As luck would have it, Emma Worley and Ben Whiteley’s paths crossed in an ice cream shop in early 2020. Ben’s busy touring schedule was halted by the pandemic, and Emma had been laid off from her day job and was working on her first album (Sentimentalist, 2022). She was looking for a bass player for the project, and found him there, eating an ice cream cone.

Emma and Ben became fast friends, and during the isolation of the pandemic, their bubbles collided. Navigating the hardships of the times together, they bonded over country music artists like George Jones and John Prine, and songwriter Bobby Braddock. They were slowly building an unspoken creative trust. "Emma has a deep appreciation for older music and storytelling," notes Whiteley, “she’s a true listener and takes the time to be present with other people. I think that’s what makes her such a strong writer.” When Emma was looking for a producer for a new batch of songs, Ben was the obvious choice.

What feels old and new at the same time, Forever Beginner is a folk-ish, country-ish, americana-ish record featuring an ensemble of incredible players and a songwriter who has found her voice. Worley is an artist with a keen sensitivity to the denseness of reality and the ability to write in a way that can feel intensely profound yet simple. The album’s title represents a restructuring of internalized expectations of oneself. In Worley’s words, “it’s a kind of self-acceptance through being open and detached. We are forever emerging and always becoming more of who we are.” Tucking grief, joy, humour, and pain into the same fold, the songs on Forever Beginner have a peculiar openness and self-awareness to them that echo the album's thesis.

Making Forever Beginner began with a core band of Whiteley on bass, Jasper Smith on guitar, and Julian Psihogios on drums, amid a classic humid Toronto summer in Whiteley’s garage-converted-studio. These initial sessions had a loose and collaborative atmosphere, steered by a group of great players and friends supporting Worley’s songs. Speaking with Jasper Smith, it is obvious that Emma has quietly earned a deep respect from her peers; “Emma has a clear, intuitive understanding of classic song form. Every new song I hear tears me down and rebuilds me again. Crushingly beautiful.”

After laying the bedtracks, the studio became a revolving door of friends and touring musicians dropping in to contribute. Georgia Harmer recorded vocals for “Comedy Club” between her own sessions with Whiteley, and Wyatt C. Louis stopped by while on tour to layer in some more harmonies. Will Kidman added his signature voice on “Hardware Store in Heaven” and “the song in my heart is a hard one to play”. Friends Lia Pappas-Kemps and Dylan Burchell floated in and out, each adding their distinct vocal textures. Supporting these vocal melodies and grounding the record’s folk-Americana sound are the additions of Matt Kelly (pedal steel), Tamara Lindeman (piano), Ken Whiteley (organ), and Kendal Carson (fiddle).

The record-making process was a light thing during a heavy time for Emma. She had spent the past few years travelling back and forth to Europe to receive treatment for a health condition not available in Canada. The medical support she received was life-changing, though it was also emotionally and mentally demanding. Prioritizing her health meant placing her life, career, and artistic ambitions on hold and accepting a long process of healing. However, creating Forever Beginner would become a way for Worley to reframe her feelings of falling behind. “I’ve spent most of my life being hard on myself, says Worley. “I’m finally learning to soften into my own nature, and songs are a place I’ve always gotten to do that.”

And while the record is not a concept album, its theme of self-reckoning and re-emergence can be felt on the album’s final track “Known,” where Worley offers a reflection on time, utility, and the fragile nature of belonging. Recorded sparsely—just Emma’s voice and piano gently supported by pedal steel, organ and bass—the song follows the life of a piano, from its beginnings as a felled tree to being turned into an instrument that would affect the lives of so many, only to eventually become “dead weight / a burden to move / a burden to tune.” The lyrics draw a parallel to how quickly our own foundations can fall away. It captures the disorientation of realizing a person or place or situation is no longer what it was, and finding yourself in the silence of this change: “now I’m nowhere / feeling nothing / feeling known by no one.”

It is perhaps within this “nowhere” that the essence of Forever Beginner emerges, reminding us that to be human is to be perpetually unfinished. It invites us to keep learning, keep failing, and to find hope in remaining a beginner, forever.