Emm Gryner - Just for You (2020)

On Father's Day last year, I gave my 85 year-old dad a card that said I was going to make him a jazz album! Although I did this because I couldn't bear to give him another tin of Tim Hortons ground coffee, I knew deep down I had something more meaningful to give.

Jazz was all my dad ever played me and my brothers when we grew up. Sure, we were into our pop/rock and wanted to knife our eyes out when we heard his jazz, but over time, as I got older and as I traveled the world and met beautiful people who love to play this kind of music, I started to pay attention.

My dad played us a lot of piano-based jazz stuff by Errol Garner, Bill Evans, Art Tatum, Jan August and he even took me to see Oscar Peterson when I was 8. I did fall asleep, but maybe I had just had a long week of eating Fun Dip and feeding our pet chickens and didn't know what greatness was before me.

I've made music for 20 years, toured the world and it surprises me that I didn't think till recently to make my dad, someone who eternally makes me laugh, who has inspired me to be creative and bold, something of his very own. I asked him to make me a list of songs he'd like to hear me do. This was an amazing education for me, experiencing songs like "Where or When" or "Orange Colored Sky". I started to listen to the greats - Ella Fitzgerald, Chet Baker, Frank Sinatra...and even as scared as I was to dive in, I started to see what my dad loves in this music. He wants me to call this album, "Just For You". His ideas come without any deliberation, he knows what he wants and what would be classic.

Jazz is a new world for me. There's a different feel than the 2/4 snare of hair metal I've been used to banging along with. There's a subtlety, a dark, low-lit sensuality, a twisted edge to some of the great music of this era. There's a beauty, a history, a rebelliousness and most of all, my dad just loves to hear music swing. He loves melody. He loves a good lyric. Maybe all of those times he played us Wes Montgomery or Larry Adler or even that jazzy Willie Nelson album called "Stardust", he was teaching me about melody. It was a battle in our house growing up, Dokken was coming out of one room, Genesis out of another, Madonna out of mine and then all of this "other" kind of music out of my dad's den. Right now where I'm at in my life, I can listen to the voice of Julie London, and fade right into a place of perfect solace. She knows my heartbreak. I get it now.