On the Rise
Amelia Coburn

When we speak's just returned from Vienna, having performed at a Ukulele festival. The following day, she flies to Hamburg to play at Reeperbahn Festival. “It wasn’t planned to have all of these things at once, I’m just hardly ever at home at the moment,” she tells me, clearly excited by the hustle and bustle of her current lifestyle.

Coburn’s curiosity for visiting new places isn’t fuelled by a desire to escape her hometown though. She’s a passionate advocate for the North East music scene, which helped to shape her into the songwriter that she is today. “When I was growing up, I remember thinking that if I wanted to work in the creative industry that I would have to move to London or Manchester,” she reflects, “but I think I would’ve been a small fish in a massive pond. You can be successful and be from Teesside. I want to shine a spotlight on all the amazing work that’s going on here that people don’t actually know about.”

As the title of Coburn’s debut album Between The Moon and the Milkman alludes to, the beauty of everyday events on your doorstep are magnified when you travel further afield. Her observational songwriting glistens with theatricality, as she unravels narratives over considered layers of acoustic instrumentation. The songwriter’s curiosity for storytelling was nurtured from childhood through reading, writing “daft little poems” and listening to her dad’s eclectic record collection. She was exposed to everything from punk stalwarts like The Sex Pistols and The Clash, to Classic FM on the drive to school, to the soundtracks of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. Coburn’s paternal grandmother was a singer in Teesside during World War II and her grandfather was in a local choir, so there’s always been a strong familial connection to music, despite no one playing an instrument.

Coburn’s own love for singing took root in Middlesbrough’s local hospitality scene. At the age of fifteen, she began working as a waitress in a cafe, singing along to backing tracks of musical theatre tunes as customers dined on the weekends. She begged her parents for a ukulele so that she could provide the musical accompaniment herself and they began attending local open mic nights with her. Through word of mouth, the musician gradually built up a loyal local following, with other small businesses and pub owners asking her to perform at their establishments too. “I couldn’t believe that people were asking me to sing for them,” she remembers fondly.

Since then, Coburn has established herself a real presence in the UK’s emerging folk and acoustic music scenes. She was a finalist for the BBC Young Folk Awards in 2017 and earlier this year, she was named as one of five winners of the Tees Valley Artist Of The Year award, an initiative that aims to support and nurture talent in the North East. Winners receive an annual fund that’s equivalent to the national living wage, plus an £8,000 development budget. “It’s been life changing,” Coburn admits, “I’m trying to make the most of the opportunity, because it’s just so unheard of to get that amount of funding as a musician. It’s such a brilliant project. I hope I can make them proud.”

Coburn’s desire to prove herself has manifested in different ways over the years. Discovering a local drama group became a catalyst for building her confidence and nurturing her love of performance. She believes this love for theatre is still prevalent in her music now, as her vocals are inspired by dramatic icons like Judy Garland and Liza Minelli. In her late teens, Coburn took the advice of her peers and decided to go to University to study languages and spend time living abroad. “I studied in St Petersburg in Russia, Puebla in Mexico and then I worked in France in Paris,” she shares. “I’ve always had this strong desire to go to places and see the world, so a lot of my debut album was inspired by that.”

Despite only being released earlier this year in March, Between the Moon and the Milkman has been a decade in the making. Coburn had been writing original material from her late teens onwards, but she didn’t want to rush into releasing a full LP. “I was quite picky about it,” she laughs. Finding the right producer was half of Coburn’s battle. Despite being classified as a folk singer, she didn’t want to work with someone who had solely produced artists from the folk genre. “The inspirations behind my music are wider than that,” she explains. “I totally get why I was nominated for the BBC Young Folk Artist award, as I am a folk singer in some ways, but I didn’t want to go for a folk producer and then be put into that box forever.”

With this in mind, Coburn and her manager decided to approach Bill Ryder-Jones. She knew the acclaimed songwriter would be the perfect man for the job and used her savings to fund the recording of Between the Moon and the Milkman, as well as setting up a Kickstarter page. “It was a bit of a risk,” she reflects, “because I could’ve mae my debut album at home for next to nothing, but I wanted to do it right.” With Ryder-Jones’ invaluable insight, his “constant creativity” and a few pints down the pub after long days spent in the studio together, Coburn’s dreams slowly began to take physical shape.

Six months down the line, Coburn is relieved to say that taking that risk and releasing her debut record independently has been totally worth it. Between the Moon and the Milkman made its way into the UK Charts, including listings in the Indie Album Breakers, Indie Album Chart and the Official Album Sales categories. “For someone who’s not worked with a major label and who’s had no label backing behind me, it was a big achievement for me,” she shares. “That’s literally just grassroots fan powered success. It wasn’t about the sales in terms of money, it was about people buying [the record] because they wanted to hear it, and that was really nice.”

This vital support network will see Coburn return to another grassroots initiative in Middlesbrough in October. Seven years after her first appearance, the songwriter will be back performing at Twisterella, a multi-venue festival that’s celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. She remembers her first time playing the event vividly: after performing cover songs in a tiny micro pub, the festival organisers asked her to play an impromptu set on a bigger stage, after another act pulled out at the last minute. “I sang all these indie covers by The Smiths and The Jam to all these middle aged blokes. It was nuts,” Coburn laughs. “I was dead young and they were all - not moshing - but you could feel the stage rattling as they were jumping up and down. This year I’ll be playing with a band and I’ll be playing my own stuff, but I’m hoping we’ll raise the roof a bit like that again.”

Coburn acknowledges the significant effect of events like Twisterella on the music community in her hometown of Middlesbrough. Not only does the festival utilise independent businesses such as music venues, cafes and pubs, the fact that it takes place in Middlesbrough itself is important. “We talk about Teesside as a whole, but when a lot of bands come to play up north, they often go to Stockton or Darlington,” Coburn explains, “whereas Middlesbrough itself needs [more of] that music scene and Twisterella is one of the key components of that, so it’s really important. There are local artists on the lineup every year too, alongside the bigger acts who may not be living here anymore. So you can see artists from all levels on the same lineup as bands who are also not from the area. I love it.”

As well as rehearsing her set for Twisterella and preparing to tour the UK with her band, Coburn is also in the process of writing her second album. She remains fiercely independent and ambitious, but she’s not forcing anything. “It’s all happened quite organically,” she shares when asked about her accomplishments to date. “I quite like being in control of stuff, especially when I know I can do it well. I think if a label came along that offered the right support, I wouldn’t say no. But so far, it’s been working well on my own. I just think it’s one of those things that will happen when the time is right. I trust the process, in that sense”