Called “one of the most multi-talented artists you will ever come across” by Grassrootsy, EMay is an award-winning songwriter, soulful singer, exceptional fingerpicking guitarist, and eclectic musician. She is most frequently compared to Alanis Morissette (whom she has studied with), Tracy Chapman, Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin, and is poised well to sit in this upper echelon of female singer-songwriters. Voted a “West Virginia Wonder Woman” in 2021, EMay has been honored with several awards and grants for her art and music, such as a Heinz Endowments Pittsburgh Creativity Project award for her “many contributions to our cultural landscape”, New Music USA, and the Mid-Atlantic Songwriters’ Association.
EMay’s 2019 studio album, Let Out Your Ghosts, was produced by multiple Grammy-award winner Jimmy Hoyson and features 10 tracks of alternative folk-rock from the greats who invented the genre: guitarist Marc Ford (The Black Crowes, ) keyboardist Rami Jaffee (Foo Fighters, The Wallflowers), percussionist Michael Jerome (Better Than Ezra, Richard Thompson Trio) and bassist Taras Prodaniuk (Richard Thompson Trio, Merle Haggard, Lucinda Williams). She has recorded 13 additional albums, as emay and in collaboration with the experimental rock band The Moon My Twin, the doom-metal group Black Yo)))ga Meditation Ensemble, Turkish Folk project Kirik Hava, and acoustic trio Between Liberties.
She has performed with those groups, as well as B&E, an acoustic duo with her sweetheart, mantra and meditative yoga music as AHYAME, party band The Sectionals, and as a session musician. She has performed alongside 10,000 Maniacs, Rusted Root, Dar Williams, Loudon Wainwright III, The Black Lilies; at TEDx, Stanford University, The Purple Fiddle. She is a long-time student of W. A. Matthieu, with many other notable teachers including Alanis Morisette, Jorma Kaukonnen, Natalie Goldberg, Allyson Grey, Alex Grey, Michael Azgour, Brenda Hillman, Zafira Dance Company, Nick Woolsey, and Cindy Chung; she carries certificates from The Himalayan Institute, Stanford CS, Carnegie Mellon and Dana Hall School.
After growing up in the Boston suburbs and spending many years in Pittsburgh, EMay now lives at Healthberry Farm in the rural mountains of West Virginia, where she homesteads and beekeeps with her love, creates work in the studio, teaches, leads retreats, hosts special events, paints, and wanders the woods with her dogs.
For more on her non-musical adventures, visit erikamay.com.
E. MAY 