Photo by Ted Barron
by Jim Testa
I became a fan of Amy Rigby back in the days when she'd
play clubs like Maxwell's and Folk City in Last Roundup
and The Shams. Now Rigby's become an author: Girl To
City: A Memoir traces her life from her arrival in
the Manhattan as a college freshman to the release of her
breakout solo debut, Diary Of A Mo d Housewife.
Rigby's fans love her honesty, her sense of humor, her
pathos, and the clear-eyed intelligence and perceptiveness
that run through her songs. Not surprisingly, those same
qualities shine in her memoir. Hoboken’s Little City
Books will host Rigby to both read from her book and sing
a few of those wonderful songs on Thursday, October 17.
Amy Rigby arrived in New York City from a Pittsburgh suburb
in the mid-Seventies. She wanted to be an artist, so after
a proper education at a Catholic grammar school and public
high school, she enrolled at Parson’s, one of the
city’s best art schools. And then things got crazy.
Girl To City starts with a moony teenager with bad skin
and a portfolio of drawings winning tickets to see Elton
John on the radio. It ends with the release of Amy Rigby’s
breakout 1996 solo debut, Diary Of A Mod Housewife. And
in between, Rigby brings to life the glamorous, grungy,
desperate, manic, and altogether fabulous Manhattan of the
late Seventies, a nearly bankrupt metropolis bursting with
creativity, talent, music, and art.
Rigby’s recollections of Seventies New York –
the nightlife, the zeitgeist, the people who passed through
her life – come to life with a clarity that’s
not just impressive but seems almost inhuman to anyone old
enough to remember that era. “I’m lucky that
I started writing this book ten years ago, when a lot of
this was fresher in my mind,” Rigby said. “I
did keep journals, and I started a sort of a blog when my
first solo record came out.” But what helped most
was that the young Amy Rigby never went anywhere without
a camera. “I kept all those photos, boxes and boxes
of them,” she said. “And that, along with a
lot of help from old friends and books and magazine articles,
help me put it all back together.”
Rigby’s memoir meticulously reconstructs her odyssey
through Manhattan’s nightlife. The college freshman
soon discovered a demi-monde of nightclubs and punk bands,
all-night parties in lofts and on rooftops, fledgling artists
and designers and writers. And everywhere she turned, there
was music.
Rigby became a regular at the city’s legendary clubs
of the era, from CBGB and Hurrah’s. She and her friends
started an ad hoc DIY club called Stinky’s that morphed
into Tier 3. And with all that music, of course she and
her brother (who had joined her in the city) and her friends
just had to start a band. The first was Last Roundup, a
folk-punk group that didn’t really know how to play
its instruments but always had a lot of fun onstage. By
the time they recorded an album for Rounder Records in 1987,
they had become accomplished musicians. Last Roundup morphed
into the Shams.
“I don’t remember the first time I went to
Maxwell’s, but I’m pretty sure it was a Last
Roundup show,” Rigby said. But Hoboken soon became
an important part of her world, and not just for gigs. She
wound up marrying Will Rigby, the drummer of the dB’s,
one of the premier exponents of what came to be known as
“the Hoboken sound” in the early Eighties.
Will and Amy had a baby and things were okay when the dB’s
had a record deal and Last Roundup always seemed one break
away from breaking out into the mainstream. But the book
recounts with painful honest how her marriage couldn’t
survive the stress of two partners with separate indie music
careers, with one or the other always off on tour and the
other stuck at home working the soul-deadening jobs that
paid the rent. They divorced, and Rigby found herself a
single mom whose daughter Hazel either had to be foisted
off on friends and relatives or dragged along on tour.
But the story has a happy ending that started when Amy
met Eric Goulden, who had been part of the original British
punk movement as Wreckless Eric. “I met Eric and it
was like I saw my future,” Rigby said. “I first
met him when I had a solo gig in Hull in the north of England.
We reconnected when the Shams reunited in 2004 to play a
Yo La Tengo Hannukah show that also had Wreckless Eric as
a guest.”
Today, she and Goulden live in the Hudson Valley. While
both still have active solo careers, they’ve also
released three albums together, one a collection of favorite
covers called Two Way Family Favorites and two of original
material. “We have nearly enough material already
recorded that could become a
second Two-Way Family Favourites but might just start fresh
with a new set of covers,” she stated.
Rigby’s appearance at Little City Books will be a
reunion of sorts with owner Kate Jacobs; the two were part
of a collective of singer-songwriters who participated in
a live music podcast called Radio Free Song Club for over
a decade. “I don’t remember how I got involved
with that, maybe I knew Kate or maybe it was (Jacobs’
guitarist) Dave Schramm, or maybe it was (emcee) Nicholas
Hill,” she said.
Rigby bookends Girl To City with the story of dropping
her daughter Hazel off at college, and the heart to heart
conversation they had. Hazel wasn’t sure she needed
four more years of school. “All I want to do is ride
around and play music,” Hazel told her mom.
“I wouldn’t deny her that,” Rigby said.
“In a way, it was much easier when I was young. You
could find an apartment in New York for next to nothing
and a part-time job that would actually pay enough for rent
and groceries. Kids don’t have that anymore. But it’s
funny, young people are resourceful. They find a way. We
did. And they will too.”
IF YOU GO:
Amy Rigby will read perform and read from her autobiography
Girl To City: A Memoir at Little City Books (100 Bloomfield
Street, Hoboken) on Thursday, October 17. Showtime is 7
p.m. Advance tickets are $20 from littlecitybooks.com, which
include a signed copy of the book and a music download.
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