I have been home now for just over two weeks and I’d like to state for the record that inertia is amazing. It’s the property that keeps an object (or a person) moving and, likewise, the property that keeps an object (or me) standing still. Once a speeding bullet stops, it lodges. I am truly not serving my surname right…   …read more.

The Wage Is The Stage, 2000 At this point in the story, all other part-time jobs were no longer in the picture and music was my full-time career. That meant that we were spending more time on the road than we were in Toronto and working like maniacs. I mean, no one said that being a full-time musician is anything…   …read more.

Permanent Marker, 1999 We started working on this project in the spring of 1999 and, by this time, Lyndell and I had been working with Cheryl Reid since the fall of 1998. I remember that I was living in a basement apartment in the Toronto neighbourhood called Parkdale. I had moved into it in the fall of 1998 after having…   …read more.

Canadian artist Ember Swift is an internationally touring musician and songwriter, and founder of the independent label Few¹ll Ignite Sound. Originally from Toronto, she has spent the past few years making her home base in the magnetic city of Beijing, China. She has released 10 albums and 1 DVD project since 1996 and continues to have a loyal fan base…   …read more.

Welcome to the 11-part Blog Series serving as a “literary drumroll” to the official release of 11:11, my newest musical creation. This is day #3 and there are 8 more albums to talk about after this one! Each album embodies a period in my career that has come and gone and includes audio snapshots of what was happening in my life…   …read more.

Welcome to the 11-part Blog Series serving as a “literary drumroll” to the official release of 11:11, my newest musical creation. Each day from Nov 1st-Nov 11th, I will be chronicling the previous albums, the journey of their arrival, and the stories behind the recording experiences and release parties. In most cases, I was also able to reach the original engineers…   …read more.

The last few weeks of my second trip to China included a lot of hanging out Guo Jian. I wasn’t taking it very seriously, though. He represented a sort of sugar-high daydream that China had become for me—liberty, foreign culture, exploration, healing—that I knew logically was soon to be doused with the cold Canadian reality of my established life and…   …read more.

Welcome to the 11-part Blog Series serving as a “literary drumroll” to the official release of 11:11, my newest musical creation. Each day for the next eleven days, I will be chronicling the previous albums, the journey of their arrival, and the stories behind the recording experiences and release parties. In most cases, I was also able to reach the…   …read more.

Canadian artist Ember Swift is an internationally touring musician and songwriter, and founder of the independent label Few’ll Ignite Sound. Originally from Toronto, she has spent the past few years making her home base in the magnetic city of Beijing, China. In other words, this is where she has been landing in between touring extensively throughout Canada, the US, Australia,…   …read more.

Newsletter Final Thought: October 2011 As I sit here, snugly in my Beijing apartment, I’m acutely conscious of the fact that I am poised to take at least six months off the stage starting next week. Of course, it’s a necessity with this ever-growing belly and then with the arrival of a new baby, but it spins me out a…   …read more.