Amy Speace – Days Of Letting Go
Award-winning singer/songwriter + poet Amy Speace has released her debut collection of poetry titled The Cardinals, published by Red Hen Press, and the single “Days of Letting Go” with accompanying video, out today.
Both are featured on her current “The Cardinals: Songs, Stories & Poetry” tour continuing into 2027.
The Cardinals is a lyrical investigation of marriage, divorce, mothering, and mysticism told through poems that read like intimate conversations but evoke the complexities of love and loss through the natural world. Speace tackles the internal language of coming together and splitting apart, evoking rivers and birds, the South and the North, weather and racism and family history and it all comes together like birdsong.
The single “Days of Letting Go” was inspired by her poem titled “Bluegrass Highway” written as part of her MFA thesis. It was inspired by a billboard that said, “Opium Kills. Jesus Saves.” The accompanying video, directed by Duende Visions Productions, creates a visual narrative to the song.
Amy further explains, “I was working on a series of ‘persona poems’ – poems where the narrator isn’t me, is a character, a specific voice – and I imagined it as a male narrator driving back home after the funeral of his father’s death. Of course, my own father had died in late 2019 and that was also a subject I was writing about in my work at the time. I wrote the poem with the repeating refrain – clearly in song form – but wanted to keep it a poem, until one of my mentors asked me why it wasn’t a song. I sang the whole thing to my friend Vance Gilbert and he said, ‘you know what would be cool? If you spoke the verse lyrics.’ And I told him it was originally a poem and he laughed.”
“Days of Letting Go” was recorded at Skinny Elephant Studio in East Nashville, TN and produced by Neilson Hubbard with Amy (vox), Doug Lancio (guitars), Lex Price (bass), Neilson Hubbard (drums) and Danny Mitchell (keys).
Amy Speace is currently on “The Cardinals: Songs, Stories & Poetry” tour continuing into 2027 with performances, readings, conversations at listening rooms, venues, book stores and a featured session at the upcoming Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 17.
“The Cardinals: Songs, Stories & Poetry” Tour
SEPT 9 / LAWRENCE, KS @ Liberty Hall
SEPT 10 / OKLAHOMA CITY, OK @ The Blue Door
SEPT 11 / BARTLESVILLE, OK @ Grey Dog Listening Room
SEPT 12 / HUTCHINSON, KS @ Tall Jann’s Concerts
SEPT 23 / NEW YORK, NY @ City Winery
SEPT 24 / HOBOKEN, NJ @ Little City Books&
SEPT 25 / BEACON, NY @ The Town Crier
SEPT 26 / SHIRLEY, MA @ Bull Run Restaurant
SEPT 27 / NORTH ADAMS, MA @ The Railway Cafe
OCT 7 / BERKELEY, CA @ The Backroom
OCT 9 / SANFRANCISCO, CA @ The Dia Tribe Foundation*
OCT 10 / SANTA MONICA, CA @ McCabe’s Guitar Shop^
OCT 14 / NASHVILLE, TN @ The Bowery Vault%
OCT 17 / NASHVILLE, TN @ Southern Festival of Books
OCT 22 @ ROANOKE, VA @ The Spot On Kirk^
OCT 24 / EASTON, MD @ Stoltz Listening Room^
OCT 25 / BETHLEHEM, PA @ Godfrey Daniels^
OCT 29 / NASHVILLE, TN @ Nashville Poetry Party
NOV 4 / CHICAGO, IL @ Uncommon Ground
NOV 5 / FORT ATKINSON, WI @ Cafe Carpe
NOV 7 / DULUTH, MN @ Wussow’s Concert Cafe
NOV 18 / WINSTON-SALEM, NC @ Running with Headphones
NOV 19 / DURHAM, NC @ Seance Listening Room
NOV 21 / ATLANTA, GA @ Red Boots Roots Music Concerts
NOV 22 / ASHEVILLE, NC @ House Concert
&in conversation with Melissa Shepherd
*in conversation with poet Matthew Zapruder
^ w/ Jesse Lynn Madera
%w/ Katie Boeck
#amyspeace