About That Song: Amanda B. Perry
About That Song #90
In our special series, singer-songwriter Sarah Morris interviews artists about the songs that shaped them.
Hi! I’m Sarah Morris. I’m wildly in love with songs and the people who write them. There have been a few songs in my life that have been total gamechangers—songs that made me want to be a songwriter and songs I’ve written that made me feel like I am a songwriter. About That Song is a space where I can learn more about those pivotal songs in other writers’ lives.
In the 90th edition of this series, I chatted with Amanda B. Perry, a Minnesota singer-songwriter on the cusp of releasing a new album. I asked her to tell me about the songs that had an impact on her as an artist.
Amanda B. Perry. Photo credit: Sara Kristine.
Sarah: Amanda B. Perry! Hi Amanda! I’m lucky enough to call you a friend and a musical co-conspirator. We’ve participated in the same prompt-based songwriting group for the last 5 or so years, so I’ve witnessed many of your songs in their brand new form. You have a new album coming out, entitled List of Lovers. Congratulations! It feels like a great excuse to learn a bit more about how your journey as a songwriter began.
Do you remember the song you heard that made you want to be a songwriter? Tell us about that song.
Amanda: Yes, I absolutely do. I can feel the room, and smell my parents' basement ... My brother is a musician and has been writing songs forever. As a young child, I would sit and listen to him play our upright grand and watch the magic of these big, huge soaring piano chords come to life. Then, as if by magic, these heart-wrenching lyrics would pour out and tell stories of love and loss, as if he’d lived another life entirely... and I fell head over heels for this art form.
The song that comes to mind, I can tell you, not many have heard, because it sits on a burned CD-R in very few homes ... It’s called “Too much too soon” by my big brother, Adam Michael Browne. Sarah, you would call it one of those domestic evacuation stories … I can't remember exactly how you word it …
Sarah: ooh yes—domestic evacuation songs—I consider it an entire sub-genre!
Amanda: It’s an end-of-a-relationship song, and every beautiful rhyme dances off just the right chord and builds to a beautiful ending. It has been in my heart ever since.
Sarah: Oh, wow. In all the times I’ve asked this question, that’s the first time that the answer was a song written by a family member. How special is that! Does your brother know of his impact on your musical life? Have you ever co-written?
Amanda: I think I have shared with him a few times how much his music has influenced me. And listening to his music again lately, I shall tell him once more! And absolutely, we co-wrote two or three songs when we were younger! One of my all-time fave co-writes was a duet we wrote, “As the Days Go By”... A very sweet love song!
Sarah: Once you began writing, did you feel like a writer immediately? It took me a few years of writing before I believed it—was there a song that gave you that “a-HA! I AM a songwriter!” moment? Tell us about that song.
Amanda: Well, I know that I wrote my first song when I was pretty young, and continued to write into adulthood. But I didn't really feel anything truly cut into me—that made me feel like I had actually written a solid song—until Prompt 4 of the 2020 Singer-Songwriters Songwriting Challenge Group Winter Session. It was a photo prompt, a view of a Ferris wheel adjacent to the Chernobyl nuclear plant, through the viewpoint of a broken window of maybe an apartment? Very dark.
Sarah: I remember this prompt so clearly! I still think about the song I wrote for it as a “someday-maybe” song.
Amanda: I wrote a song about the end of a relationship that had gone, in a word, nuclear. Nothing left to save, all had been damaged, and it is as dramatic as you can get! It’s called “Vanishing.” This song I never play, but it made its way onto my first album, By Special Request. It can still give me all the feels listening to it.
Sarah: One of the first ABP songs that I remember hearing that “stopped me in my kitchen” (because that’s where I listen to all the prompt songs!) was “One Last Stop Til Boston,” which is on your second album, 2022’s My Time. Can you tell us about that song?
Amanda: The prompt was “badge”… and luckily for me that week, I had woken up with a melody in my head, and in the melody I heard the word Boston. My cousins live out there and I asked one of them to send me a description of what the train system there was like (sights, feels, smells) so I could mentally place myself there.
Sarah: Ah! I love that you did that!
