Amy Speace is a modern folksinger whose music nods to the genre’s 1970s glory days. She has spent two decades chronicling the high marks, heartbreaks, and hard roads of a life logged on the road. She’s been a tireless traveler, chasing the dream from the coffeehouses of New York City to larger stages across the globe. Along the way, Amy’s built an international audience without the help of a major label, relying instead upon a touring schedule whose milestones include the Glastonbury Festival, NPR’s Mountain Stage, and a yearly average of 150 shows.
Amy’s recent work is the most nakedly honest yet, with sparsely-decorated songs that double down on her larger-than-life voice and detail-rich songwriting. She sings of dreams and reality, full of characters making sense of their lives when something is lost and then found. Discovered and mentored by folk-pop icon Judy Collins during the early 2000s, Speace left her career as a classically-trained Shakespearean actress and, instead, kicked off a string of acclaimed albums. Championed by The New York Times, NPR and other taste-making outlets for her solo work, she received further acclaim as a member of Applewood Road, a harmony-heavy trio whose self-titled album became a critical success in the UK, earning a five-star review from The London Sunday Times.
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.
According to Mary Gauthier, “Folk music doesn’t get any better than this.”