IN HER ELEMENT: Emily Burdette & The Elements release party at Bourgie Nights
- Shannon Rae Gentry
- 6 hours ago
- 6 min read
Wilmington-based singer-songwriter Emily Burdette has been making music for about 20 years, and her new album with her band The Elements, “This Road I’m On,” is a bit of a culmination of that and perhaps a reset. It’s not a debut, but more of a snapshot of a working artist in motion while balancing gigs, a day job, a full band, a marriage, and the realities of the modern music industry.
“This album is just the way I look at it,” she notes, “it’s a long road, it’s still going. And, here’s what’s next.”
Burdette will celebrate the release of “This Road I’m On” at her first-ever ticketed show in Wilmington at Bougie Nights, where she’ll perform the record with her full band The Elements. Folks can grab physical CDs at the door and local favorites Striking Copper will open the show.
The majority of the album was recorded at Michael Daniel’s AudioScribe Studios with her band: drummer Jason Cecil, bass player Chad Smith, and electric guitarist Joe Pierce. “They all put their own flair on their parts of each new track on the album,” she notes.
“Like Aristotle” and “Don’t Burn Me Down” were produced by Sam Hatch (The Hatch Brothers), who has a studio in Bolivia called Hatch Music Studios. But “This Road I’m On” as an album actually stems from some practical advice. After connecting with the manager of another touring act, Burdette booked a consultation and handed over everything: EPK, website, music, social channels. Her advice to Burdette was straightforward:
“She had seen that my last full album was released in 2013,” Burdette recalls. “She was like, I would suggest that you do another full album… you can put some of those previous singles on there, just so that somebody looking, a venue looking, can go, ‘Oh, she has a new album that was just released and has all these songs,’ right? Because the idea is, like, they don’t want to look all over the place. They want stuff to be in one spot.”
So Burdette gathered previously released singles and EP tracks, added four new songs, and built something that not only checked the “full album” box for venues, but also finally put a big portion of her catalog in one place. “Most of them are based on my life,” she says. “They’re all based around some story from my life. So I guess that’s the cohesiveness.”
Burdette’s releases have always been anchored by phrases that felt true to where she was at the time. Her EP, “Time to Speak,” was exactly that—her first time putting songs into the world. “That was my first ever EP that I ever released,” she adds. “So to me, it was like, Okay, it’s time to speak… It’s time to put this out there. It’s time to let people hear my music.”
Her next projects followed suit: “Make Believe” and “Let Me Be Me,” each titled after lyrics and song lines that captured a phase of her life and artistic identity. When it came time to name the new album, her first instinct was “This Is Where It Starts,” another song title. But it wasn’t quite true. “The more I thought about it, I was like, well, it’s already started, so that doesn’t really make sense.”
Instead, she combed through her lyrics for something that matched reality: a mid-career artist still very much in the grind, not just at starting line. She landed on a phrase from one of the songs: “this road I’m on.”
“I was going through all of my songs, and I was like, what lyric makes sense for where I am right now? And one of the songs has ‘this road I’m on’ in it… that kind of just made sense to me, because I’ve been putting music out for 20 years now… it’s a long road, it’s still going. And, you know, here’s what’s next. So that felt very fitting.”
The backbone of “This Road I’m On” is autobiographical: songs rooted in Burdette’s own experiences and the lives orbiting around hers. But some of the most striking moments on the album come from other writers she loves, especially her close friend Jayce Esterline.
“Two of the songs that are new on the album were written by [Esterline]. Those I feel like have a good Americana feel to them: ‘Don’t Burn Me Down’ and a song called ‘Sarah’s Song.’”
Burdette first fell in love with Esterline’s writing long before she recorded it. Jace, in turn, wasn’t sure he wanted to record those songs himself. So she asked if she could. And Burdette says the recording process unlocked something new in her singing.
“He was like, ‘Oh my God. Like, that is what your voice needs to be doing,’” she quotes Esterline. “It’s the first time I recorded [something] that really allows me to belt a lot… I have a tendency to not write them to be big.”
On the surface, “This Is Where It Starts” is an upbeat song Burdette wrote about a relationship that goes from zero to “let’s move in together and get a puppy” almost overnight. Underneath, it’s a gentle critique of how fast people fling themselves into love—and post about it.
“It’s a song about people who rush into a relationship really fast,” Burdette says. “The chorus is, ‘We met on a Sunday morning, you moved in on Tuesday night,’ and it’s like, whoa, you know.”
The initial spark came from her brother-in-law and his fiancée, whose relationship moved quickly and, notably, worked out (engagement, baby, a whole life together). The other half of the inspiration lives online. “I also see people who get into relationships on Instagram,” she continues. “People will put all these tons and tons of pictures of themselves in this new relationship. ‘I’m in love. I’m in love. Oh my gosh.’ And then… months later, a year later, you look at their Instagram and all those pictures are deleted, and you’re like, oh, they broke up… and then soon after you see the new relationship, and then it’s like, ‘I’m in love. I’m in love…’”
Despite the commentary, it isn’t a bitter song. “It’s like, slightly poking fun, but not really…”
One of the most meaningful shifts on this album is that it’s the first one to feature her wife, Jordan, alongside the full band. When they met in 2020, Jordan wasn’t performing.
“First of all, she wasn’t like a singer who was singing out at all. She just loved to sing, and she has [a] great voice, so she just would do it at home… She plays guitar, but she primarily does harmonies. She’s self‑taught on guitar. She doesn’t want to do the lead singer thing… She likes to be, like, in the background.”
That “background” quickly became essential to Burdette’s sound. “Our voices kind of blend together, I mean, I think pretty perfectly. Everybody that hears our harmonies is like, ‘Oh my God, you guys’… when we sing just the two of us, they’re like, ‘Your harmonies are amazing.’ So when I sing now solo and she’s not there, I miss those harmonies.”
On this album, though, Jordan doesn’t just harmonize. “I gave her a verse that she sings lead on in one of the songs called ‘Let’s Quit Our Jobs,’” Burdette details. So that was the first song that she got her own verse on… So she’s not just in the background.”
Performing together has reshaped home life too. Practice is literally in the living room, and Jordan’s role has expanded from quiet musician to full-on bandmate. “I think she really likes being a part of it, because it’s the first time that she’s been able to really get out there in front of people,” Burdette says. “I taught her how to set everything up and, you know, like, plug everything in, and then she got that down… now it feels super easy to her.”
Even as she roots deeper into Wilmington’s scene, Burdette is still looking outward. For example, she’s eying Nashville writers’ rounds, major festivals, and Pride stages. “I am going to Nashville for a week before the album release to play… I think I’ve got like four writers’ rounds that I’m booked on right now. I’m gonna play songs for more exposure… and just connect to other songwriters.”
For those outside the songwriter circuit, Burdette explains:
“Usually you’ve got like four different songwriters lined up on stage. You sing one song, and then they go to the next one… and then it keeps going. A big part of it is networking with other songwriters… and I’m sure, hoping that there’s a publisher or someone at one of the rounds that might hear something that they do and be like, ‘Hey, that song was really awesome. I want to talk to you about… pitching that song to someone.’”
She’s already thrown her name into some big hats. “I just submitted for CMA Fest. You can apply to play on small stages. I also applied to play the Nashville Pride down there as well. So fingers crossed… that would be a big deal.”
Here in Wilmington, “This Road I’m On” and the Bougie Nights release show feel like the next step in building something sustainable, ticket by ticket, song by song, harmony by harmony. Burdette is still tuning her setlists, nudging her wife into the spotlight, submitting to festivals, and moving forward.
“It’s a long road,” she notes, “it’s still going.”
Details:
Saturday, March 14
Doors at 8 p.m., show at 9 p.m.
Bourgie Nights, 127 Princess St.
Tickets: $15 adv., $20 day of
