Photo: Daiana Feuer
Amanda Jo Williams always knew she was going to get out of her tiny town of Hogansville, Georgia, she just didn’t quite know how-- until one day a model scout plucked the gangly, dark haired beauty out of the crowd. Quickly, Amanda had landed amid the buzzing energy of NYC, a place so inspiring she realized she definitely wasn’t going to sit still for a photographer’s lens. On a whim, she and a friend hitchhiked up to Woodstock, NY, where Amanda met a man who would bring her two gifts-- the gift of playing music, and the gift of her twin girls. Suddenly, Amanda was recording new songs as fast as she could write them. Finding her calling set her heart afire with new dreams, and the experience, she recounts, felt entirely natural. “It made me feel good, free, and like I could go places I hadn’t been,” she says.
When she talks, it’s in a strong southern drawl swirled into a high pitch coo, like a little girl or a fairy nymph. And when Amanda Jo Williams sings, it can sound as soft as a mother singing her children to sleep, or as primal as the call of an Indian across a wild plain. In fact, Native American culture resonates with Amanda, and its heartbeat threads through her sonic landscape. “I think,” says Amanda, “I was an Indian in my past life.”
Her newest offering, The Bear Eats Me, is chock full of catchy rockabilly band numbers, with multi-layered recordings featuring cherubic choruses and good ol’ honky tonk. It’s dusty jukebox rock that will wake the kids in the middle of the night for a boot-stomping, moon-invoking dance party on the back porch.
While the experience of Amanda Jo Williams’ music is at once
like nothing you’ve ever heard, it sometimes evokes some legendary saucy and
soulful comparisons like Hank Williams Jr., Joanna Newsome, Melanie or June
Carter, Victoria Williams and Lucinda Williams as well. When you mention
influences though, Amanda shrugs. “Oh, that’s nice. I like all those people.
I’m just being me.”
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