A NEW NOTE

Another chapter for Gryner

Emm Gryner will make a trip back to the Forest Fall Fair on Friday.

More than two decades ago, the singer-songwriter was playing a solo show at that fair, near her childhood home in the suburbs of Camlachie, before flying to New York City to rehearse as a backup singer in David Bowie's band for his 1999 appearance on Saturday Night Live.

“Forest has a really special place in my heart,” Gryner said.

This time, her 7 p.m. show in the beer tent on the fair's opening evening comes as Gryner adds another line to her long resume, alongside Juno nominations, recording with an astronaut, touring the world with Bowie, releasing close to 20 albums of her own (including a jazz album in 2020) and, in recent years, coaching other singers.

Her first book, The Healing Power of Singing, will be released Sept. 28, but Gryner said signed copies already are available for sale from The Book Keeper in Sarnia.

Gryner said she traces this latest step in her career to 2018, when she watched a DVD included with a special album release of Bowie's 2000 Glastonbury Festival concert.

“I was sort of in a bad place in my life when I saw it — post-divorce and Bowie had passed away,” she said.

She had mixed emotions watching the concert where she performed, as a young musician in her 20s, as part of Bowie's band, but it also resulted in an “awakening,” Gryner said.

“I looked around at myself … struggling as a single mom and making it look like I have a lot going on when I'm actually having a hard time.”

Watching the concert from years before, she had the feeling performing was “what I was meant to do,” Gryner said.

“I realized I was living my Camlachie dream” formed back when she was singing in her childhood bedroom and hoping to someday make something of her love of songwriting, Gryner said. “And I had, but I just wasn't grateful for it.”

The experience of watching the DVD also came at a time when people in St. Marys, where she lives, were coming to her and asking for singing lessons.

“Teaching singing was not something that I ever wanted to do,” Gryner said.

But she did it anyway and discovered teaching brought with it the gratitude she had been missing.

“I thought, `I should write about this,' ” Gryner said.

The book that came out of that inspiration includes tips and instructions for singing, as well as stories from her life as a musician.

“Some are uncomfortable and some are embarrassing, but some are also very funny,” she said.

“It was hard to write because I wasn't sure a book should be those different things, but I really think learning was intertwined with doing for me. So it makes sense to me these stories would be in there with some tips.”

When she was starting out decades ago, Gryner didn't believe she had a strong singing voice, but a vocal teacher all those years ago, Mitch Seekins, told her it would come.

“It took me a couple of years and it took a lot of singing outside of the lessons, but it did come,” she said. “So, I try to tell that to the people I work with.”

The book's back cover includes blurbs by Jann Arden and Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara, and Gryner recorded Instagram conversations with fellow musicians, including Arden, Chantal Kreviazuk and Matt Nathanson, in the days leading up to the book's release.

She said she enjoyed the conversations and learning about their processes, “how their voice has guided them,” and problems they've faced.

“If you start following your passion … you start hearing these other passionate stories,” she said. “Those have been really fun.”