"Embers and Envelops" Dave Elkins of Mae ft. Emery, Sunday, April 10, 2022 + Alternate Versions YouTube playlist

The members of Emery work hard both on their side hustles and their main gig, and sometimes it's hard to distinguish between their side hustles and their main gig. Lead singer Toby Morrell and guitarist Matt Carter started a blog with their friend Joey Svendsen, which later became The BadChristian Podcast. They started a record label, BadChristian Music and released Emery records and other artists--mostly Tooth & Nail associated bands--who shared a vision of Christian music that pushes the envelope. And while Emery only has about 172,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, the band has actually migrated their most loyal fans to their own Patreon-style music subscription service. This service used to be under the name Emeryland, but recently the band has merged its production of BadChristian Podcast and Emery's music and their work with the Labeled Podcast to one subscription-based plan under the moniker Knuckle Breakers. 
 
MAYBE NOT TO AGREE, BUT TO PROCLAIM LOVE. I'm more of a fan of Emery's business model and their non-Emery projects. I'm a fan of the universe of music they create around them. The reason I started listening to The BadChristian Podcast was their early days of interviewing their friends in bands, hearing Christian Rock bands have honest, often profanity-including conversations about their beliefs, doubts, and the dirtiness of music industry. Matt, Toby, and Joey kept inviting more and more diverse voices to the conversation about Christianity--liberal, conservative, and everything in between--exploring the questions about what is really Christian and who has the right to judge what is and what isn't. Over the years, the podcast became less about music and less about faith, but those early band associations and the band members that kept coming back on the show kept me interested. In 2020 and 2021, Emery hosted several Sunday Night musical live streams as part of their Emeryland membership. Matt and Toby cross-promoted their Twitch Are You Listening? A Sunday Night Streamo Show  on the BadChristian Podcast, playing today's song as the intro music for one of the BadChristian episodes. Are You Listening? would often have a musical guest jamming along on Emery songs, and Emery would often play one of the guest's band's songs as well. 

THERE'LL BE ROOM FOR CHANGE, BUT GRADUALLY.  Emery produces a lot of music these days and not all of it ends up on streaming platforms. Today's song, a synth-based cover of Mae's "Embers and Envelops" featuring Mae's singer Dave Elkins is available on YouTube in a playlist of collaborations the band has done for their Are You Listening? show. So that made me think about the songs that I've chosen as my featured song of the day that were only publicly available through YouTube, and I decided to make a playlist on my new YouTube channel: NewYearsDayProject. Here it is along with the link to the original post: 


1. "Embers and Envelops" by Dave Elkins of Mae ft. Emery. Today's song.
2. "She's Always a Woman" by Copeland. Copeland's cover's EP Know Nothing Stays the Same is unavailable on AppleMusic and Spotify.
4. "My Secrets Have Secrets Too" by Search the City
5. "She Kissed Me" by Leauges. Unfortunately, the deluxe edition of You Belong Here isn't on streaming services. 
6. "Sky May Fall" by Grits ft. Dan Haseltine and Annie Peters
7. "Part of It/Outro" by Relient K. The band's 2009 record is now on Spotify. It's not on AppleMusic. The album version splits "Part of It" and "Outro" into two tracks, but they should be heard together, like in this YouTube video.
9. "Happier Hymn" by Adam Dutch (Marshmello ft. Bastille's "Happier" vs. Anberlin's "Paperthin Hymn") DJ Mashups don't usually make it onto AppleMusic or Spotify.
10. "I Won't Give Up" by Eric Nam. Nam's YouTube covers weren't recorded for mass consumption when he became world famous. 

11. "Dance or Die" Family Force 5 ft. The Secret Handshake
12. "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" by Daniela Andrade. Like Eric Nam, Andrade started with YouTube covers before writing her own material.
13. "Somebody That I Used to Know" (1988) by Gotye ft. Kimbra. This remix is sooo much better than the already amazing original. 
14. "Feel Good Drag" by Johnathan Slack


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