Interview: Amy Speace on her view of “The American Dream”

You can take the girl out of New York, but not New York out of the girl.

Amy Speace is a favourite of Americana UK and has just released her fourth record in five years, “The American Dream”. What is remarkable is that this level of productivity hasn’t resulted in any falling off in the quality of the songs and performance, indeed the Americana UK review scored it at 8 out of 10. Americana UK’s Martin Johnson caught up with Amy Speace at her East Nashville home over Zoom to discuss the new record, her musical partnership with producer Neilson Hubbard and her future plans. The new album brings in some subtle new sounds and approaches that include hints of heartland rock and comedy. Amy Speace explains that while she is still writing about serious subjects, “The American Dream” is essentially a happy record and is more up-tempo than some recent releases. Building on the happy theme the album includes a touch of real-life comedy in ‘First United Methodist Day Care Christmas Show’, and she explains that while she doesn’t often include comedy songs on her records she does write funny songs and normally just plays them live. Poetry is a big passion and Amy Speace explains in quite a detailed way the differences she sees between song lyrics and poetry. One of the key songs on the new record is ‘In New York City’, and she shares her plans to write a one-woman musical around the song that describes her time in New York in her 20s and 30s. Finally, she shares her memories of working with Memphis legend, Sid Selvidge.

Your new album “The American Dream” seems very appropriate given the current state of America and what some politicians are promising. It is also very personal and covers your own dreams. Did those themes just emerge or did you have a firmer idea of what you wanted to do?

What happens is I always have songs. When I wrote ‘In New York City’ that’s when I thought this is the anchor piece for this record, and then I look at the songs I have written, and I’ve been writing these songs since COVID and I have a bunch of them. I’d just written ‘The American Dream’ and then I realised that all my songs were about reaching for a dream that is slightly out of reach and you get what you need rather than what you want, or you don’t get what you want. At the end, there is the ‘Love Is Gonna Come Again’ song which is like if you don’t get what you want the next door opens. I didn’t really see that until I had a slew of songs in front of me, and I thought these are the strongest and this is the arc. I do that with every record and because I’m a story writer I feel I try to put together a short story collection, and Neilson Hubbard, my producer, is part of that definition. He will come over here and I will play him songs I’ve just finished, and we’ll decide which ones work and which ones don’t. So, by the time I had it, I knew I wanted to call it “The American Dream” because that felt like a really appropriate thing, that is the biggest thing this country reaches for.

We never planned to release it during election season, and the first tour I did on the record was in the UK and ended on November 5th. I came back to a very disappointing situation about re-evaluating ‘The American Dream’, and I thought a lot about people commenting about me talking about being young in that song and understanding patriotism through the bi-centennial in the midst of just coming out of the Vietnam War. That’s the last time I think our country went a little nuts until Trump showed up, and Trump just brings for some people a really big misunderstanding of the American Dream. I was shocked at the election, I didn’t know there were so many people out there who would vote for Trump, so I was thinking let’s wait and see what happens to the dream of a lot of immigrants who have come in and are about to be criminalised, which just might be my next record but there again I might not want to make a political record. So, a long, long answer to your question and a yes and no.

Neilson Hubbard is on board again. Why do you think you have such a symbiotic relationship?

He’s one of my best friends, and I’d say he’s my musical soulmate from the beginning. The way we started was we wrote a song and then we wrote another song, he’s such a great songwriter. So we started by writing songs together, and then because he’s a producer we thought we’d demo them, and that became my first record with him called “Land Like A Bird”. At one point it was funny, I was talking to another songwriter friend of mine who had just worked with him, it was Mary Gauthier and her record with him was nominated for a Grammy, and I’d already done all these records with him and I asked her if she thought it was time for me to change and try something else. She was like, no, he’s working at the top of his game and why would I go anywhere else because it’s working. He just gets my writing, he gets my voice, and he brings the right people in, and we record fast because the people who are in the studio with me get what I’m going for. So, I can’t imagine doing music without Neilson, we write together, we get each other, I’m super-close friends with his wife, his kid is my kid’s friend, he is just one of my best friends and my best musical partner.

You are in heartland rock territory with the title track, how much did you enjoy that?

