounds" in particular exploded my brain and made me feel things that I didn’t know music could make you feel.

I only wish Sam Bush was out with them for the shows, because it might have made me pick up the mandolin 20 years earlier than I did!

Refusal of the Call: Doubt and resistance 

Studying music in an institution can truly feel like the film ‘Whiplash'. It sure did teach me a lot of wonderful and important things. But it also taught me lies that I’ve since had to unlearn: that music is a competition, that you’ve gotta be “better” than your peers, that if your voice doesn’t fit a particular tone or vibrato pattern you’re not good enough.

I came out feeling pretty dejected and aimless, and the music slowly drifted away.

One of the things that I did hold onto and have revisited constantly since those years, though, was the music and philosophy of Miles Davis: Cherish silence and space, play with musicians who listen, leave room for improvisation, embrace mistakes, keep learning, and evolve.

Meeting the Mentors: who shaped her musical DNA

I had my second musical awakening at Woodford Folk Festival 2022-23 when I had my mind blown by mandolin player Jacob Jolliff. It sent me into a tailspin of existential crisis (which I now look back on fondly as an existential epiphany).

At the time, I was working very long hours in a top 10 law firm and making plans to become a barrister and had all but lost my identity as a musician and a songwriter. I had never even considered the mandolin as an instrument for me and, all of a sudden, I was obsessed.

The day I got home from Woodford I bought a mandolin and I haven’t looked back. It truly brought the music back into my life. I found a lovely teacher Justin Vilchez (High Street Drifters), who has taught me so much and who introduced me to so many wonderful mandolin players, including Andrew Marlin and his band Watchhouse, and life has never been the same.

Trials and Transformations: road records and heartbreak

I’ve spent more time on the road touring than I have at home over last two years, and even home itself has changed three times across three states and territories.

I’ve really leaned on my favourite records to get me through the long drives between Mparntwe/Alice Springs on Arrernte Country, Naarm/Melbourne on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country, and Northern Rivers NSW on Bundjalung Country.

There are maybe seven or eight records that feel like home when I’m not quite sure where home really is. A lot of them are about heartbreak, leaving, travelling great distances, and living a solitary life, and each one of them was an influence on the songs and tunes that make up my upcoming record Unfold.

One of my go-to albums for these road trips is Bella White’s album Just Like Leaving (Reed Stutz’s mandolin playing on that record is a real delight!)

The Return: where is she now?

The great thing about having such diverse influences is that they’re like ingredients you put into a blender that get all mixed up and come out as a new kind of sound.

My two most recent releases also really speak to the influence that the land and connecting with country and community has on me.

“Together” is a song I wrote in Mparntwe/Alice Springs at the tail end of a long, hot, dry summer. I was feeling lonely and isolated, frustrated that the rain wouldn’t come, and unsure where I belonged in community.

Then I saw the river flow for the first time, and realised I was already part of community, because we are all right here together.

It’s also a call to people of the world to stand together against hate.

The tunes in my Gumbaynggirr set are both about places that make you feel the magic.

"Dundurriga" is the Gumbaynggirr word for ‘stringybark’ and there is speculation that the name of the town Dorrigo is derived from this word.

I wrote the tune the day I got home from a beautiful weekend playing at Dorrigo Folk & Bluegrass Festival 2025. You can hear the magpies in the morning, the waterfalls cascading down the mountain, and the tension of heartstrings being pulled (which is a bit of foreshadowing for the story that unfolds in the album). 

“Jackadgery Gap” is a landform just west of Grafton, NSW, where a number of national parks converge. Every tune writer’s gotta have a tune about a gap or a ridge or a forge of some description, and this is mine.

There’s speculation that the word Jackadgery means ‘a foolish act’ in Gumbaynggirr, and the band really leaned into this when recording the tune. These tunes are so much fun to play live.

Thanks Emmy!