AMY RIGBY - GIRL TO COUNTRY - A MEMOIR - FREE ENTRY

Amy Rigby will be on tour in the UK in June with readings and songs from her new book ‘Girl To Country’.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amy Rigby has established herself as one of America's enduring underground/cult/indie artists. She started bands Last Roundup and the Shams in NYC's East Village before launching a solo career with 1996 classic album Diary Of A Mod Housewife. Her most recent album Hang In There With Me (Tapete, 2024) was called "…an absolute masterpiece, a career best" in Louder Than War. Rigby writes on Substack at Diary Of Amy Rigby. She's contributed essays to Dylan at 80(Imprint Academic); The White Label Promo Preservation Society: 100 Flop Albums You Ought To Know (Hozac) and How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History (Harper Collins). Rigby's first book, GIRL TO CITY: A Memoir, was published in 2019. She and husband and sometime duet partner Wreckless Eric recently relocated from New York to Norfolk UK.


PRAISE FOR GIRL TO COUNTRY'
Amy Rigby’s unfiltered self-portrait is a testament to friendship, the power of songs, the corrosive effects of bad boyfriends and the possibility of finding true love in middle age. Shot through with hard-learned lessons, it is also a book about the sacrifices that come with chasing your dreams’. Jim With (Mojo Magazine)

'A rocking, rolling journey from new-wave New York, through Nashville, on to England...and France—moving and very funny' - Nick Dalton (Record Collector)

'As compelling a storyteller on the page as she is on the stage, Rigby is an engaging and likeable narrator, disarmingly frank and funny whether discussing sex, parenthood and family dysfunction or the trials and doubts of an independent touring musician heading into her 40s, in a physically demanding industry that's forever fixated on the next big (young) thing. Triumphs like hearing one of her songs recorded by Ronnie Spector, with Keith Richards on guitar, help compensate for every dodgy Glasgow B&B, under-attended gig or highway breakdown. Ultimately however, it's love that gets her through: for friends, family and a certain British punk-rocker, but most of all for music itself.' Ben Graham (Shindig)

Broken-down vehicles. Premenopausal libido. A punk rock-loving teen to share the culture shock with. I don't think Hank done it this way.
A few years after her 1996 breakthrough album Diary Of A Mod Housewife, singer/songwriter Amy Rigby is still figuring out who she is. Closing in on forty, a newly-divorced mom trying to tour, work temp jobs, and keep a car running, Amy is ready for a change. She trades her beloved NYC for Nashville, where she navigates music, men and motherhood to learn the hard way that outside validation is no substitute for self-belief.
Following on from her acclaimed debut GIRL TO CITY, where Amy fumbled her way to becoming an artist in late twentieth century NYC, GIRL TO COUNTRYdepicts the tricky second act of a creative life, after the coming of age and first flash of achievement. How do you keep doing the work you love into your forties and beyond in a game everyone told you was only for the young? What's the price for juggling parenthood with fulfilling your dreams? And how about love—will it knock you off balance or help you keep going?