No Skips: Emma Jo walks on with high heels and six shooters on new LP Girl Bandit

Courtesy Emma Jo

In our series No Skips, we sit down with an artist or band and go track by track through their latest release. For some of us, the banter in a concert where a song gets explained is our favorite thing in the world, and we’d just like to keep living in that. Every song has a story, and these are those stories in the order you’ll encounter them on the record.

Kansas City singer-songwriter Emma Jo’s second full-length record, Girl Bandit has recently gone live on all streaming platforms, along with vinyl pressing. The record is her studio follow-up to her debut album, Brave. The 10-song album mainly centers around moving on from tragedy and toxicity, a theme expanded on and continued from her first record.

The Queen of the Silver Lining describes herself musically as a love child between Bruce Springsteen and Shania Twain, tributing her love of rock n’ roll from her late father, and country from her mother. Not only a talented songstress, Emma Jo is also a history nut, possessing a master’s degree in the field.

Predominately written in Kansas City and Branson, and recorded in Nashville, Girl Bandit features the musical talent of multiple artists, including producer Craig Wilson, Grammy winner Charlie Chamberlain, Adam Beard, Hermon Mehari, and John Salaway.

Our NO SKIPS begins now.

No Skips art by Jacqulyn Seyferth

The Pitch: The album has such a great opener with, “Queen of the Silver Lining.” Was that the perfect song to set the tone for the rest of the album? 

Emma Jo: It really sets the tone for what I’m trying to say with this record and what I think is sort of my philosophy on life, which is yes, bad things are gonna happen. Bad things are gonna happen to all of us, that is life. I lost my dad, I got into a stupid, abusive relationship, a lot of that is just part of life. You do things and experience things that aren’t fun. And it’s all about being able to take that and move forward you know. That’s what it’s all about. So I thought it would be a good thematic opener to kind of make this statement of this is who I am, this is what I believe, and this is what we’re gonna go through.

The second single, “Straight Into Mine” is a great follow-up to the first track. It has this Carrie Underwood feel to it both sonically and thematically. Is that your take on that relationship you had to go through? 

Emma Jo: I was in Nashville when I wrote the song, and I had recorded it on the iPhone’s voice memo app and sent it to some friends and family. And I got these messages back like Emma, this song. People are going to resonate with this. I think that anyone who’s experienced that kind of a relationship is going to hear it and go, wow, that was my life, and I’ve experienced that.

I’ve gotten DMs from girls who said thank you so much for telling this story because I’m going through it right now. Or they say that they’ve been through it before or whatever the case may be. And that makes me feel so good that my experience is reflected in a song that other people get to hear and find some sort of catharsis in because it’s all about harnessing your power after it’s over. And, if you’re still in it, my hope is that it’s telling people that there is something afterward.

The next track, “Walk” immediately proceeds, and perfectly continues on the themes discussed in “Straight Into Mine.” Were those both recorded and placed together to have that effect? 

Emma Jo: Both songs were written in Nashville, so as a result they have that sort of glossy Nashville kind of sound. “Walk” came after I started getting those DMs that I mentioned before. I told my producer Craig that I keep getting these DMs from girls who say they’re in this relationship that they think might be abusive or toxic. And they always ask me, how did you know it was time to walk away? How did you get the strength to do that? Because it’s a hard decision to make. And he goes, well what do you tell them? And what I said ended up being the song, which is that it’s not easy. And sometimes you feel like you need to be given a permission slip.

I remember putting things on Reddit’s Am I the Asshole forum. Like, I want to leave this situation, am I the asshole? I would explain it, and everyone would be like, no, your husband is and you need to get out. Or I would tell a counselor or a therapist what he did, asking if it is okay to leave. I was sort of looking for permission to do something that I knew I needed to do, but I wanted someone else to tell me. And, you know, at this point, if those girls need someone to give them permission, I’ll gladly stand up and say here’s your permission slips. Get the fuck out. But you don’t need anyone’s permission. If you know what is right for you, it’s okay to walk away.

The album’s fourth song and newest single, “In the Ozarks” sort of switches gears, and has that old traditional feel-good country vibe to it. Since it follows these empowering, emotional songs, does it act as sort of a taste breaker to continue that thematic lift towards positivity? 

Emma Jo: Yeah, I live in Kansas City, and I have family in Missouri. That does influence me and I’m definitely a nature girl. I do like getting out and seeing the stars. I really think a good way to reconnect with yourself is to reconnect with the world around you. And so “In the Ozarks” is very much about a city girl who occasionally just needs that moment of reconnection with nature. Sometimes I think everyone needs that. So it’s about self-care, really getting out of town with someone that you love and want to spend time with. That’s what the song is about. Really taking care of yourself and having those moments when it’s okay to just get away from it all.

Directly after, the album returns to a theme that feels more aligned with the previous tracks with “Mirror.”

Emma Jo: “Mirror” is the indication that I have been able to move on. And again, for those people who are still in bad situations, it’s my way of saying they can too. For the vinyl version, it actually closes the first half of the record. And it’s my way of saying that there’s life on the other side. And if you fall off, you can have beautiful things again, even if someone tried to take it away from you. Someone took your past, whatever that sucks, but they’re not going to take your future. So that’s what that song is really about.

