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Amy Rigby (born Amelia McMahon, January 27, 1959) is an American singer-songwriter. [1] After playing with several New York bands she began a solo career, recording several albums which had only modest sales despite enthusiastic reviews. She settled into a career of touring while raising a daughter, then formed a duo with Wreckless Eric whom she also married. As of November 2011 they continue to tour from a base in upstate New York. She is the author of a memoir, Girl to City. [2]
Rigby was born in the Pittsburgh suburbs and raised Catholic. She moved to New York City in 1976. She married dB's drummer Will Rigby in the 1980s, and during the late 1980s and early 1990s recorded with New York bands such as The Shams and Last Roundup. She had a daughter with Rigby. [3]
In 1999 Rigby moved to Nashville to pursue a publishing deal, and continued to record and tour.
Rigby met Eric Goulden, also known as Wreckless Eric, in Hull, England, where she was performing one of his songs, and they married. [3] She later relocated to Cleveland, Ohio, and in late 2006 she and Goulden moved to France. In the fall of 2011 they moved back to the USA, settling in a town in upstate New York. Rigby and Goulden collaborated on albums. [3]
Rigby wrote a memoir of her journey from suburban Pittsburgh to New York City, and her journey to becoming a musician. Girl to City was published in July 2019. [3]
Rigby released her first full-length recording under her own name, Diary of a Mod Housewife, in 1996. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau praised the album, calling it "concept album of the year". [4] Spin voted Rigby "Songwriter of the Year" for 1996. Middlescence and The Sugar Tree (like Mod Housewife, recorded for Koch Records), also were well received by critics and listeners. Koch also released Rigby's compilation album, 18 Again.
After leaving Koch, she recorded for the Signature Sounds label, and also sold live CD and DVD material through her website. Til The Wheels Fall Off, with its opening track, "Why Do I," produced by Richard Barone, was released on Signature in 2003, and Little Fugitive in 2005. The weekly newspaper The Nashville Scene said that Little Fugitive "finds Rigby as sharp as ever, even as many of the songs evince the fuzz of dislocation...or the exasperation of a survivor who hasn't lost her sense of humor but knows that jokes have their limits."
She writes lyrics about the trials of a cash-strapped single mother in an uncaring world. "The Good Girls" is a song about consumerism and underemployment, for example. Asked by her manager if she would not be able to write the same kind of songs after starting a happy relationship, she responded "No problem. I'm still poor", before cranking out a lyric about her beau's ex-wife. Another trademark is outrageous sexual humor, as in the songs "I Hate Every Bone in Her Body" and "Are We Ever Going to Have Sex Again?"
Rigby uses basic chord structures derived from '60s rock and pop music. Her records are as notable for their musical sophistication as for their lyrical directness.
Her influences also include New York City punk rock, especially as played at the famous CBGB club, as well as the Beatles and other mid-1960s pop. One of her recent songs is entitled "Dancing With Joey Ramone."
Ronnie Spector, Sara Hickman, and Laura Cantrell have recorded compositions by Rigby. [5]
In 2008 Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby was released. The album is described as combining various influences. The pair toured to support the album. [6]
Janis Ian is an American singer-songwriter who was most commercially successful in the 1960s and 1970s. Her signature songs are the 1966/67 hit "Society's Child " and the 1975 Top Ten single "At Seventeen", from her seventh studio album Between the Lines, which in September 1975 reached no. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart.
Indigo Girls are an American folk rock music duo from Atlanta, Georgia, United States, consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. The two met in elementary school and began performing together as high school students in Decatur, Georgia, part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. They started performing with the name Indigo Girls as students at Emory University, performing weekly at The Dugout, a bar in Emory Village.
Lucinda Gayl Williams is an American singer-songwriter and a solo guitarist. She recorded her first two albums, Ramblin' on My Mind (1979) and Happy Woman Blues (1980), in a traditional country and blues style that received critical praise but little public or radio attention. In 1988, she released her third album, Lucinda Williams, to widespread critical acclaim. Regarded as "an Americana classic", the album also features "Passionate Kisses", a song later recorded by Mary Chapin Carpenter for her 1992 album Come On Come On, which garnered Williams her first Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1994. Known for working slowly, Williams released her fourth album, Sweet Old World, four years later in 1992. Sweet Old World was met with further critical acclaim and was voted the 11th best album of 1992 in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of prominent music critics. Robert Christgau, the poll's creator, ranked it 6th on his own year-end list, later writing that the album as well as Lucinda Williams were "gorgeous, flawless, brilliant".