I love recording and I love writing songs. I don’t like the process of writing songs but I love getting the artwork for Amy Speace album "The American Dream"song, and basically, when I wrote that song I knew it couldn’t be pretty folk, and I said to Neilson my last two records were very symphonic folk, and I’ve got tracks on this new part that I think, even though it’s got divorce in it, it’s a really happy record and there’s a lot more up-tempo on it. He knows that two of my favourite artists of all time are Tom Petty and Springsteen, and it just happened that some of these songs came into a heartland rock Mellencamp place. Part of it is that Doug Lancio has just played guitar for me for the first time and he’s Dylan’s guitar player and he’s a genius at finding those grooves, So, I just went with what they showed up as, and I love the sound of this record because it is a little different for me, although it still has strings and all that stuff.

There are some dark stories on the new record, how much is that memory and how much is creative writing?

I’m a pretty honest songwriter. I don’t call myself confessional but I write what I see, and ‘In New York City’ is 100% autobiographical, it was a walk through my life from my 20s and 30s to my 50s at the end where I’m looking back nostalgically. That came out in about half an hour because I just followed myself through my neighbourhoods. ‘Where Did You Go’ came out of that feeling of I don’t understand what’s just happened, and I wrote that with Neilson, but the details in it aren’t true. ‘Glad I’m Gone’ is 100% not true, it is basically me sitting down with Gary Nicholson, who is like one of the best songwriters in Nashville, and telling him the story of my divorce. Gary always picks out something I say and then starts jamming on it, and I said something like, Man I wish I was in a place where I’m gone, and Gary goes that’s the song. That wasn’t me at all, and ‘Margot’s Wall’ I’d started a million years ago when I’d gone to Amsterdam and went to Anne Frank’s house, and I’d started writing that story and I didn’t know how to finish it. I decided to add someone to it who longed for something as Margot did and had to reckon with not getting it, but that’s not my story.

‘I Break Things’ is 100% true because I wrote it on the day of the insurrection here, I was sitting in a rented apartment having just separated from my husband, and there was a blizzard going on and I watched the country break apart. I wrote it real quick, and then afterwards I realised, oh, my marriage is breaking apart and the country’s falling apart. I took a lot of responsibility for the divorce in that song, it’s very true. Everything starts with the truth, but I’m also a bit of a fiction poet, although ‘First United Methodist Day Care Christmas Show’ is 100% true, that’s exactly what happened at my kid’s day care. So, that’s the answer, it is and it isn’t.

‘First United Methodist Day Care Christmas Show’ is a bit of a mouthful and does it hint at a possible stand-up career?

I do write comedy songs, and on my first record ever, “Songs For Bright Street”, I had a song called ‘Double Wide Trailer’ that was played a lot on the radio here, and it was picked up by the NPR show Car Talk and stuff like that. So, I write the funny songs and play them live, and I’ve never really recorded them until this time.

I’m not sure if you picked up that ‘I Want An Old Fashioned Christmas’ and ‘First United Methodist Day Care Christmas Show’ were featured in Americana UK’s Mince Pie Monday.

And they are really funny, ha.

You mentioned New York and it is obviously a big influence in your life, do you miss it at all?

I moved from there when I was just turning 40, so I’d been there from 23 through 40. I’m grateful I lived there and was able to afford rent in Greenwich Village and East Village, which was a hotbed of creativity and from the early ‘90s to 2009 I was able to afford rent and that is impossible now, and there is no creative scene of people living in Manhattan anymore. I got to live near St Mark’s Place which is just filled with creative history like Pattie Smith lived there, Sam Shepherd lived there. Because I grew up in small towns I always knew I was going to live in New York City, I was a real fan of the ‘20s literary movement there and Edna St. Vincent Millay. I found the pubs they wrote in and I loved it, and it informed me as a writer. I started out there as a playwright and an actor and dated a guy who was in a rock band who taught me how to play three chords and all of a sudden I started writing songs.

