Emma Rose

Her parents played folk and bluegrass as a duo and took her along to their gigs, and she grew up in Fort Collins, Longmont and Jamestown, Colorado. She took up the bass in the sixth grade, as the only bass player in her school orchestra, and learned guitar at about the same time. After high school she spent two years in Austin, Texas, playing in bluegrass bands and working on her songwriting at open mics, then came back to Colorado. By her own count she has played bass in some 15 projects, mostly bluegrass, old-time and folk.

In 2021 she joined the mandolinist Bonnie Sims, the fiddler Eve Panning and the cellist Joy Adams in Big Richard, a band of four women put together for an invitation-only festival in Castle Rock that year. She was on bass and guitar for the band’s early years, including its 2022 set at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, later released as a live album. By early 2024 Hazel Royer had taken over the bass. In 2022 Rose was also playing upright bass with Daniel Rodriguez and with the band Whippoorwill.

Sound of Honey began during the pandemic as a way to record songs she had written over several years, with Rose on guitar and vocals, Tobias Bank on drums and William Kuepper on bass, later joined by the electric guitarist Sam Armstrong-Zickefoose. They recorded the EP Dozens of Colors in 2020 with Charlie Rose, formerly of Elephant Revival, at his house in Lyons; its first single, “City,” came out in February 2022 and the record followed by early 2023.