Manifestation and positive visualization are powerful tools - this we know, but not all of us believe. “I remember I listened to Dwyane Wade talk about (when he was) in the third grade,” Emi Grace, rising artist and guitar heroine, recalls with marked specificity. “He was like, ‘I'm gonna make it to the NBA…it's gonna happen.'” Before he had played a true organized basketball game, Wade had the conviction to declare himself a future professional. It’s this level of confidence (delusion?) that can will one’s dreams into reality. And for Grace? “There was none of that,” she admits unashamedly. “I was not sitting around the talent show being like, ‘I wanna be Britney Spears.’ It was not even a question for me. I was happy to successfully raise my hand in class and not say something silly because I was so shy. It was never, ‘I'm gonna sing on stage for people to watch.’ But when I tapped into that,” she says, her self-belief reignited, “it's my favorite thing on Earth. And I'm so, so grateful that out of all the ways my life could have gone that this is what I get to do, because it feels like magic.”

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The things Emi Grace does with a guitar can be described as magic, but perhaps a better interpretation would be witchcraft. She appears, in moments with the instrument in her hands, to be possessed. It’s an intensity that is obvious on stage but hard to imagine given her demeanor in a Zoom room, holding conversation with measured, thoughtful responses. “You know what, I think it might just be reserved for music,” she says of the passion she feels when wielding a guitar. Across her other hobbies, Grace isn’t able to channel that “pitbull” within to properly express herself. “With music, it's almost like everything clicked for me and all of these other areas of my life that I was getting joy from and I had passion in - because I'm a passionate person for sure - but when I really stepped into music, it was like ‘Oh my God, like, this is my thing.’ My whole heart is in it in a way that I don't experience with anything else in my life.” More simply: “I'm just flying, you know? And I love it.” 

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Where Grace truly takes flight is on the stage, where she performs with a fervor that is palpable even through still-shots of her set. Most recently, she joined Winnetka Bowling League on their West Coast tour, allowing the California native to make fans close to home. Ever since returning from her stint of opening performances, “there's definitely a different level of slightly elevated-ness” surrounding Emi Grace that she senses in herself. And while a concert is the best way to meet the noisy pop-rocker, social media has brought the most eyes and ears to her unapologetic sound. Just because she’s not apologizing, however, does not mean there aren’t any people airing grievances for her outspoken style of guitar playing. A certain level-headedness is required - alongside a little hard-headedness - for Grace to push forward. “They don't get it, and that's OK and not everybody has to get it,” she says of those who offer critiques of her playing in social media comments. “And I think that always makes me feel better. I just want to be there for the people that want it. And then for the people that don't, that's totally cool too.”  While a mature approach, Grace admits there was “definitely a learning curve” for dealing with criticism online. At first, one negative comment was easy to ignore, but when they ballooned to hundreds of hurtful comments, it was harder to ignore. “If so many people think like this maybe the issue is me,” she began to question. With the support of her parents (along with the praise of several hundred more fans compared to haters), Grace was able to find perspective in all the feedback she was receiving. “Ultimately, when I was able to get over the initial sting of the different kinds of things people would say, I was like, ‘I love this. There's no way I can get everybody.’ I'm just gonna keep going and just focus on the people that do enjoy what I'm doing, the people I'm inspiring and the impact that I do get to have.” Since hating is not in her blood (“I could never fathom in my most upset day, hating on someone's post. I couldn't!”) she has decided to frame her lack of understanding as a good thing. With Emi Grace, you’re either with her or against her - and if you’re with her, you better be ready to rock.

In the hands of Emi Grace, Thursdays on Instagram have gone from relying on throwbacks to worshiping trashy tone guitar playing. Trashy Tone Thursday has become a weekly trend for Grace, allowing her to fully unleash her inhibitions and grind out 30 seconds of enthralling shredding. There’s no real secret to what goes into each week’s edition; for Grace, the entire exercise is a practice in gratitude. “Just like anything in life, when you do something over and over and over and over again, it's like, how do you keep it fresh? How do you keep it feeling good for yourself, you know? And I think for me, every time I sit down to record one of those, I remind myself how grateful I am to even be sitting in front of this camera, making one of these videos and that there's people that are going to see it.” The process mirrors that of writing a complete song, with two essential steps beforehand: Grace clears her head and brings her love for music to the forefront. “I'm gonna make sure I love what I make, and I'm going to make it right, I'm gonna give it the respect that it deserves, you know?” she explains to me, listing them as if they are a checklist she must accomplish ritualistically. “And this series has done a lot for me, and I just go in there with respect and love. I just want to have a fun time and I think that that always helps me, getting the right mindset.” 

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For as open as Grace is about her love for guitar and passion in making music, these traits are deceptive in respect to her beginnings. She is a self-taught guitarist who learned how to play in secrecy, often practicing when the house was empty. After taking an interest in guitar after learning violin at an early age, Grace was producing when she was around 15 years old, taken aback by how quickly she was falling in love with music. Being a career musician wasn’t even on her radar. “I didn't know that there was a career for it,” she tells me, still a bit at a loss. “And certainly when I realized there was, (I thought) there's a snowflake's chance in hell that I'm going to make it. I remember just being here and just like sitting in my house and being like, ‘no, no, no…that's not…I'm not good.’” Grace can be forgiven for not thinking she had a talent for guitar - no one was aware of her skills to offer any praise. But once she began sharing her music with others, her snowflake turned into a snowball, hurling down a mountain and growing in size as it went. “It was just a pie in the sky, no chance,” she says of a career in music, “but when I think that I finally started to feel momentum and I moved to Los Angeles, I was like, holy shit. If I just work my tail off, maybe this could be something that could be my life. And I think that's really what I found is hard work just unlocked so many doors.” Grace’s talents aren’t secrets anymore - she’s always had “a lot to say about the world,” and those ideas quickly became lyrics for the music she was producing. The plan was to wait until she was older, when she was away from her hometown and “no one knows I exist anymore” before trying her hand at writing and singing, but Grace couldn’t resist that long. She had suddenly stumbled upon “the freaking trifecta,” and was a proper artist whether she knew it or not. After putting all of the pieces together to make her first songs, Grace knew she couldn’t stay anonymous much longer. “I could never give these (songs) away (to other artists) because they're pieces of my heart now,” she discovered. “When I write, produce and sing and the guitar on there, it was totally a piece of me that now just gets extended into the world. And when that happened, I was like, this is magic to me.”  

Grace’s incoming new music is sure to up the ante, taking aim at the reckless nature of early-20’s relationships. With the core tenets of a clear mind and love for the craft, Grace went through an evolutionary process in creating these new tracks that differed slightly from her typical approach. As she explained more of her process to me, her devotion to her craft was almost intimidating - her vision is narrow and clear in what she wants. It’s easy to become hypnotized by the details Grace shares, an entirely similar effect that her guitar playing holds over a listener. She is, simply, captivating, in whatever medium you happen to meet her in.

Grace is hopeful that her new music is the beginning of something bigger. It will certainly solidify her “slightly elevated-ness” and may propel her to solidly-elevated status. “I want to kick off what will hopefully lead to a whole EP. I think lots more touring; I’m going to hopefully be out again in the fall. I want to introduce my fans to the rock stuff, this pop-rock kind of lane. I want to re-show them who I am.” Whether it’s a re-introduction or a first impression, through a new release or a Trashy Tone Thursday video, Emi Grace is hard to forget. She’s loud but with a purpose; she has something to say and is firm in her positions. Ask her 10 years ago about being an artist and she wouldn’t have believed you. Ask her today and it’s all she could ever want.

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