The second half of the album opens with the title track, “Girl Bandit,” which has this awesome, Johnny Cash feel to it. Is this where you say here comes the badass bandit girl out from the ashes with a six-shooter on her hip? 

Emma Jo: “Girl Bandit” is this character that took root in my mind. I wrote it when I was still married, and I was still in the thick of this relationship. This character really took hold of my imagination, because I wanted to be like that. I thought it was so cool. That there could be a woman who decides, I may live under the patriarchy, I have disadvantages. But I also have advantages, and sometimes I’m going to be able to use them. And so she’s a woman who took the fact that she has certain powers over men, and she decides to use it, and she steals money from them, which I think is just a hilarious way of exploring some of the gender dynamics and the power dynamics that women and men have.

So the girl bandit is this powerful, sexy figure that I thought was something to sort of aspire to in a place where I was just down. A time when I wasn’t allowed to wear the things I wanted to wear and I had to walk on eggshells constantly. Just being able to harness some of that power from a fictional character really helped me in those moments when I needed it most to kind of break out. And now, I feel like I am the girl bandit. I’m really gonna try to embody her when taking these songs on tour and doing live performances. I’m really going to try to embody that sort of character.

The next track, “The Road to Ruin” has a really strong Reba feel to me, and it plays so well off of “Girl Bandit.” It has this great guitar solo and feels like the most rock-influenced track on the album. 

Emma Jo: It’s absolutely the most rock n’ roll inspired track. I told the guys in the band to channel that sort of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band feel with it. And they really did a great job. That’s the song that we play live and people are super impressed with. It has this huge energy, and I want people to sense that energy. And I got the idea for the name of the song when I was driving through New Mexico one day. I saw one of those handwritten billboards that said, whiskey, the road to ruin. And I thought it was really clever. It was just a fun, rock n’ roll song to drive the record forward.

Conversely, the sweetest-sounding song on the album, “Same Moon” really slows the pace down and feels more like a love song. Sonically, it’s much different than anything on the album, similar to “In the Ozarks.” It’s not an outlier, but feels much different. 

Emma Jo: Same Moon is one of my favorites because I had the idea for such a long time. I have two degrees in history, and I’ve always loved history. I’ve loved reading history and writing about historical figures, and I developed favorites. As a kid, I really fell in love with Anne Boleyn. But I was saddened that I’d never know her. She seemed like she was so cool. And so I had this idea when I looked at the moon one night, and I realized Anne Boleyn looked at that same moon. And so it became this idea that I would think about with people who were historical figures or people who I was just separated from for one reason or another, like dad after he passed away.

It was a way to feel connected with somebody that you can’t be with physically. The first verse is about Galileo. It started off as my song to Galileo. But then the second verse is about Neil Armstrong. So it kind of uses the moon as a way of connecting things together within the song. So that’s where it all came from. And I love it. I love playing it.

Another song that diverts somewhat is the ninth track, “Kansas City in the Autumn Time.” It has a really cool swinging-jazz feel to it, like something you would hear in the basement of a smokey club. The direct references to the city really help drive that home. 

Emma Jo: I have always wanted to live downtown. And for a long time, I was stuck in the suburbs. And I really wanted to be around that energy of downtown Kansas City. It’s always changing, and over the last 10 or 20 years, it’s come so far. I wanted to capture that in a song that would have some of the energy of what makes Kansas City such a special town. And that’s what it makes references to. Yes, this is a sports town where we do tend to get a little loud. This is a food town with that sweet barbeque smoke in the air, we’re the City of Fountains, and there’s arts and culture here.

So I wanted to capture some of those things in a way that makes people have that good type of feeling. And I think that Kansas City is particularly magical in the autumn, which is a fun way to bring it all together. And then when we went into the studio to record it, I said there’s this really cool club in Kansas City called The Green Lady Lounge. I pulled up pictures of it because I’m in Nashville, and these guys don’t know The Green Lady Lounge. So I showed them pictures and said this is the vibe I want.

The final track, “Twelve Steps” is a track that on this album, feels the least guarded and raw. It feels the most reflective of the journey you took on this record, looking back within your most vulnerable self. 

Emma Jo: It’s my favorite song on the album. The language is taken from my dad who was a recovering alcoholic. He was in recovery for 13 years before he died. And he used to take me to open AA meetings. And so I would come and I would hear all the stories of people there. And the AA meetings, to me, felt like a safe place where you’re hearing these wild stories of all these things that people had gone through. And yet it was a safe place where people felt growth, and people felt trust, and healing for sometimes the first time in their life. Hearing all those stories really, really impacted me as a young person. And so I took some of the language from a 12-step program, and I put it into the song because I think that program has all the markings of when you’re trying to start over and you’re trying to take the first step toward something.

I loved the language and the stories of people really trying to start a new life. And at the time, that’s what I was doing. I literally had my life turned upside down, and I had to start over. Which is scary, but exciting too. “Twelve Steps” is about those scary moments, the vulnerable moments where you’re like, what am I going to do? How am I gonna do that? And so it really becomes about taking one step at a time. It’s the beginning. It may be the last song on the album, but really, it’s the first step. And what I wanted was for people to get to the end of the album and say, okay, I’m ready to take the first step. And then flip it back over and listen to “Queen of the Silver Lining” again.

Emma Jo will be celebrating the Girl Bandit’s release on Friday, Nov. 10th at Knuckleheads where you can catch the songs live.