About Emory Duncan
Originally from Houston, Texas, Emory Duncan doesn’t like to sand down the edges. Blending pastoral Americana with weathered indie folk, his songs feel lived-in and personal like somebody’s shot of whiskey over everybody’s cup of tea.
Raised around his father’s classic country records and his mother’s classic rock, Duncan picked up the guitar while still young and has played almost entirely by ear ever since. That instinctive approach carries into his songwriting, where unexpected arrangements, imperfect moments and whatever simply “sounds right” are often more important than following the rules.
After five years in Los Angeles, Duncan moved with his wife to the Santa Cruz Mountains, where they now live in a log cabin beneath the redwoods. When he isn’t writing, he works at a nearby winery and spends much of his time backpacking, snowboarding, and climbing.
Songwriting is a daily practice. He collects overheard phrases, fragments of ideas and passing thoughts, trusting that occasionally one will open the door to something deeper. His songs live somewhere between uncertainty and possibility, using writing as a way to understand feelings that often aren’t clear until they find their way onto the page.
His second EP, Semicircles and Half Written Songs, was recorded there over the course of a week with producer Jamie Mefford (Gregory Alan Isakov, Nathaniel Rateliff).
“Often the way I feel about something is really only revealed to me after I've written about it. Songwriting is kind of my way of getting in touch with my subconscious and allowing myself the space to feel all the intrusive emotions we typically like to shut out.”
Emory writes to process, to survive, and to pry open the buried parts of the psyche that polite society prefers to repress. His writing dances along the edges of nostalgia, like a dream your eyes can’t quite recall into focus, and is as raw and haunted as it is lived-in.
And his songs are soundtracks for outcasts, romantics, and anyone who’s ever felt too much but couldn’t find the words.