Amy Speace’s senior university lecture was a discussion on whether Bob Dylan is a poet or a songwriter. Now, Speace is living that dichotomy, as she releases a book of poetry called “The Cardinals” and a single, “Days of Letting Go.”
The line between the two art forms is at play in both pieces that she has released today: the song started as a poem, and a poem in the book began its life as a song. The poet Maggie Smith, whom Speace calls her mentor, encouraged her to turn the poem called “Bluegrass Highway,” written as part of her MFA thesis, into what would become “Days of Letting Go.”
“I had written it with like a chorus, and she said, ‘Why isn’t this a song?'” Speace says in an interview. “And I said, ‘Because it didn’t come out with music.’ And she said, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ But then that night, I was like, let me see if there’s music. And that’s the single.”
The East Nashville-based artist is on the road sharing her poems and music via a tour called The Cardinals: Songs, Stories & Poetry. It will stop at the Loft at City Winery in New York on Sept. 23, Little City Books in Hoboken on Sept. 24 and The Town Crier in Beacon on Sept. 25.
The poetry book is billed as “a lyrical investigation of marriage, divorce, mothering and mysticism told through poems that read like intimate conversations but evoke the complexities of love and loss through the natural world.” Rivers, birds and the US North and South, weather and racism “all come together like birdsong” in “The Cardinals,” a press release declares.
Speace moved around as a child but says “we were always Maryland,” noting that her father is from Eastern Shore farmland, “like super evangelical, not even Baptist — like one-room schoolhouse, no drinking.” She lived in New York for about 20 years, and when she moved to Tennessee, she says, “It took a few years for my feet to settle in, and once it did, I was like, oh, I’ve always meant to live in the South. I’ve got a South thing about me.”
She adds: “I kind of develop an accent sometimes. It’s kind of like when Madonna moved to London and has a British accent. But I have an ear for it. I named my kid Huckleberry, so whatever.”
Asked about the history that informed the Southern tradition of songwriting and prose writing, she says: “There is blood in the dirt here that is barely on the surface. It’s not buried. These trees are marked from lynching and we know it. I mean, I’m saying it metaphorically. This is not that far behind us. My grandmother was alive. My mother was alive when they were lynching people in the South. So that’s just there. And as a white person in the South, you have to grapple with the fact that you’re looking at your neighbors and you’re like, holy shit, not even a hundred years ago we would not be able to live side by side. I mean, we’ve got a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest in town, and he he’s the guy who started the KKK.”
About 20 years ago, Speace was discovered by Judy Collins, who signed her to her label, Wildflower Records. Speace was drinking tequila shots and was joined by Katherine de Paul, a longtime associate of Collins who manages Wildflower, but didn’t tell Speace who she was. Speace’s friend handed her Speace’s demo recording.
Collins and Katherine De Paul, a long-time associate of Collins who manages Wildflower, saw her set at South by Southwest.
Later, “Judy and Katherine showed up at my show in New York,” Speace recalls. “Judy was there and she’s like, I want to sign you and take you on the road with me. And now Katherine de Paul and I have just locked it in that she’s going to manage me.”
In October, “right prior to midterms,” she says, Speace will release a cover of Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” with Garrison Starr, John Fullbright and Beth Nielsen Chapman. She also has a duo with Kenny Foster called The Salt and the Wound. “We call ourselves The Civil Wars without the weird sexual tension. We have the songs and we’re pitching for a producer, so that’s the next music project.”
Photo credit Neilson Hubbard
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