Before Speace, a former member of the Sabrinas, was an accomplished singer-songwriter, she explored various interests. "I've always known I would end up in New York City doing some kind of performing. I just wasn't sure exactly what," said Speace. "It's been a very patchwork kind of post-college life. I knew I wanted to sing, to write, to teach, to act. I just didn't quite know how to do all of it."
Experimenting with theater
After college, Speace attended an acting program run by The National Shakespeare Conservatory, which was recommended to her by professor of theater and dance Peter Lobdell. Once the program ended, Speace moved to New York City to complete the "Two Year Professional Actor's Training Study" run by the conservatory.
Speace then acted in, directed and produced various productions. She also helped to start a theater company which later developed into an internship program. "We had a great two-year run and received some wonderful press," she said. "It was an exciting time for me, living in the East Village before there was a Starbucks and a Gap on every corner. I was hanging out with poets and musicians and actors and directors and painters, and we were all charged by being really young, bursting with ideas and completely poor."
Sounds of music
Inspired by her East Village surroundings, Speace fell into writing music. "I'd bought a guitar from a pawn shop and taught myself to play and passed the time during auditions writing lyrics and melodies," she said. Speace and Erin Ash '91, a fellow Sabrinas alum, started a folk duo and performed in New York City clubs. After recording their first album, entitled "Edith O., Tattooed Queen," the duo received some attention from record labels but parted ways soon after.
After the split, Speace initially decided to continue her theatrical career. "I figured I'd just go back to theater, so I took on a long tour with a repertory theatre company," she said. "But when I returned to New York City, I had a whole slew of new songs I had written on the tour, so I put a new band together and began recording my first solo album."
While working on her album, Speace remained involved with theater. When her solo album, "Fable," was released in March 2002, she and her manager decided that Speace should concentrate completely on her music and take a break from full-time acting. "I still do commercials and some sporadic work, and I plan to get back to it," she said. "And I'm always catching ideas for new plays to write, eventually, but for the past few years, I've been concentrating mostly on my music career."
Receiving recognition
Speace's music has been recognized with various awards and nominations from contests such as the Billboard Songwriting Competition, the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, the Mid-Atlantic Songwriting Contest, the USA Songwriting Competition and the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival New Song Contest. In addition, "Fable" was nominated for Female Singer-Songwriter Album of the Year by the Just Plain Folks Music Organization. She has been profiled as one of the "Women to Watch" for WomanRock Magazine, Performing Songwriter Magazine and as a Critic's Pick in The Village Voice, Time Out New York and The Nashville Rage. Her songs have been played on over 150 AAA and college radio stations. She has also achieved acclaim abroad, reaching number-one status on Serbian and German radio stations. Her song "Why Not Wyoming?," will be featured in the 2005-2006 national television and radio advertising campaign for tourism for the state of Wyoming.
The college years
Speace has fond memories of the College and has returned for many Homecoming games. "It was always nice to go back, nostalgic, but good to see familiar faces," she said. Although she originally planned on being an English and music double major, Speace decided to pursue theater along with English after falling in love with the theater department. "I felt like there was a real community and family feeling in that department at the time," she said. "The nature of such a small, highly charged intellectual and social atmosphere like Amherst, steeped in tradition, challenges everyone to be the most they can be. You feel the weight of all the other years and minds that passed through there and you want to step up to the plate yourself."
Speace remembers many positive experiences in the classrooms of the College."For the first time, I allowed myself to be confident in my ideas, unafraid [finally] to raise my hand and answer questions, whether I was cut down or not," she said. She recalls memorable classes with Professors of English Barry O'Connell and Andrew Parker, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science Austin Sarat, as well as Lobdell.
Speace made an impression on those professors. "She was one of these impossibly talented people that excelled in everything she set her mind to. She was always on, always involved, always engaging others to participate," said Parker. "You would want to have Amy in every class that you would teach because she was a catalyst." Sarat expressed similar sentiments. "She was the epitome of what Amherst seeks in its students," he said.
Beyond academics, however, Speace pursued a range of activities both at the College and in the five-college community. She devoted most of her time to The Sabrinas, the College's first all-female a cappella group. "I did a lot of arrangements for the group and it was my main outlet for performing and singing," she said.
As a theater major, Speace was also interested in musicals and classical plays. She was involved in the acting, writing and direction of both mainstage and student-produced plays both at the College and at Smith College.
As a member of Mr. Gad's House of Improv, Speace's performing was not limited to traditional theater. She calls her involvement with Gad's "some of the most challenging and thrilling performing I've done." She was able to use the experience of Gad's when she did some professional improvisational comedy later in New York City.
Outside of the classroom, Speace had the opportunity to meet many different people and discover her own identity as well. "Like everyone at that age, I came out of my shell and discovered my own voice. I discovered the kind of books I liked to read, the kind of debate I thrived on, the kind of friends I liked. I recognized in myself things I wanted to change, prejudices and stubborn streaks," she said. "For the first time, I was exposed to different cultures and religions and races and political and sexual persuasions. I met my first urban-raised friends, prep-school friends, first gay friend and vegetarian friends. I had friends who were sons of senators and daughters of single poor mothers. That kind of diversity was unknown to me in my little hometown."
Lessons learned
However, there are lessons Speace wished she had learned at Amherst. "The only thing I think I wished I had drummed into my own head as a student was this: Don't be afraid to fail and fail large because in the failure is the real lesson," she said. Her first experience with failure came during her freshman year when one of her professors gave her a failing grade on a paper. "It was excruciatingly mortifying, especially because I prided myself on my writing and felt like [the professor] really liked what I was doing. It felt like a slap in the face and a huge step backward for me," she said. "In the end, it challenged so much for me. It challenged my assumptions about my own writing, about my own intellect and my own inherent prejudices, and it made me such a better learner."
Speace currently resides in Jersey City, N.J., where she says she has "a nice view of the lower Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty." In addition to recording for her second album, Speace is developing ideas for books while teaching songwriting in private lessons and workshops. She is also receiving training as a teacher for "Kid Pan Alley," a national workshop founded by composer Paul Reisler. As part of the program, artists teach elementary through high school students songwriting through workshops. Each class writes an original song. "We've just completed a residency CD project that came out of our work in the Nashville public school district and the 'local' artists who have donated their talents to the CD are Wynonna Judd, Amy Grant, Delbert McLinton, Brooks and Dunn and other country stars," she said.
Speace hopes to develop teaching into a regular pursuit in the future. "[I plan to] keep doing what I'm doing and hopefully make better records with better songs each time," she said. "My goal, I guess, is to reach out. Either to entertain, and hope my audience is having a good time, stomping their feet, singing along, or they're moved by something to say 'I feel that way too.'"