The second volume of Amy Rigby’s memoirs picks up the story where we left her in Girl To City. The earlier book was “set in a ramshackle twentieth century New York world of homemade clubs and bands, through love affairs, temp jobs and motherhood, Girl To City describes the screw-ups and charmed moments it took for a girl in the crowd at CBGB to pick up a guitar and sing her truth on stage, creating an identity as an artist back when female musician role models were still rare. For anyone who ever imagined trying to make a life out of what they love.” Having drifted from Pittsburgh to New York and bands like Stare Kit, whose punk/new wave sound was documented on 2025’s Live in NYC 1979 she was now established in the city. The latest volume picks up the story with encounters prompted by forming another band, the Country punk Last Roundup and meeting some of country music’s most prominent writers and decision makers, including Cliff Williamson, Hazel Smith, and Matha Hume who all suggested moving to Nashville.
But first there was some tidying up to do in New York. As with her first book Amy Rigby’s writing style is conversational, engaging, and the book as a whole is just great fun, as was Girl To City. It is intelligent and subtle, much like her songwriting. She has a way of making places characters a quality which she shares with Patti Smith’s writing. In the first book, the New York scene is a character itself, feeling a bit dangerous but full of potential. In the sequel, there’s Nashville. Rigby points out that while she embraced country music for its shared sense of alienation with punk, the Nashville industry often resisted that intelligence which is one of the best points about her writing, in song and prose.
An interesting sentence early in the book which illuminates Rigby’s state of mind as she shifted from one world to the next is “Trying on self-confidence like a suit of clothes was easier in Nashville than in New York, where calling bullshit was almost a full-time occupation”. Later on in the same chapter she spots the future of the music business creeping in. She points out that the music business of 1998, while still being a sort of divine hand distributing money and deals to artists, video game production and music licencing were already becoming more profitable for the major labels.
Reading beyond just Amy Rigby’s story, Girl to Country is actually an account of a time when the music business shifted on its axis. The centre of the American music world seemed to be moving away from LA and New York towards Nashville, and she followed it. It is also an account of what happens to a musician who is also a parent, and a provider, with all the requirements for housing, food, education that this implies. From that point of view Rigby represents the thousands of musicians who work away at their craft while still doing life, something the gig goers and record buyers seldom think about I’d suggest.
As she suggests at the end of the book, this is a set of postcards from the frontline of music, and life. She ends up meeting and moving to France with British singer songwriter Wreckless Eric Goulden, which is hardly a spoiler if you’re interest enough in her to pick up this book.
So many of the older generation of artists seem stuck in the mould of struggle, get big, tour, album, tour, fall from grace, redemption. Girl To Country, and indeed Girl To City are a different sort of music memoir. Along with Patti Smith’s books referred to earlier, and Clothes, Music, Boys, by Viv Albertine and Carrie Brownstein’s Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, Rigby has looked beyond the superficial music world to give us a proper look at what the world is like for an artist who operates at a level where she makes a living, but the trappings and issues of proper fame never cause her problems. The behind the curtain look at the daily of being a songwriter, and how that meshes with her life and the people who support, or hinder, her makes this one of the best music biographies. Read both books, and if you aren’t familiar with Amy Rigby’s music, correct that omission. The last sentence suggests that there will be a third volume at some point. Having followed her online diary and Substack for a while there are more stories to tell, she may possibly call it Girl To World.
Amy Rigby has compiled a set of solo songs recorded at gigs, I’ve Got The World On A Broken String, which cover the time she talks about in Girl To Country. While she is a fine songwriter, she closes the album with a version of Nick Lowe’s (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding, which shows off her qualities as a performer brilliantly.
And just because it’s my favourite song of hers…
