Emily Maguire

Emily Lucy Maguire (born 8 March 1975) is an English singer-songwriter.

She has released five albums to date which are distributed through Universal by Active Media.

All the songs apart from one cover version are written and composed by Maguire.

She has also released two books, containing a mix of poetry, prose, song lyrics and diary entries.

Maguire runs her own record label Shaktu Records with her husband Christian Dunham.

Maguire was born in South London, but most of her childhood was spent in Cambridge, England.

She grew up without a TV at home and developed a passion for books and music, learning to play the cello, piano, flute and recorder from a very early age.

Her father initially got her playing the piano which led to a love for classical music.

She was raised with the music of Bach and Mozart.

At age 12 Maguire looked destined to become a professional cellist.

She played in competitions, attended courses on chamber music, and took a master class with cellist Paul Tortelier.

When she was 17, she was involved in a car crash and a whiplash injury triggered fibromyalgia, a condition that affects the nervous system and results in chronic pain.

The condition affected her mobility for several years and by the time she was 21 she had to give up her job and was on walking sticks, sometimes completely housebound.

During this period she taught herself to play Bob Marley songs on the guitar and started writing her own songs inspired by his music.

She wrote hundreds of songs in her bedroom and purchased a ProTools Studio to start recording them at home on a computer.

By her mid 20s, her health had improved and she moved back to London, and started working again doing office jobs.

To begin with, Maguire did not see herself as a performer, but eventually began singing her songs in open-mic clubs.

In 2003 she went to stay with Christian Dunham in the Obi Obi valley up in the hills behind the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia.

Dunham plays bass guitar and was a member of an Australian rock band.

They later married, and together they produced her album in a recording studio next to their house, a shack with no heating, built from old bits of timber and metal with walls made from rendered potato sacks.

Mice live in Maguire's piano, and Huntsman spiders live in the bathroom.

Maguire overcame a snake phobia by giving a 7 ft python, who moved into the shack from neighbouring farmland, the name "Dudley".

Maguire recorded her debut album, Stranger Place, over 14 days and nights at the shack.

She and Dunham set up their own record label – Shaktu Records, named after the shack.

They took over the family cheese-making business in order to fund the album independently.

Proceeds were raised by the manufacture and selling of goats cheese.

In 2006, after completing another tour of the UK, the couple returned to Australia to record her second album, Keep Walking.

In July 2007 they returned to the UK to play the Cambridge Folk Festival and embark on a three-month tour of pubs and clubs before heading back to life on the farm.

On 9 September 2007 she was featured as a Sunday Spotlight artist on Aled Jones' Good Morning Sunday show on BBC Radio 2, and her song "Back Home", from the album Keep Walking, was played.

The manager of The Waterboys heard it and phoned Maguire to offer her a 16-date tour of Ireland with American singer Don McLean, culminating in a show at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

This story led to several articles appearing in the press, including one in The Guardian on 21 November 2007, titled "My Wildlife", and one in The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 November 2007, titled "Valley girl seduces London", as well as several live radio interviews on national radio in the UK.

On 16 October 2008 Maguire played her first major headline gig at The Bush Hall in London performing her songs with an all-girl string trio from The Royal Academy of Music plus Damon Wilson, the drummer from The Waterboys.

Her third album, Believer, was released in November 2009.

Maguire puts her classical training and cello-playing to use, writing and recording all the string arrangements for all her albums.

On her MySpace page she cites Bach, Bob Marley and Buddha as her influences.

A practising Buddhist for over 10 years, her albums are dedicated to her teacher Lama Jampa Thaye

Maguire released her first book titled Start Over Again on 1 October 2010.

It contains a brief autobiography and is based on the verses of her song "Start Over Again" (from her third album, Believer).

It includes her poetry, prose, song lyrics and personal diary entries that offer an insight into the creativity of a manic depressive mind.

She wrote about her tough battle with chronic depression and bi-polar disorder.