That’s where I built an audience, that’s where I made my first records, that’s where Judy Collins found me. A lot of people who heard my songs told me I belonged in Nashville, and I’d come down to Nashville to write songs with people but I never thought I’d ever be able to live here because it was too slow. I love walking around The Village and I loved the pace of it all because it was so different from my life and the people I grew up with, I felt special. I was able to really find my voice in New York City and I moved here for my songwriting and the community. I found the community here was more open, I was really embraced and I got gigs at The Bluebird right away because I came here at a perfect time in my career when I had a career and people already knew me rather than being like the people I see starting out here who are just banging their heads against a wall.

It took me a little bit to get used to the sound, but now I love it, I own a house, I have a big yard, I have a six-year-old, and I live in East Nashville which is the equivalent to Greenwich Village. Whenever I go back to New York I really miss it, and my dream is to go back for two or three days and just wander, I haven’t had that opportunity yet. It did start me, and now I think I’m kind of a mix of North and South, I will never leave Nashville because I love it. Also, I can’t afford to live in New York City anymore. When kids come out of songwriting school like Belmont and they tell me they want to go to New York, I tell them they’re crazy because they will never be able to do this because they will need four jobs just to live in Staten Island. Come to Nashville, it’s expensive but more affordable.

East Nashville used to be cheap.

I’m glad I have a house I bought a long time ago. I’ll never sell it.

Unless you’re going to buy a bigger one.

They start at $900,000, even the small ones like mine.

Do you see a difference between your lyrics and your poetry?

I had to do a graduation lecture during my MFA, and I did it on the difference between songwriting lyrics and poetry, and I’m of the mind that they’re 100% different. You can be a poetic songwriter, but that doesn’t mean you are a poet. I’ve been writing much more poetry since I wrote my book for my thesis and I’ve been in more of a poetry stance. This is going to sound really nerdy, but in songwriting, the line makes a complete thought and you are rhyming ends of lines and you have a specific beat, whereas with poetry unless you’re working in iambic pentameter or some blank verse form, the ends of the lines are essential. Do you stop the thought there or do you let it fall through to the next, and sometimes you think the line has a specific meaning but when it falls to the next it has a double meaning. Songs can’t really have a double meaning, and if they do have a double meaning it comes out in the last verse. You only have three or four minutes to hear a song once, and if you don’t get it, it ain’t going to stick with you. Poetry is meant to be read a few times and then read aloud.

So, I’m a poetic songwriter and that made me a better poet because I had poetic language underneath me but I really had to learn poetic form. Since I’m so obsessed with poetry now I write a poem a day. With songs, once I finished this record I was like, I’ve got nothing, and I’ve been doing a lot of co-writing with other people because having another person in the room helps kick start my creativity. If I’m doing poetry and I think it is not right as a poem I’ll put it to one side and keep it for potential lyrics. I wrote a song backstage in London in like a minute. It was rainy and I was playing on a Monday and I texted my best friend and said I don’t know who’s going to come out and see me on a rainy night in London and as soon as I said it I knew that was a song. I had an idea in my head but I didn’t know what it was going to be about, I had a melody which I thought sounded like flying, and off the cuff I wrote this song which I realised was about a hawk longing for a human, but that it wouldn’t be able to reach them. It just fed to the melody and I caught the dream of the hawk. So, those are the two songs I’ve written in the last couple of months. I feel if I have an idea I can tell whether it is a song or a poem. I talk too much, I’m sorry.

No, I only ask you questions to hear what you think, and you don’t disappoint.

Good, good.

While we are chatting I’ve got to ask you about your memories of working with Memphis legend, Sid Selvidge.

He was like my dad. He met my father and they just bonded, they totally bonded, and I’m so glad they got to meet. I loved Sid the minute I heard him play and before I knew we were going to collaborate. When I heard him play solo I was like, who is this? I researched him and I was oh my God, he’s famous. I then listened to his radio show, and I just fell in love with what he was doing. My manager knew him, and my manager was working with Amy LaVere who’s from Memphis and was putting records out on the Archer label, and Archer had Sid. Also, Sid’s kid was playing with Amy so it was this whole weird circle, and Sid heard me and he told me he was looking for his own duet partner like Emmylou Harris and was like, let’s do a record together. We spent a whole summer flipping through songs, I suggested some songs, and he listened to mine and chose two to record. I would go to Memphis and he would come here and we just fell in love with each other, I love his wife, and his kid Steve and I became good friends.

