Sweating, Rocking, Tender Moments
JUDE MONTAGUE
Amy Rigby, US singer-songwriter, visits Hastings for her first ever local gig with husband and sometime-duo partner, Wreckless Eric. Eric (Goulden) is local, from Peacehaven. Amy was raised in Pittsburgh and became, retrospectively, the girl from Eric’s hit single The Whole Wide World (Stiff Records 1977), a case of life imitating art.
Amy’s songwriting is incredibly personal, and documents the journey of a fully active participant in the touring rock and roll and independent music-making scene. She is a deeply instinctive lyricist, with musical roots in rock and folk. Like Joni Mitchell, she makes her own comment on her current life events and how they make her feel. She converts her honest reflections into personal and witty song statements.
Schooled in late 70s lower Manhattan, Amy formed the pre-Americana country band Last Roundup and Richard Hell’s favourite girl group The Shams in NYC’s East Village, before launching a solo career with 90s classic album Diary Of A Mod Housewife.
I first came across her work in her 2018 album The Old Guys, which is literally about ‘old guys’ of rock and roll, including Bob Dylan, Amy’s friend and mentor. She’s part of the rock and roll resistance – fun, mischievous, with jangly guitars and thumping drums. Eric and Amy have been working their individual albums in tandem over the past few years, both scratching our consciousness with a gritty poet’s pen, in their own style.
Amy is touring her new album Hang In There With Me (Tapete Records) which Rock ‘n’ Reel calls “Afascinating and profound roller coaster ride in the life and music of one of the most intelligent and inspired true American troubadours of the last half a century.” The record includes odes to Bob Dylan, Joey Ramone, and Julie Christie, as well as chat boxes, bricks and rainbows. I think she’s one of the finest songwriters of this generation, one of my favourite American-raised lyricists. Her memoir Girl to City follows her progress from Elton John fan in the Pittsburgh suburbs to Manhattan art student, and on again to a cult singer-songwriter who caused a sensation in the mid-1990s. It’s full of screw-ups and charmed moments and shares the story of how it was to create an identity as an artist back in a time when female musician role models were rare. It’s a struggle to make a life of what you love through temp jobs and motherhood, but Amy did it.
During lockdown, in a conversation with Alex Smith at BMI, she imagined life once the enforced separation was over: “I want to play a show that has it all: sweating, rocking, tender moments: anger and joy shared with a crowd, and just hugging everybody.”
Amy Rigby, with Wreckless Eric and Ian Button, plays The Pig, Hastings on 28 November 2024
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