Amy Fairchild is a phoenix on the greater-Boston music scene. After dropping off the radar screen for a few years, Fairchild, a 20 year veteran of the music business, is back with an exciting new CD. She’s been participating in a Linda Ronstadt tribute show, and she’s developed an interest in making music videos to accompany her songs.
There was no particular concept for her recently released self-titled CD. “They’re really just a collection of songs,” she said. “Each song represents some different” element of her life. When asked why she waited until her fourth album to name it after herself, she said it had never occurred to her before. She always felt it had to have some clever title.
“This is sort of the most me record,” she said. “I’ve really come into myself. I’ve grown up song-wise. It doesn’t try to answer questions. It just asks them, and it lets the listeners finds their own answers. Music can tear you apart” if you think about it too much.
Fairchild was out of the scene for a while. She started a part time job in real estate, and she had some other things to attend to. Partly, it was because her personal relationship with her producer ended. She needed time before she was able to work with him again, as he knew her music well, and, although she could’ve produced it herself, she prefers to work with a producer. “I needed time to work with him again after a difficult split,” she said.
Interestingly enough, her songs on Amy Fairchild, such as “Long Way Down” are not about what she was going through. “They’re less personal,” she said. Only one of her new songs, “Love Love Love” could encompass what her life had been like. “It’s about redemption,” Fairchild said. “We all can use a fresh start and move onto a better place.”
Fairchild’s song “Hold Me Down” was also not written about her producer, although it is about trying to feel grounded after something is lost. Her album is marked by a smooth, tight sound, for which she has to thank her producer(and ex-beau). “He’s a great producer,” she exclaimed.
Fairchild’s new album is also noteworthy for her clever lyrical work. She’s a little bit of a folk artist and a little bit of a rocker. There’s a picture of Fairchild at the Kerrville Folk Festival wearing a rock tee-shirt. “I’m confused,” she said. “I’m confused where to put myself. I’m a songwriter. I play solo. I play in duos. I can hold it down with a band.”
Fairchild feels her evolution as an artist has resulted in a broader, fuller, more thoughtful pop rock and roots rock sound. “It’s slicker,” she said. “I have more experience, more knowledge how to get certain sounds out. I’m more mature, and I learned from other people more. I think it’s gotten a little slicker and a little more polished, and just a little bit more poppy. I was a little more folksy with my first record. It’s now more radio friendly.”
Fairchild broke into the Western Massachusetts music scene in 1994 while living in North Hampton and studying at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, quitting before she finished her degree. She had played piano and sung since age five, but, as a young adult, she just picked up a guitar and started writing songs. “I had been musical my whole life, but I hadn’t really written until I had went through some school and figured out I didn’t want to be a classical artist.”
The Western Massachusetts area Fairchild was living in was, and still is, a liberal community very supportive of the arts and music. Witnessing and working in the office at The Iron Horse Tavern picking demos for the venue gave Fairchild an in. “That was helpful to be able to kind of grow out of the Iron Horse,” she said. “That’s where I did my first CD Release there. It was like my home.”
That first CD Release Party sold out, and Fairchild was received very well at that point in her career. She then moved to New York City, remaining there from 1997 to 2002, working with producers, beginning a $5000.00 demo deal with Atlanta Records, playing numerous gigs, and working a day job. She worked with Kenny White who produced music for Peter Wolf before working with Stephen Haigler who had worked with The Pixies. Haigler produced one song for her. Meanwhile, Fairchild recorded vocal parts for jingles to be played on the radio, paying her royalties each time a commercial aired.
Eventually, Fairchild returned to her native Massachusetts and rejoined her old music scenes, in Boston as well as Western Massachusetts. She released another album in 2002 called Mr. Heart. Last year’s self-titled album is the one she’s currently promoting. She recently developed an interest in making her own music videos to accompany her songs online. “The minute I send out a mailer with a link to a video, it will get 20 times more clicks than anything,” she said. “It’s clear that people want to see you in motion.” Fairchild had to learn the Mac software program called I-Movie to maker her visuals.
Fairchild has a charisma and a presence in her videos. She acted in a lot of her high school plays and she competed in an all state competition, winning an all state best actress award for a role in an Anton Chekov play. “I’ve always been comfortable in my own skin, pretty much,” she said.
Well connected, Fairchild has Jim Weider from The Band playing on her latest CD. She met the legendary guitarist at a studio in Rhinebeck, New York where she recorded her second to last album. Her new disc also features Norah Jones’s pedal steel player Jon Graboff who Fairchild knows from her five year stint in New York City. Her current band consists of guitarists Adam Steinberg and Andy Santospago, drummer Steve Chaggaris, bassist Jeff St. Pierre, and keyboardist Jim Gambino. Fairchild also works with Bad Company’s drummer Simon Kirke who she met through a party for Woody Giessmann’s Right Turn organization.
“We met and just kind of hit it off,” Fairchild said, “and started talking about songs and traded CDs and it evolved, the idea of doing a show together. He wants to be heard as a songwriter as well, not just a drummer. He’s made a couple of records.” Fairchild and Kirke also perform some Bad Company songs together with a common band, “Ready For Love,” “Rock Steady,” “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love,” and “All Right Now.” Kirke sings lead vocal on “Shooting Star.”
“I’ve actually been covering ‘Ready For Love’ for years before I met Simon,” she said. “It was really fun to actually play that song with the drummer who invented it, invented the drum parts any way.”
Many might not remember but Fairchild took first place and near first place in many national songwriting competitions over the years. She won a $20,000.00 prize in 2003 from a Maxell sponsored contest that was linked to the John Lennon Songwriting Competition.
“My song called ‘Falling Down’ won $20,000.00, and it was determined to be the best the song out of all of them, which kind of shocked me, to be honest,” she said. “I was just sort of like ‘Wow!’ It’s a very simple song. I think it’s a good song. It was quite an honor, that’s for sure.”
Fairchild was presented with a huge cardboard check for the $20,000.00 by the pre-fame Black Eyed Peas at a NAMM Conference. “There’s a photo on my website, actually,” she said. “It was a huge, fake cardboard check, and I can’t find it now. I lost it.”
As if Fairchild isn’t busy enough, she and songwriter friend Carla Ryder formed a band five years ago called Miriam. This two female fronted band plays Toad in Cambridge, Massachusetts the last Tuesday of every month. The country-rock outfit has guitar, bass, and mandolin. Fairchild and Ryder have not written for Miriam, but they do feature each other’s songs mixed in with covers of songs that many people wouldn’t know, though they do add some familiar favorites by The Beatle or Tom Waits. For example, one song they perform is called “Past The Point Of Rescue” that almost nobody recognizes. Yet, that one song is only of many that mainstream audiences may not be able to identify from their set list.
“We developed a following out of that bar, and we’re going to start to play out more in 2015, I think,“ she said. “The focus is on a lot of tight harmonies. Andy Santospago is in that band too.“
Fairchild is an artist reborn. She’s coming back into the music scene in a major way after a brief hiatus. With a tidal wave of talent pushing her forward, she’s bound to make a huge splash.
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