WA’s Emily Barker on recording album in hotel quarantine, fleeing Bridgetown fire ahead of Albany gig

Emily Barker’s passion for performing ignited when she watched Albany’s The Waifs as a teenager. The Bridgetown-raised musician, who has been based in the UK for the past 20 years, is back in her hometown where she is preparing to pack her bags and hit the road on tour. The award-winning singer-songwriter will play her first gig at the Vancouver Arts Centre in Albany from 5pm next Sunday supported by Walpole twin-duo Oceanique. The tour comes on the back of the release of her latest album, Room 822, produced in collaboration with her husband and UK producer and multi-instrumentalist Lukas Drinkwater. The pair cover Australian classics and favourites from the likes of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Waifs, Deborah Conway and Kasey Chambers. The 41-year-old is best known as the writer and performer of the theme to the BBC’s crime drama Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh. She spoke to Inspire from her parents’ place in Bridgetown, where the small town with a population just shy of 3000 is recovering from a bushfire disaster. The blaze has destroyed one home and left one man in hospital since it started on Saturday. “Having to evacuate was pretty intense and traumatic,” she said. “My family are OK. The whole town was advised to evacuate and we went up to Manjimup, thankfully the house was all right.” Barker said she realised music was her calling after seeing The Waifs perform at her high school. “I thought ‘Oh my god, I love this’,” she said. “I already did singing at home. My mum played the guitar and my dad is a big music fan so we always had records playing.. “When I heard (The Waifs) I thought, ‘Right, I want to start to doing this’, so I auditioned for the high school band, started singing and and then writing songs and soon after music became the thing I loved to do most.” Barker moved to the UK 20 years ago after she became unsure of what life had in store for her. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do at uni, I’d done a year and then buggered off and went backpacking,” she said. “I ended up meeting a lot of good musicians and forming a group and then all my music opportunities happened over there, which has kept me there.” Six years ago, Barker met her husband Lukas. The duo recorded Room 822 in a Perth hotel room during hotel quarantine in October last year. “Fourteen days in one room with no fresh air is not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but in order to visit my family back here in Australia after almost two years away, my husband Lukas and I decided it was worth the time in quarantine,” Barker said. We thought a good way to kill the hours — and avoid killing each other — would be to set ourselves a goal.” Barker said finalising the album’s 10-song tracklist was challenging. “I found myself gravitating towards songs that meant a lot to me in my late teens growing up in WA, songs I would put on the tape deck of my yellow VW Beetle while driving to the coast with the windows down, singing at the top of my lungs,” she said. After choosing tracks by artists Alex Lloyd, You Am I, Silverchair and Kasey Chambers, Barker also listened to “anything and everything by The Waifs, and for obvious reasons, we chose London Still.” Writing and recording songs in the confinement of a hotel room overlooking the streets of Perth didn’t come without difficulty. Barker said the constant hum of the refrigerator could be heard in the recording, despite all the pillows and instrument cases they piled against it. “We had interruptions from choppers flying past, police and ambulance sirens, someone with a rowing machine in the room above us, and phone calls to our room from hotel reception letting us know our meals in paper bags were outside our door,” she said. However, by day 12 of quarantine, the husband-and-wife team had finished an album Barker described as “minimal, alternative covers of some of Australia’s best song-writers and songs”. While she may hail from the neighbouring region of the South West, Barker said Albany played a big part in her childhood. “I came as a kid regularly where we would stay at Emu Point and have a week in a caravan, all six of us in the family, and enjoy the beaches, going to into town and the cinema,” she said. “Albany is quite a big town compared to Bridgetown. We had great holidays there, lots of wonderful childhood memories. “I’m really looking forward to playing at the VAC and connecting with the people who listen to my music there.” For tickets, visit https://bit.ly/3B7pym3