Aimee Elizabeth Mann is an American singer-songwriter. Over the course of four decades, she has released ten studio albums as a solo artist. She is noted for her sardonic and literate lyrics about dark subjects, and her work with the producer Jon Brion in the 1990s was influential on American alternative rock.
Patricia Mae Giraldo is an American singer and songwriter. In the United States, she has two multi-platinum albums, five platinum albums, and 15 US Billboard top 40 singles, while in Canada she had eight straight platinum albums, and she has sold over 36 million albums worldwide. She is also a four-time Grammy Award winner. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in November 2022.
Righteous Babe Records is an American independent record label that was created by folk singer Ani DiFranco in 1990 to release her own songs in lieu of being beholden to a mainstream record company.
Amy Elizabeth Ray is an American singer-songwriter and member of the contemporary folk duo Indigo Girls with Emily Saliers. She also pursues a solo career, releasing ten albums under her own name, and founded the independent label Daemon Records in 1989. Ray is known for her alto and tenor range, and plays both electric and acoustic guitar, as well as mandolin and harmonica.
Larry Wallis was a British rock guitarist, songwriter and producer. He was best known as a member of the Pink Fairies and an early member of Motörhead.
Veronica Yvette Greenfield was an American singer who co-founded and fronted the girl group the Ronettes. She is sometimes referred to as the original "bad girl of rock and roll".
Eric Goulden, known as Wreckless Eric, is an English rock and new wave singer-songwriter, best known for his 1977 single "Whole Wide World" on Stiff Records. More than two decades after its release, the song was included in Mojo magazine's list of the best punk rock singles of all time. It was also acclaimed as one of the "top 40 singles of the alternative era 1975–2000".
Patricia Theresa Schemel is an American drummer and musician who rose to prominence as the drummer of alternative rock band Hole from 1992 until 1998. Born in Los Angeles, Schemel was raised in rural Marysville, Washington, where she developed an interest in punk rock music as a teenager. She began drumming at age eleven, and while in high school, formed several bands with her brother, Larry.
Ada Dwyer Russell (1863–1952) was an American actress who performed on stage in Broadway and London and became the muse to her poet lover Amy Lowell.
Jessica Ann Johnson is an American singer, actress, and fashion designer. After performing in church choirs as a child, Simpson signed with Columbia Records in 1997, aged seventeen. Her debut studio album, Sweet Kisses (1999), sold two million copies in the United States and was led by the Billboard Hot 100-top three single "I Wanna Love You Forever". Simpson adopted a more mature image for her second studio album, Irresistible (2001), and its namesake lead single track peaked within the top 20 of the chart. The album received gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Simpson's third studio album, In This Skin (2003), sold three million copies in the United States.
"Whole Wide World" is a song written by English rock singer-songwriter Wreckless Eric, who wrote the song in May 1974, and recorded it in 1977, whilst an original member of the Stiff Records label. Additional musicians on the record were Nick Lowe on guitar and bass, and Steve Goulding on drums.
Deborah Ann Harry is an American singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie. Four of her songs with the band reached No. 1 on the US charts between 1979 and 1981.
Big Smash! is the third album by the British musician Wreckless Eric. It was released as a double LP and as a cassette on 29 February 1980.
Duane Jarvis was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter who recorded, wrote songs and toured with many rock and roll and country music performers, including Frank Black, Peter Case, Rosie Flores, John Prine, Amy Rigby, Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakam, Tim Carroll, and Gene Clark & Carla Olson.
Daddy Rockin' Strong: A Tribute to Nolan Strong & the Diablos is a vinyl-only tribute album released by The Wind Records and distributed by Norton Records. On January 21, 2013, Burger Records re-issued the compilation on cassette tape.
Amy Allison is an American country music artist and the daughter of jazz-blues musician Mose Allison. She became interested in country music as a kid growing up on Long Island, and first began making music as the lead singer of Amy Allison and the Maudlins. She then joined Ryan Hedgecock to form the country duo Parlor James in 1994, before embarking on a solo career in 1996.
Diary of a Mod Housewife is the debut album by the American musician Amy Rigby, released in 1996. It has been called a concept album about growing older in a music scene, marriage, motherhood, and romantic dissolution. Rigby supported the album with a North American tour.
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