Amanda: Then I thought of a storyline of returning your raincoat that still smelled of your cigarettes and your cologne, to see if we could undo the damage that the miles had done to this relationship. One of my favorite lines in that song was “With each track I feel it, I’m getting closer to … finding if I’m just a memory”. I knew that the track was, of course, the train track, but also each “track” that played in my headphones on my way to you, brought me closer to finding out my fate! It makes me smile to hear when people like this song, because it has always felt like a totally different genre of music for me to play!
Sarah: Between your luscious powerhouse vocals and your swoon-worthy piano playing, you have a singular way with big ballads. Your song “Gone” feels like a standout example of this—can you tell us about that song?
Amanda: AHHHHH “GONE”!!! One of my Big Ballads on this album! I cannot sing this song without crying! This came from the “Privy” prompt. If you grew up in the time of passing sweet little folded-up notes in school to each other, and where we spent our time falling in love outside on a park bench and riding around in friends’ cars, this song will hit you!
Sarah: I did grow up in this time you describe and it DOES hit me!
Amanda: A beautiful young love story that sadly ended too soon with the loss of life … told from behind the wheel of the woman all grown up, now looking back through the rearview on the life they could have had. When I hear this song, I hear rain on my windshield, I feel love notes in my hands, and the richest, youngest of loves … that then all goes numb. In this story, she can almost see this carefree and happy human she would be without this loss … but there is some pain that is too deep. It’s what I call a doozy of a song.
Amanda B. Perry’s List of Lovers album artwork. Photo credit: Sara Kristine.
Sarah: I think you’re skilled at the doozy, ABP! “I tried to wash away love like a rainy day but I guess I’m dirtier this time around.” You sing this lyric to begin and end the title track on your new album—the second time it carries this sense of heart-on-your-sleeve, hard-won-wisdom. Can you tell us about THAT song?
Amanda: Yes! “List of Lovers,” the song is exactly that. A realization that we can love whomever, however, feels right to us. All the advice in the world won’t change who we are at our core. This list that we start to carry with us as we grow, full of bad choices or just questionable choices, can start to feel dirty and heavy. But then the lyrics pull us out of that … “To find the color of rain, you gotta dance with the thunder clouds. To taste a moment of pain you gotta let tears make a sound.” Realizing that the past hearts we’ve collided with have actually created this list that we can be proud of, because it makes for a fuller love story and life story. Why should I compromise to make anyone else proud or comfortable? This is my list of lovers.
Sarah: Gah, YES! Here’s to the fuller love story AND life story. And here’s to you and your list of lovers! Before you go—do you have any upcoming Midwest shows where we might hear you sing these songs?
Amanda: Absolutely! I will be debuting List of Lovers at the Century Oaks Studios - Meyer Barn up in St. Joseph, MN, on Saturday, November 8th.
Sarah: A magical venue! Readers, if you’ve never been to Meyer Barn, and/or experienced Amanda B. Perry in concert, you are in for such a treat. Amanda—thank you for stopping by to talk about THAT song with me. And again, congratulations!
Come help Amanda celebrate her beautiful new album on Saturday, November 8, at Century Oaks Studios - Meyer Barn, 32869 102nd Ave, St Joseph, MN 56374. The International Treasures will open the evening! Doors are at 6:30pm and music begins at 7.
Listen to “List of Lovers”
List of Lovers Album Credits
This album was recorded and produced at River Rock Studios, Minneapolis, by Eric Blomquist
So many amazing musicians said yes to playing with me. They truly bring all the magic to these ten songs.
Piano - Adam Daniel, Joe Peterson, David Smith
Guitar - David Feily, Doyle Turner, Ted Hajnasiewicz
Bass- Ian Combs
Drums - Tarek Abdelqader
Cello - Julia Floberg
Violin - DGS
B3 organ & Harmonica - Joe Peterson
Upright Bass - Greg Byers
Percussion - David Tullis
Digital production - Eric Blomquist
Banjo, mandolin - David Feily
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Morris. Photo credit: Tom Smouse.
Sarah Morris is a superfan of songs and the people who write them, and a believer that certain songs can change your life. A singer-songwriter / mama / bread maker / coffee drinker who recently released her fifth album of original material, she’s been known to joyfully sing with people in her Big Green Bathroom.
