Critically acclaimed singer/songwriter Amy Speace was accepted into a weeklong songwriting residency at The Blue Rock Retreat and Studio this summer and has 11 songs to show for it. Each song is delicately pieced together; some are old, and some are new, produced by her and the studio engineer, Hayes Howard, and the album, entitled naturally enough, “The Blue Rock Session“, will be out on November 21st, just in time for some U.K. tour dates in December. Tickets are available here. The first single, the original version of which you can hear below, is ‘The Sea and The Shore’, originally a duet with John Fullbright from her 2013 album, “How To Sleep In A Stormy Boat”, but Speace always wanted to present it solo acoustic.
“It was a dream. Blue Rock is an enchanted place. Part private home, part artist retreat, part world-class recording studio, part concert hall, there are miles of hiking/walking trails, a rainwater pool, birds, cedars, sagebrush, and blue Texas sky, walls and walls of bookshelves with every conceivable kind of inspiration from science to poetry to autobiography to painting. And it was all there for me, for free, along with beautiful meals and three other incredible artists,” says Speace
The instructions were simple: “As part of the residency, we were each given a few hours in the studio with an engineer. I decided to lay down all my new songs on my 1956 Gibson J-45. I didn’t think too much. I just sat in front of the mic and sang the songs, freshly written, still forming in my mouth. Mostly, they were the first or second ‘take’. There was some magic in the air. I brought out my notebook of other new songs I’d written over the past year and kept going. With each song, I’d say to Hayes, “I think there’s something happening here,” and he’d smile and say to me, “Hell yeah, there’s something happening. You’re making a record!” Three hours later, 11 songs down, and I was exhausted and giddy. I’d made a record I hadn’t even intended to make.”
Speace was discovered by Judy Collins, who signed her to her record label and has recorded her songs. She’s the 2020 winner of the AMA UK’s International Song of the Year. Her newest record, “The American Dream,” was released in 2025 and “The Cardinals,” her debut collection of poetry, will be published by Red Hen Press in 2026. Her writing has been published by The New York Times, American Songwriter, Salon.com, The Guardian, No Depression, Working Mother, 2 River View, and Euonia. In 2025, she published “To The Performer: A Singer-Songwriter’s Handbook”, based on her 20 years of teaching performance. In addition to her performance career, she teaches English and Writing at Cumberland University in Lebanon, TN.
Amy Speace UK Tour Dates 2025:
28th November – Green Note, London
29th November – Town Hall Live, Kirton-in-Lindsey
30th November – Walter Yeat Village Hall, Walter Yeats
2nd December – Montrose Folk Club, Montrose
3rd December – Tollbooth, Stirling
4th December – Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast
5th December – St. Augustine’s Church, Londonderry
Excellent article. Really looking forward to the gig on the 29th November.