It was in 2019 that Amy Speace delivered Me & The Ghost of Charlemagne – opening his review of the album, Mike Davies declared she was “one of the great contemporary Americana singer-songwriters, a voice that can send shivers down the spine, lyrics that squeeze the heart until it bleeds.”
A lot has happened since that release, life-changing moments that have shaped her new album There Used to Be Horses Here – the accompanying press reads: Looking back on a twelve-month span between her son’s first birthday and the loss of her father, award-winning singer and songwriter Amy Speace culled eleven new songs directly from her depth of personal experiences—childhood memories, coming of age in New York City, and losing a parent while learning to become one.
Despite the weight of those aforementioned words, this isn’t a sad record. It’s down to the skill of the songwriter that moments of hope and energy are drawn from such moments – propelled by a playwright’s eye for detail, a performer’s gift of vocal delivery, a poet’s talent for concise writing the press release says which is impossible not to agree with. The icing on this cake comes in the form of collaborators, The Orphan Brigade. They have been well-covered on Folk Radio UK and this is sure to be an immense and powerful combination.
Why take my word for it. Here is the accompanying video for the title track…
Amy on There Used to Be Horses Here:
“A month after I turned 50, I gave birth to my son, Huckleberry. My father was present for the birth and held him within hours. My Dad was 81 years old and we both knew my Dad would not see my son grow up. In the year between my son’s birth and my father’s death, these songs spilled out of me. I grieved in writing. I wanted to illuminate my father and his stories, from the horse farm near his home that was bulldozed to make room for condos to his memory of a car ride that came back to him in a dream the night before he died to a photograph found in an old album. I wrote to my son as I nested with him in the morning. I sang to our ailing world as the pandemic raged around us.”
There Used to Be Horses Here; out April 30th on Proper Records/Wind Bone Records.
Pre-Order here: https://smarturl.it/amyspeacehorseshere