Stream: Aaron Embry, ‘The Wheel’

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Aaron Embry at Echo Park Rising 2014 (Photo by Joel Michalak)
Aaron Embry at Echo Park Rising 2014 (Photo by Joel Michalak)

Singer-songwriter Aaron Embry’s singular voice has been largely absent from the local radar since he released the heartrendingly beautiful album “Tiny Prayers” in 2012. Embry, onetime touring hand with the likes of Elliott Smith, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros and Willie Nelson, and frontman of the band Amnion, is ensconced in Ojai, living the life of a family man, trying in these troubled times to find hope where he can. (Working with a local children’s opera production, for instance.)

On Nov. 10, he released a new album to Bandcamp. “Life Ahead,” — the first of what Embry promises will be annual album releases on his birthday. It’s an eclectic mix of folk and classical music that includes 1) a handful of heart-stopping originals, 2) two covers of songs by a guy named Johann Sebastian Bach and 3) a cover of the 1958 gospel classic “Lord Keep Me Day By Day” (The Caravans).

The album begins with Embry in his folk-singer finery, issuing a cautionary tale titled “The Wheel.” It plays on the notion that life’s wisdom is passed down from generation to generation, and we should heed our elders. Except in “The Wheel,” he sings, “It’s sad to say they don’t make them old man stories like they used to.” The song actually originated, Embry says, by remembering his own childhood experiences and then imagining himself — in his current state of mind — in that role.

“I loved my great grandfather Virgil dearly. He lived to be 105 and I used to sit an listen to him tell stories for hours and hours. When he and his wife were alive we built our family gatherings around them,” he explains. “The song came after I watched a doc about euthanasia called ‘How to Die in Oregon.’ I was struggling with strong suicidal fantasies at that time and thankfully I’m past them, but the film and familial estrangements with my father haunted me somehow. I tried to imagine where some of the angry, bitter resentments might be leading me if I grew old with them. Writing the song was not an effective way of purging those feelings, but illustrating those feelings has been helpful.”

Embry, who says his main income these days comes from the tip jar that sits on his piano, has made “Life Head” available on Bandcamp on a name-your-price basis.

||| Stream: “The Wheel”

||| Previously: “Raven’s Song”