Emily Maguire - The Slaughtered Lamb

Emily Maguire

Emily Maguire - voice, keys, guitar
Christian Dunham - bass
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support by
Ben Walker - guitar

15th September 2018
The Slaughtered Lamb, London, UK

Emily Maguire and Christian Dunham performed to a packed crowd at The Slaughtered Lamb in London for the last night of her 2018 UK tour.  You can see photos of the gig on Emily’s Facebook page. Emily is doing a special one-off gig on Saturday 27 October 2018 at Gaunts House in Wimborne before starting her book tour in November.  Dates and ticket links for all these gigs can be found here.

Christian Dunham

Singer-songwriter, composer, poet, multi-instrumentalist and mental health advocate, Emily Maguire is an artist like no other, her remarkable story of recovery an inspiration for those who know her music. Born in London, Emily grew up in Cambridge with no TV at home, a bookworm obsessed by her children’s history books, playing sport and music, learning the piano, cello, flute and recorder.
When she had her first breakdown at 16, diagnosed as acute clinical depression, Emily left home and dropped out of college.  A car crash that same year triggered fibromyalgia pain syndrome (FMS), a chronic nervous system disorder that causes constant pain.  By the time she was 21, Emily was on walking sticks and registered disabled. In constant pain but elated by her creativity, Emily’s mental health deteriorated until on her 23rd birthday she was taken to Fulbourn Hospital in Cambridge in a psychotic state and diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

She moved back to London, recovered from the FMS thanks to Dr Peter Fisher at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine. A few months after coming out of hospital, in a strange twist of fate, she ended up on a plane to Australia to meet up with an old friend, Australian bass player and producer Christian Dunham. A three-week holiday turned into four years happily living a self-sufficient, eco-friendly life on a goat farm in the Australian bush, in a shack built by Christian from recycled wood, tin and potato sacks. There Emily recovered her mental health, helped by constant sunshine and a veggie garden, surrounded by animals on the farm and in the hills around the shack.  She started writing songs again in a wood and tin yurt built for her by Christian, and became a cheesemaker, financing her first two albums and UK tours by making and selling goats cheese on the farm.

In 2010, with a single on Radio 2 and touring the country as Caffé Nero ‘Artist of the Month’, Emily had a breakdown following a miscarriage (portrayed in her ‘achingly beautiful’ song ‘Banks of the Acheron’ on ‘A Bit Of Blue’).
She decided to go public about her mental illness by publishing an extraordinary book ‘Start Over Again’, a brutally honest and deeply intimate account of her experiences of dealing with bipolar disorder.  The book was launched on Radio 2 on World Mental Health Day generating a huge response from listeners.

Ben Walker

As an advocate for mental health, Emily speaks frequently in the media about combating the stigma of mental illness. In 2013 she was interviewed by Libby Purves for ‘Midweek’ on BBC Radio 4, talking about her book ‘Start Over Again’ and her experiences of dealing with bipolar disorder.
In 2017, she was interviewed by Coronation Street actress Cherylee Houston for a Radio 4 programme called ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’, talking about chronic pain, creativity and her bipolar condition.  She was also interviewed by Clare Balding for Radio 2, talking about her music, mental health and Buddhist faith.

In October 2017, Emily performed at the World Congress of Psychiatry in Berlin before heading to Australia in December to spend time with family and to start recording her next album.
In early 2018 she performed gigs for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust at mental health hospitals.

Emily is a patron of the mental health charity Restore.

Thank you to Mike and Gail Watts (Dr & Mrs Fizzy) for the invitation to this concert.