When we put the record out, which ended up being his last record, we went out on a summer tour and I spent an entire summer travelling the United States with him, and he gave me a lesson in the blues. He was like, what do I know about blues and I was like, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and he was like, oh no Ames, that won’t do and he introduced me to Lightnin’ Hopkins, Furey Lewis, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and he told me I was a folk singer as he was, but that this is where you start. He got me so interested in the blues and the blues trail and the history of the blues, and he told me great stories about Furey Lewis back in the day. It was towards the end of that tour that he found out he had cancer, and the last few weeks of the tour I had to do it by myself because he had lost his voice. I was devastated when he died because I thought we’d do another record, and we’d actually written a song but we hadn’t finished the lyrics. I have a track of him playing it because it’s all musically done, and I’ve spent years working on those lyrics. As soon as I’ve finished the lyrics, his son Steve and I want to record that song together, so that would go on a record of mine as a posthumous co-write

Man, he taught me how to stand up for myself. There was a gig we did where a guy underpaid us, and at the time I was too timid and very disappointed but Sid went up to him, and he’s in his 70s, and told him we weren’t leaving until he gave us the money. The guy was so pissed, and Sid looked at me and told me some bridges are OK to burn, and to always look after myself. He told me he’d been doing this for 60 years and that nobody fucked with him, he taught me how to be professional. I was so sad when we lost him, especially as we had just started to forge a creative relationship. I feel so blessed I got to work with him, it was a masterclass.

What are your plans for 2025?

I’m thinking about a couple of projects. We have a recording of me doing a full show in a studio, and they did a beautiful recording and I’m trying to get hold of it, so we might finally put out a CD of my show and my story. That’s something I really want to do and I’m really trying to get that recording. I have a prose project I don’t want to talk about, and I have a music and words project that is a goal. Basically, I want to do a one-woman musical based on my songs and my life in the ‘90s in Greenwich Village. So, that’s a goal and I have four songs for it and I need to write eight songs for it and then talk to somebody about writing the book. That will take a couple of years, but I want to start it in 2025. I have my first poetry book with a publisher, and if that’s published I’m already writing for my second book. My goal is to get that book published, to get my memoir called “Menopausal Mommy” published. I believe I will get an agent for the memoir, but I don’t know, and I want to put out the live record.

That’s a lot for 2025, but this is what I do, I’m obsessed with creating. I don’t know when my next original record with be released because since COVID I’ve put out four records, and I think I need to take a breather because I need to figure out where I want to go next. So, I need some time on that which is why I’m going to work on some past songs, ‘In New York City’ is the centrepiece of that musical, and then get together with a book writer to figure out the form of this. It would be a 90-minute thing, just like one of my shows, which is the next thing, and it scares me which is why I want to do it.

We like to share new music with our readers, so currently, what are your top three tracks, artists, or albums on your playlist?

Well, right now I’m listening to the Charlie Brown Christmas record over and over again, I just love it. I’m obsessed with Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings’ “Woodland”, I think it is one of their best records and I have it on vinyl, and I’m listening to it a lot. Oh, yes, Rhiannon Giddens’s new record about the railroad, “American Railroad”, and I’m obsessed with her podcast. I have just been through her podcast about the American railroad because I have a song that I’m in the midst of writing with Buddy Mondlock, called ‘The Day They Changed The Rails’, about the three days when the Southern railroad was changed to the same track length as the Northern railroad. That opened up commerce in the Reconstruction, so I’m working on that and listening to Rhiannon.

I’ve hit the place where I’m appreciating, and kind of loving, Taylor Swift. I had a thing against Taylor Swift for a while, but I decided to start with “1989” which I think is a brilliant record, and I then went back through her catalogue. I like the new one, but I don’t like “The Tortured Poets Department” but I’m kind of in. I’m also in Lana Del Rey land, and these are things that kind of passed me by because I don’t like pop music, and even though she’s a friend of mine I can say that Allison Russell’s new album “The Returner” is just spectacular, and I think she channels Stevie Wonder and Prince. It is amazing, and she deserves all the success she’s got.

