We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful EMPRIS. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with EMPRIS below.

EMPRIS, appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I’ve always played music since I was young, but I never shared it with anyone other than my college days. In my adult years after graduating college, I would pick up my guitar here and there, but never really did anything with my music. I got married in October of 2020 to my partner of 4 years and in early fall of 2022, he packed up and left. A few weeks later he asked for a divorce. I was left to just myself after 6 years of partnership. Music was all I had. I picked up my guitar and started playing music again. I discovered open mics in my local area and started playing in front of a room of people and shortly after, started booking gigs at restaurants. If I didn’t have the ability to play music, I don’t know how I would have handled the breakup. It was tough to have that life and partnership disappear so suddenly. So with music, I was able to find myself again.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

When I was 8 years old, I started taking piano lessons with my childhood nextdoor neighbor. She taught me how to read sheet music and play my favorite songs growing up. I stuck with playing piano since then all the way through to high school. When I was 14, I started taking guitar class at my school and really started to fall in love with the instrument. I learned that I could sing while playing guitar a lot better than I could while playing piano. I really started to discover my true vocal abilities while learning how to play guitar and started teaching myself covers of songs I really loved at the time. I kept this musical endeavor to myself because I was too shy to showcase it to anyone else. It wasn’t till about junior year of college when I joined some musical clubs and did some open mics, but even then, I wasn’t very confident in my abilities to play in front of people. After my partner left in 2022, I finally just entered a local open mic, many many years post college and haven’t been playing that much since, and it all just clicked that I deserve to be in this musical space too.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part of being an artist and writing stories in my lyrics is that it reaches people and brings new relationships into my life. The people that have seen me play or sing my music tell me that they love the lyrics and that it really speaks to them. I wrote my songs as a way to heal from the pain, grief and loneliness that I felt after separation, and it’s amazing to hear that my lyrics help others in some way, whether that’s just from enjoying the music or that they can relate to the story.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Back in 2019, I started my instagram account centered around secondhand and thrifted fashion, sharing creative outfits and joined in the thrifting community on the platform. During the pandemic, it was much easier to spend a lot of time on the platform and sharing content super consistently. I participated in a lot of online community engagements such as “style challenges” which was a way that all of us thriters could share our outfits together based on prompts that inspired our looks. In 2022, I took a back seat from being so consistent with content and started shifting towards sharing my music on instagram instead. My audience has pretty much dwindled since transitioning to music content over fashion content, but there are still followers that have been following along since my fashion days. My advice for building a social media presence is just be yourself, share what you’re passionate about, share stories, and that helps create a space where followers feel like they are involved in your life, which I think is really special.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/yourempris
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@empris
• Other: https://empristhegems.hearnow.com/three-of-swords?fbclid=IwY2xjawMRe0tleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFEbHpsQk9BZklKUFVhNXhqAR43xgAg4hQhh6j6b-45SH8WYBEyoFhL959lRsK-_pLbeOoTZ0KQLDvrb4nIBA_aem_Iw6MkboTUtpkp-xv2N71vg

Image Credits

Photo Credit to Gabriel Hoff (pictures 1 & 2) , Daniel Geiss (picture 5) and Ryan Peake ( pictures 3, 4 & 6).