Amy Rigby – Just like a woman
Will Rigby became a fan of the Last Roundup and helped them cut a demo at the dBs’ rehearsal space. That led to a recording contract with Praxis Records and an album cut in Nashville at Cowboy Jack Clement’s studio. That disc was never released, but the Last Roundup made another album with the Skeletons’ Lou Whitney in Missouri, and that was released as Twister by Rounder in 1987.
In 1988-89, the Last Roundup fell apart and the newly married Amy Rigby had a baby. She subsequently joined Garner and Uprichard in the Shams, a Roches-like trio that emphasized vocal harmonies over minimal guitar backup. The Shams released an album, 1990’s Quilt, and an EP, 1993’s Sedusia, on Matador. But that, too, fell apart as both Rigby and Garner started doing more and more solo shows.
“‘File Clerk Blues’ was the first song I ever did solo,” Rigby recalls. “I was working at a real estate agency, and I wrote that song for the company talent show. It’s like the scene in Melvin And Howard where Paul Le Mat sings ‘Santa’s Souped-Up Sleigh’ at a company talent show; people went so crazy that they made me sing it again. When I played more personal songs like ‘File Clerk Blues’, I felt there was a reason for me to be up onstage. It wasn’t just a hobby or a vanity project; there was a mission behind it.”
That sense of mission is obvious on The Sugar Tree. She moved from Brooklyn to Nashville after the first two solo albums. Miles away from her ex-husband and old friends, she felt the pressures of being a single parent as never before. She describes those first few months in Tennessee in the song “Rode Hard”, where she sings: “A girl gets tired of doing all this for nothing/You look around and everyone’s got retirement funds/They’re all socking away, saving for the future/While I buy shoes, shave my legs and see how fast I can run.”
“When I first got to Nashville,” she says, “that phrase kept going through my mind: ‘Rode hard and put away wet, driven ’round the bend, got far down as I could get.’ That was how I felt. I knew that was the beginning of the chorus, but I didn’t know where it was going. When I got to the end of the chorus, I came up with that line, ‘I’m going out again.’
“That was me, because I’m always on the verge of giving up, but when I got to that line, I knew I had to try it again — both music and love. I feel very uplifted whenever I sing that song, because it’s a song about survival, of taking your experiences and shoring yourself up to do it again, knowing more than you did before.”
ND contributing editor Geoffrey Himes is a former single parent who once allowed his son to ask some questions during a U2 interview.