Gregory Allan Isakov is one of my favourite writers and arrangers, I love his work and he’s coming to Nashville to play with the Symphony. Then there are the songwriters I met at a folk conference in Texas who aren’t well known, there’s this guy Kenny Foster and he is one of the best songwriters out there and I can’t wait until he puts out a record. Also, Aaron Lee Tasjan who’s a friend of mine and I love his records. I’ve known him since New York, and I’ve seen him evolve and I think he is doing his best work. Also his producer Gregory Lattimer is a friend of mine from junior high school, we grew up together, and there’s a chance I might do something with Gregory and do something a little bit more rock/pop. He wants me to do it with him and he keeps telling me I should do something super left field, and I’m super open to that and we’d write it together. Anyway, those are the people I’m listening to right now.

Eclectic as ever.

Totally. I’m also listening to a whole lot of Judy Garland, and I’m back into Sarah Vaughan and Ella FitzGerald. My first love was jazz, and the first thing I ever sang besides classical was jazz and I’m going back into vocal jazz.

People are beginning to realise there may be something to Taylor Swift after all.

Everybody was saying she’s the best songwriter who has ever lived, particularly my thirty-year-old friends who grew up with her, and me and some stodgy old Nashville hit writers were like, we don’t agree, talk to me about Paul McCartney. I can’t say Dylan was the best songwriter who ever lived because his melodies aren’t that good, but talk to me about Paul McCartney, talk to me about Randy Newman, don’t talk to me about Taylor Swift, she’s not going to have her songs around in a hundred years, which I still believe. However, I can’t believe she writes as much as she does and I can’t believe how creative she is, and I do love some songs in the way I was obsessed with Madonna when I was a kid.

A pop phenomenon that I think holds up that I’ve seen a million times is U2. They’re my favourite band of all time, they still make records, and I think ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ will be here in a hundred years. I don’t think ‘Shake It Off’ will be here in a hundred years, but I’ve learnt to appreciate Taylor Swift. I don’t get the rest of them, like Olivia Rodrigo I’m not 100% on, but I’ve decided not to be a songwriting snob. All of us old farts are a bit like, what, just a phenomenon, and I’m like, but she plays guitar and piano and she’s learnt to sing, because she wasn’t a great singer at first, and she can hold up a three and a half hour show like Springsteen. Speaking of Springsteen, forget it, beyond end all, I’m a huge Springsteen fan.

I have super eclectic tastes. I do dance parties with my kid every morning to the Beatles and Taylor Swift, but lately, he’s asked if we can dance to bluegrass because that’s his favourite music.

He’s got taste.

And he loves John Prine. So, we’ve tried to get him on piano lessons but he wasn’t in, so we’re trying to get him on guitar. His dad is a bluegrass player and a bluegrass writer, and he’s super into bluegrass.

Is there anything you want to say to Americana UK readers?

I love them so much. I can honestly say touring the UK are the best shows, they are the most fun shows. People show up, people have been very loyal and have kept in touch through COVID since I haven’t been back. We’ve already got the tour booked for next fall, and it really is my favourite place to tour. Tell Scotland I’ve bought a slew of Tunnock’s from Amazon, and they are my favourite candy. If I didn’t have my son, when Trump was elected I’d have sold my house and moved to the UK. It is my favourite place, I buy dresses and bags there and it’s a place I want to live. I have friends there, and I don’t want to move to the beach, I want to move to a beautiful grey, rainy, dreary place. I’d go to Scotland because at least Scotland is a rebel, but London would be fun but it’s way too expensive.

Amy Speace’s “The American Dream” is out now on Goldrush Records.

About Martin Johnson 448 Articles
I've been a music obsessive for more years than I care to admit to. Part of my enjoyment from music comes from discovering new sounds and artists while continuing to explore the roots of American 20th century music that has impacted the whole of world culture.
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Kenton Foster

Thanks for mentioning Kenny Foster! He’s got a couple of albums out. You can find him in all the places.
He’s headed to Europe again for C2C. See him live there.

Les Smith

A good read. Really love everything about this album. FUMDCCS gets me every time.