Emma Cook has found a way to channel the loss and frustration of a serious head injury and forced hiatus from music into an album filled with songs about loss and hope.
And that took her in a new direction, away from the folk music she sang earlier in her career.
The Toronto indie-pop singer began writing the songs that make up her latest album, Living Proof, while trying to find her way out of the fog in which she found herself as she battled Post-Concussive Syndrome.
“Living Proof explores what it means to be human, and particularly how we deal with loss, both of the selves we thought we knew and of those we love,” Cook says in a press release.
“This album was born out of a very challenging time in my life, after a bad head injury left me in a dark place, not knowing if or when I would recover. I wrote the whole album on piano, so it’s very different from my previous music and definitely has more of a pop sensibility.
“Ultimately, Living Proof is an album of hope, and the drive we have to survive. I think the songs are accessible to everyone, as the themes really touch on what it means to be human.”
Cook was well on her way to making a name for herself before a falling tree branch caused a serious head injury and forced her to take a hiatus from music to focus on recovery. After a three-year battle with Post-Concussive Syndrome, Cook released her third album, Same Old Song, at the end of 2016.
Earlier that year, Cook had also begun writing new songs, building the foundation for what would become Living Proof. The first single from her fourth album, which was released in February, would help her reach the second round of CBC’s Searchlight competition.
Cook wrote the songs that make up Living Proof on a piano she purchased while she was recovering from her head injury.
“I think definitely a part of me knew I wanted to get back to [music], but I didn’t have the capacity or something, I didn’t have the drive or the will,” she says.
When she was younger, Cook taught herself guitar, and she wrote a lot of songs while she was learning the instrument and practising so much. She hoped learning the piano would have the same effect.
“I remembered when I bought a guitar, the learning part was when I was the most creative,” she says.
“I knew I needed something to spur the creative juices again, so I decided to get a piano. I started playing around with it, and the songs started coming out of me. The songs in me weren’t really folk songs anymore, and the guitar wasn’t the right instrument.”
Starting to play and write music again was cathartic for Cook.
“It was more to do with the medicinal aspect of it at first,” she says.
“It was super helpful to be playing music again. I wasn’t really thinking I could play music again as a career. I personally believe music is pretty cathartic for everybody. I think music allows you to access feelings in a way that is different than talking or feeling. After the injury, I don’t know the word, but I was so sad because I thought I had lost a big part of myself. Having a brain injury, the ‘you’ that you know isn’t you anymore. It’s hard to verbalize it. I think the music got that out in a way words couldn’t.”
Cook has performed a lot since releasing Living Proof, but she recalls it was “super scary” when she started performing again after being away from music for so long, especially now that she had to worry about the effects of all the lights and noise.
“The first time I played after the break was terrifying, even more terrifying than I remember the first time I played when I was younger,” she says.
“With the head injury, it was hard for me because I couldn’t be in lights and around lots of people, and I was terrified I would get dizzy.”
Cook is now celebrating the release of Living Proof with a Western Canadian tour April 17-May 6 that takes her and her bandmates from Jasper, Alberta, to Port Alberni, B.C., and back to Calgary.
Cook will bring her new music to Quesnel Friday, April 20 when she performs at Pen-Y-Bryn Farm at 2911 Kersley Dale Landing Road. Cook and her band perform at 8 p.m., and doors open at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are available at the door, at Circle ’S’ Western Wear, online at penybrynfarm.ca or by contacting Lindsay at 1-250-510-5508.
Cook, who has two young children at home, is excited to get on the road again. She has been performing scattered shows, but this will be her first big tour in a while.
“I’m looking forward to re-connecting with that part of myself,” she comments.
She says she’s also excited for those special moments that happen between bandmates during a show when you share a stage for so many nights in a row.
To find out more about Cook, visit emmacookmusic.com.