Amy Rigby

Us humans, we love stories and when it comes down to it, the Wild Hare Club only exists because of my insatiable appetite for a good yarn. The WHC stage has hosted some great artists who can tell a good story through words or song and, indeed, my own bucket is now brimming with stories shaped by the mad happenings connected with the club. It is therefore with great pleasure that the highly storied Amy Rigby has accepted an invitation to perform at the WHC to celebrate the publication of her second book of memoirs Girl to Country.

Raised in Pittsburgh and schooled in late ‘70s lower Manhattan, Amy is imbued with true grit and a DIY spirit inspired by punk, which led her to form pre-Americana country band Last Roundup before hooking up with Sue Garner and Amanda Uprichard to form The Shams in NYC East Village. With Amy’s already obvious songwriting chops and fabulous harmonies, The Shams became Richard Hell’s favourite girl group and got to record a lp, Quilt, which was produced by Lenny Kaye, Patti Smith’s longstanding guitarist and gentleman lieutenant. It’s not hard to imagine that in a parallel universe, The Shams got bigger than The Bangles.

Fortunately, or not, that didn’t happen and Amy launched a solo career and has been honing her songcraft ever since, combining elements of folk and country with an innate understanding of the dynamics of what makes a cracking rock song. Many of Amy’s songs explore the tensions of the creative struggles of a rock’n’roll lifer with the constraints of keeping it together in the ‘real’ world.   Across her albums, from 1996 cult classic Diary of a Mod Housewife to 2024’s gritty Hang in There with Me (recorded with husband Eric Goulden, Wreckless Eric to you), there are pithy songs aplenty - songs that tell it like it is, often shot through with wry humour. “Think Randy Newman and Loudon Wainwright, at their best,” says Steve Earle, who is no songwriting slouch himself.

You get the picture, Amy is a songwriter’s songwriter, with artists such as Laura Cantrell and Maria Doyle Kennedy covering her songs. Perhaps no greater endorsement, (beyond a place in the WHC Hall of Fame of course) is that Ronnie Spector chose Amy’s All I Want for inclusion on The Last of the Rock Stars album - a spirited performance that is given further drive by Keith Richards’ guitar. It’s not hard to imagine Amy dancing round the kitchen table when she first got to hear their version.