On her third album with Oh Boy Records, and her fifth since beginning her career a decade ago, Emily Scott Robinson once again unveils her mastery as a performer and storyteller. With her 2026 release Appalachia — recorded at Dreamland Recording Studios with Grammy-nominated producer Josh Kaufman — Robinson opens herself up to experimentation and sings in her crystal-clear voice about resilience, love, grief and hope.
Robinson’s talent is no surprise to the music industry — she’s now a veteran touring artist, both at home and abroad. Her records Traveling Mercies (2019) and American Siren (2021) each landed high on Rolling Stone’s “Best Country and Americana Albums” and Stereogum’s “10 Best Country Albums” year-end lists. She’s been lauded by the Washington Post, Billboard, American Songwriter and No Depression, and earned the 19th spot on NPR’s “100 Best Songs of 2021” with her song “Let ‘Em Burn.”
It was her 2020 release “The Time for Flowers,” an anthem of hope recorded at home in the midst of the global pandemic, that caught the attention of Oh Boy Records, the independent label founded by John Prine in 1981. Robinson jumped at the opportunity to join the free-spirited and beloved record label carrying on her hero’s legacy.
Robinson believes the songs on Appalachia are the best she’s ever written — she sings about her grandmother slipping into dementia, a cash-only saloon full of characters, and gratitude for life, despite its hardships. The album features a duet with Grammy winner John Paul White that celebrates the kind of love that comes with scars and age, and a hymn for anyone who’s ever failed or fallen short.
“There’s this thing I do with every record I make,” she says. “I knit a prayer into it, and I ask for all these songs to find their way to everyone who needs them. I ask these songs to be of service, to help people find and experience joy.”
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“There are breakup songs, and then there's the breathtaking "Let 'Em Burn," which fans out to survey the wreckage of a painstakingly curated life…
With her pure, bracing vocal set against an achingly somber piano, Emily Scott Robinson doesn't marinate in misery so much as summon the strength to venture up to a precipice and stand at "the edge of something wild.”
— NPR
“Built On Bones is more than a gateway for the Shakespeare-curious. It also ushers in a crucial reexamination of the idea of the “witch,” with its long history of misunderstanding and oppression. Robinson may not be able to rewrite this history, but her reframing of it feels like its own kind of healing potion for this current moment in which women continue to be oppressed and must battle for such basic freedoms as reproductive rights.”
— No Depression
“On her 2019 album Traveling Mercies, Emily Scott Robinson showed herself as a songwriter for the ages. It’s no wonder that John Prine’s Oh Boy Records snapped her up for the follow-up, American Siren… Whether through the simple but potent reminders of “Lost Women’s Prayer” or the life lessons of “Things You Learn The Hard Way,” she’s not so much the preacher but learning with us as we go, her poetry leading the way.”
— Stereogum
“It’s only right that John Prine’s Oh Boy Records put out Emily Scott Robinson’s album American Siren, because the Colorado songwriter has some of the late master’s flair for narrative wit and wisdom. Robinson’s pure, lilting voice is a great vehicle for describing scenes of intense conflict…Like Prine, Robinson can devastate with a simple description of something ordinary.”