Americana Highways presents this premiere of Secret Emchy Society’s song “Everything Was Fine” from their new album The Chaser, due out on May 15th. The album was produced, engineered, mixed and mastered by Tolan McNeil, and recorded at The Queer Country Cave in Oakland, CA.
“Everything Was Fine” was written by Cindy M. Emch, and features Cindy M. Emch on lead vocals and rhythm guitar; Tolan McNeil on backing vocals and lead guitar; Mya Byrne on mandolin; Hans Winold on upright bass and harmonica; Michele Kappel on drums and Carolyn Mark on backing vocals.
With a casual Bakersfield-rockabilly blend, Secret Emchy Society once again captivates anyone within earshot. “Everything Was Fine” transports you to the most of superficial human survival skills — just act like all is fine.
It’s funny – I had all of these little notes and jotted down things that had happened that year while I was on tour, but it was when I was home that the song really was born. I was working a food delivery job setting up corporate lunches in SF and it was just awful. Stuck in traffic all of the time, cutting my hands up on cheap aluminum food trays, having to push 200lbs of hot catered food up those crazy hills, it was a far cry from being on the road and playing shows. I was talking on speaker phone to my sometimes tourmate – and backup singer on the song, Carolyn Mark, about how I was just glad that we’d gotten some rain to help fight the fires we were having but also how much the job sucked, and she started making jokes about making raingels in the gutter rainwater to celebrate that everything would be fine. I told her right then I was stealing the idea of a raingel for the song, and when I got home from work I grabbed the guitar and got to work.
At its heart, “Everything was Fine” is about the call of the open road and the loneliness that can come along with it. Driving hundreds of hours on I-5 over the course of 2019, there are flat tires, the forest is burning 10 feet away from the road I’m driving, people sometimes just drive right off the road – and you just keep going to the next gig. Everything was fine becomes one of those reassuring mantras – even if you don’t always believe it.
I probably drove through Bakersfield six times while working on this album – so there was a lot of Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam on my shuffle for sure. Other folks on the phone jukebox were Waylon Jennings, Lydia Loveless, Those Darlins, Sarah Shook, Jason Hawk Harris, Neko Case, Lisa LeBlanc and of course a steady diet of my friends albums – Hearse, Carolyn Mark, Lavender Country, Karen & the Sorrows, High Card Drifters, Beckylin & Her Druthers… I could go on and on — Cindy M. Emch
Order here: https://emchy.bandcamp.com/album/the-chaser while you are listening right here: