Marty Stuart knows who EmiSunshine is. He discovered her on YouTube, the same way as the many who've driven a clip of the sprightly 10-year-old Madisonville, Tenn., wunderkind busking "Folsom Prison Blues" past 1.6 million views mark.
Another viral video features Emi belting out Jimmie Rodgers' "Midnight Turning Day Blues (Blue Yodel No. 6)" at a flea market in East Tennessee. The video shows a child whose chin barely clears the checkout counter she's standing next to while strumming a resonator ukulele for all it's worth. She looks comfortable; her voice is startlingly clear and strong. She rocks back to glance at her father, a burly man in overalls playing a standup bass. After the Today show aired the clip in March 2014, "Things got crazy," Emi tells the Scene.
Later that week, then-9-year-old Emi appeared on the Today show and sang "Little Weeping Willow Tree," a catchy ditty about love and longing — the second song she ever wrote. Emi smiles at the camera as she plucks the melody on the metal ukulele like it's an extension of her arms.
The kid is a natural.
The Today clip caught the attention of venerated Nashville session and stage guitarist Kenny Vaughan, a longtime member of Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, who, in typical viral-video fashion, passed it along to his boss. "I watched about half of it, and I said, 'Whoever she is, she's about to be invited to play The Opry,' " Stuart tells the Scene.
Emilie Sunshine Hamilton doesn't have much use for today's country music. Or pop music, for that matter. For Emi, yesterday's country is a birthright. Her great-grandparents were musicians who lived in the Appalachians, just like the generations that would follow. As mentioned, her father, Randall Hamilton, plays bass in her band, The Rain, which also features her older brother John Letner, 29, on mandolin and longtime family friend "Uncle" Bobby Hill on drums. As such, it might seem natural that Emi's parents exposed her to an eclectic mix of country, classical and rock music in utero.
"It started with headphones on the belly," Hamilton tells the Scene. "We played [her] Dylan, Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Tom Petty and Merle Haggard."
Hamilton says since his daughter's first days, she gravitated to old-school country music, largely ignoring other genres.
"Emi pulled more toward what used to be called 'country,' " he says.
And the darker and sadder the song, the more Emi liked it, her mother, Alisha Hamilton, tells the Scene.
"You loved Dolly's 'Silver Dagger' when you were little," Alisha tells her daughter during the interview. "When you were between 1 year and 3 [years old], and you'd cry and say, 'Play it again!' "
Likewise, counter to what her smile and lively stage banter might imply, many of the songs she pens are fairly dark.
" 'Carry Me Home' is a sad song," Emi says of her most recent tune. "Somebody dies." At press time, a solo-performance video of the song is averaging more than 1,800 views a day on YouTube since she uploaded it on Feb. 20.
"She's not the product of a talent show on a network, and I find that very refreshing," Stuart says. "It gives me hope for traditional country music and roots music."
Emi's Today show spots last year set into motion a series of appearances that outpaces many Nashville success stories.
"The happiest I've ever been onstage was that first time I played at the Ryman," Emi says. "I was thinking about, 'What if I mess up?' or 'What if I get this wrong?' And when I got up there and I was looking at everyone, I was shocked for a few minutes. After that first song, I knew that I could do this."
Stuart, who watched her Opry debut from offstage, felt the same way.
"Emi just walked out and she stormed the place," he says. "I watched people's faces, and there were people with their mouths wide open. You could tell what they were thinking: What is this? What are we witnessing? I love the effect she had on the room — she stole the show."
She got a standing ovation.
But it's not the novelty of a child who can sing a country song that captivated Stuart — Lord knows Nashville has enough youngsters with pipes dreaming of being the next Miranda Lambert. Besides, Emi is more of a June Carter girl anyhow, she says.
"She'd be just another kid act if she didn't have the goods," Stuart says, "and she has the goods. When she opens her mouth to start to sing, she could be 100 years old. I mean, she is an old soul."
Music isn't the only arena in which Emi has wisdom beyond her years. She worries about the financial burden chasing her dream is placing upon her family. On the other hand, she is very much still a kid. The only question she winced at during two rounds of interviews was about "Stanley," the beloved plush toy turtle she lost when the family car was stolen at a gig in Atlanta earlier this winter.
Although she has no record label backing her — her two albums to date were both self-released — that may soon change. Last year, her parents inked a deal with Susan Bank at Red Light Management on Emi's behalf. Bank, who represented Britney Spears during her meteoric heyday, says the singer will start showcasing for Music Row bigwigs later this month. There's also talk of a TV deal, but Bank would only say: "It's nonfiction but it's not reality, per se. It's something that doesn't exist quite yet on television. It's centered around music, and Emi would be Emi."
Her mother admits she's anxious about finding the balance of guiding a rising star and raising a daughter. She says she got "skittish" in 2013 and kept Emi off the stage for nearly two months.
"I wanted to make sure that she really wanted to do this," she explains, "and that she wasn't just doing it because her dad and her brother are musicians. I still ask her every week if she still wants to do this."
"She's the real deal," Stuart says. "She is a serious artist. I hope that she's treated seriously from Day 1, not like a novelty kid act. ... "[She's] framed by those characters called family around her, which is a pretty interesting concept. I love it. I think it's great."
