“I think, if I didn’t have music, I wouldn’t know what I would be living for,” says EMILY PALEN, leader of Bay Area, CA superpower trio KNIGHTRESSM1. And from the sound of her soon-to-be-released album Dreams and Devastation, this composer, singer, producer, and shreddingly innovative violinist has gotta lot to live for these days. After all, her latest 12-track magnum opus was recorded at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 with co-producer/engineer John Lousteau (Foo Fighters/Joan Jett/Iggy Pop), whom everyone calls ‘Lou.’ “He has an amazing recording bedside-manner,” says Emily. “Lou was really gracious and wise working with me and allowing me to get to the height of where I could at the time.”

Supported by just bass and drums, Palen’s violin replaces the guitar outright as the foundational, crunchy-riff-and-searing-solo machine of the band. Uniquely, she doesn’t use an electric but an acoustic violin—her sister’s in fact. This she plugs into a specially chosen amp for a sound that is heavy and even dirty as all hell, without sacrificing clarity. While all of this is going on, she sings lead. Indeed, as a live performer, Emily’s approach is striking. She seems to center herself into a sort of trance, conjuring a sincere urgency that successfully sells her music to the uninitiated. In fact, she imbues her stuff with a level of soulfulness seldom heard in today’s rock and metal scene.

Palen grew up in an atypically artistic family in Midland, Michigan, studying violin as a daily discipline since age four. But at some point, in the midst of training at the University of Michigan School of Music, she hit a wall. “I couldn’t do it anymore. It’s not the healthiest of environments,” she says of the classical scene. “It’s very competitive… There’s just a lot of pettiness.” Depressed with tendonitis and a drinking habit, she had to get out.

That’s when new sounds and styles started to take root. “When I quit music school, I kind of had a break with the discipline,” she explains. “You woodshed these pieces and you’re using one part of your brain, and I couldn’t do it anymore. So I had to find a workaround.” As a fan of “emotional metal,” she decided to start rockin—and hard. But the real breakthrough was just learning how to jam, to play freely outside the restraints of composition. “With improvisation you get to play how you feel in the moment,” she says, “which to me was a profound thing—coming from this background where everything needs to be totally perfect.”

Not long after this discovery, Palen found herself in California in the late 90s for a temporary stay. She fell in love with the place and never left. For seven years straight, she earned her living solely from busking in Union Square, San Francisco. “I hate having a boss,” she laughs. “I’ve been fired from more jobs than I have fingers and toes.” And though she was playing on the street for a living, she was hardly spinning her wheels. In fact, she was commissioned to record an album of solo improv, releasing Glass — Live at Grace Cathedral in 2012, followed by Creation the following year.

Not long after this discovery, Palen found herself in California in the late 90s for a temporary stay. She fell in love with the place and never left. For seven years straight, she earned her living solely from busking in Union Square, San Francisco. “I hate having a boss,” she laughs. “I’ve been fired from more jobs than I have fingers and toes.” And though she was playing on the street for a living, she was hardly spinning her wheels. In fact, she was commissioned to record an album of solo improv, releasing Glass — Live at Grace Cathedral in 2012, followed by Creation the following year.

Meanwhile, early incarnations of KnightressM1 had already begin taking root, with Palen writing heavier and heavier material while working with some of the best musicians in the Bay and beyond. Today, Emily lives in Oakland, 19-years-and-counting sober—and KM1 seems to have achieved an apotheosis of technically brilliant yet emphatically primal bad-assery, as we can already gleam from her advance singles/videos “Polarity Integrate,” “Lock And Key” — and soon to come, “Butterfly.”

Throughout the past decade, KnightressM1 has gigged frequently with Stymie & the Pimp Jones Luv Orchestra [see Episode 8], which is how Ace and Emily met. In fact, they recently reconnected at a local Stymie show, where Ace asked Em to come on the podcast next time she had something to promote. Lucky for us, that time has come—and she brought her violin to jam with Ace and Jay Stone on an old Sly & the Fam song to boot! (You are NOT going to want to miss that).

In this fun and inspiring interview, Emily gives advice to young ladies who might want to start their own band, describes how she “manifested” her performance with the Foo Fighters at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, reveals her struggles with abuse, and explains why she tuned Dreams and Devastation to 528 Hz.She alsoprovides a detailed rundown of how she concocted her signature sound, tells us why some spiritual gurus are bullies, explains why she and guitarist Eric McFadden are “peas in a pod,” and recalls that time John Paul Jones asked her for a violin lesson while they were rehearsing for a performance at the Grammys.