Amy Speace
Folk music doesn’t get any better than this
Since her discovery in 2006 by Judy Collins, Amy Speace has been heralded as one of the leading voices of the new generation of American folk music, and what a gorgeous voice it is!
From her beginnings in New York City as a classically-trained actress with the National Shakespeare Company, to the coffeehouses of Greenwich Village where she began playing her original songs, to her move to Nashville in 2009, what ties all her work together is a palpable empathy for the small struggles of the human condition. Amy has played all across the country, appeared on Mountain Stage multiple times, as well as many folk festivals around the world.
Her music has received critical acclaim from The New York Times, The Sunday London Times, and Mojo Magazine and National Public Radio which described her voice as "velvety and achy" and compared her to Lucinda Williams.
Speace's song “Weight of the World” was recorded by singer Judy Collins on her 2010 album Paradise. She has toured extensively in the US, UK and Europe and has shared the stage with Guy Clark, Judy Collins, Mary Chapin Carpenter and many others. Speace also works as a songwriter with the non-profit Songwriting With Soldiers which helps veterans process their trauma.
Years before Americana music received its own category at the Grammy Awards, Speace was one of the genre's earliest champions, mixing the best parts of American roots music — gospel, alt-country, folk, classic pop — into her own songs.
Her album Me and The Ghost of Charlemagne (2019) follows in that diverse tradition, but it also shines its light on a new Amy Speace: a clear-eyed, reenergized songwriter who's done with chasing things that don't matter. She was awarded "International Song of the Year" by the Americana Music Association for the title song on that album.
There Used to Be Horses Here (2021), recorded in Nashville with The Orphan Brigade in just four days, draws directly from her own childhood, coming of age in New York City, and losing a parent while learning to become one. While many of the subjects are heavy, it isn’t a sad record. Instead it’s a direct reflection of the 12 months between her son’s first birthday and the loss of her dad, propelled by a playwright’s eye for detail, a performer’s gift of vocal delivery, and a poet’s talent for concise writing.
It's a treat to finally have Amy Speace perform at Folkus.
“Speace, who is one of Nashville’s most literate, and at times literary, songwriters, consistently zigs where other writers would zag, finding the dark crevices of ordinary life and mining them for all they’re worth.” --Chris Griffey Top 10 Albums of 2019, Concerthopper.com
“Amy Speace is one of the great contemporary American singer-songwriters, a voice that can send shivers down the spine, lyrics that squeeze the heart until it bleeds.” --folk radio-UK
“Amy Speace is on a roll. Each new release has brought an expansion of her voice and her art, and she has reached the level of absolute mastery. Folk music doesn’t get any better than this.” ---Mary Gauthier