There’s a plentiful heap of rock stars that let fame go to their heads and then there’s a meager pile of others who stay modest throughout the heights of success. Emery is one of the latter, despite success with a catalogue of chart-topping creations that in turn brought them a frenzied force of fans.
“A lot of times people might look to band members as higher than them or better than them, but that’s not the case at all,” vocalist/bassist Devin Shelton says. “Just because we have musical talent or get to play in front of a bunch of kids every night, then that makes us not really any different at all. We’re just pretty lucky to be able to do what we do.”
Shelton is one of the quintet who make up the band along with vocalist/bassist Toby Morell, guitarist/vocalist Matt Carter, keyboardist/vocalist Josh Head and drummer Dave Powell.
The horde started out in Rock Hill, S.C., when members Morell, Shelton and Carter met in college and united to form Emery after graduation. On a musical whim in September of 2001, they decided to move to Seattle. “There wasn’t anything going on in South Carolina back then. So, we were like, ‘Well, we need to go somewhere that’s going to have more opportunity,'” says Shelton. “We thought about L.A. and New York, but that is kind of where everybody goes, so we thought Seattle would be a better place to start out.”
The band’s move proved to be valid; Emery soon signed on to Tooth & Nail Records, where they have released ’04s The Weak’s End and ’05s The Question. Their newest album, ’07s I’m Only A Man, opts as a balancing act between the screamo-hardcore bands beginning state of being and a newer melodic approach to harmonies. From the album’s first track “Rock-N-Rule,” this balance is quite clear. But there are other standouts such as the bands first single, a catchy track about dead-end party lifestyles “The Party Song,” the softer thwarted “World Away,” guitar gushing “After The Devil Beats His Wife” and the dance-disco accessorized “Don’t Bore Us, Get To The Chorus.”
Of the newly added elements, Shelton says, “Just by trying to branch out and do different things we realized we were taking a risk, because a lot of times fans want to hear the same style from the bands they listen to. We were hoping that everyone could kind of get the idea of what we were going for, that we weren’t trying to go off the deep-end and that we weren’t trying to do something so different but that we were trying to expand ourselves.”
The Emery crew also expanded across the United States, putting a distance between themselves that would seem to have posed a music-making dilemma for I’m Only A Man. “We have to travel before tours,” Shelton says. “When we come together and start putting songs together we’ll have basic ideas down and then get the other guys input into what we want to do. The rest of the songs will come together when we have some time to sit down and write all together.”
And that’s just what happened when Emery sat down to write their third album. On crafting the song “After The Devil Beats His Wife,” Shelton explains, “The funny thing is, Toby put the lyrics to that song and he wrote it basically about how a friend is drowning and you tried to save them but couldn’t. It is meant to be an actual drowning in a sense, but also it can be taken metaphorically and can easily apply to anyone’s life that lost somebody or tried to help somebody in a situation and couldn’t quite help them.” Afterwards Shelton recounted a similar situation of his father, who once failed to save a friend from drowning. “It was kind of eerie how the story correlated with the song,” he says.
In the end, it’s obvious that I’m Only A Man is brewed full of relevant songs that anyone could relate to on some scale. Emery’s message should be evident from the album’s title and from its career outlook, but in case you still aren’t sure Shelton says it loud and clear. “Nobody’s perfect. Everybody makes mistakes and everybody has faults. The main thing is just for everybody to realize that you do have those things and you are only just a man or just a woman. No matter what there always is hope.”
Emery will perform at Tremont Music Hall on Friday, March 21, with Mayday Parade and As Cities Burn. Tickets are $14 in advance and $16 on the day of the show.
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2008.
