Émigré began in the fall of 2016 in Johnson City, Tennessee, when Austin Gregory (guitar, bouzouki) and Saro Lynch-Thomason (vocals, shruti box) began to combine their diverse musical talents and experiences with their love for the traditional music of Ireland and Scotland. In 2023 the band welcomed Megan Drollinger as fiddler. Today Émigré performs a variety of music tracing the diaspora of the Irish and Scots across the ocean to North America.

Their repertoire includes ballads and fiddle tunes from Great Britain and Ireland, songs from the French-speaking regions of Canada, and melodies familiar in Appalachia and the North Atlantic alike. The band’s name comes from the dispersal of people, ideas, and music that resulted from centuries of emigration from Ireland and Scotland and the unique music that has resulted as these were combined with others from a world away. The sound of Émigré is characterized by the rich vocal melodies sung in Scots-Gaelic, French, and English, dynamic fiddle playing, and driving guitar accompaniment.