Name: Amy Stroup
Nationality: American
Occupation: Singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist
Current release: Amy Stroup's current single "Break The Feeling" is out via Milkglass. A new one, “As Long As You’re With Me”, is slated for release on March 24th 2023, with her fourth solo album, Since Frank, to follow on June 23rd.
Recommendations: They say if you want to write, you have to read. So I try and keep a stack by my bedside. One of the most helpful books I’ve read on the writing process is Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott another great one is The Story of A Happy Marriage by Anne Patchett. Both are not about songwriting per se but offer a wealth of knowledge on writing in all forms … and both are delicious storytellers so you won’t be bored.
In my own home, I have several art pieces by a sculptor/painter named Luke Chiswell. He repurposed skateboards into art. They are particularly awesome, I think, and I love what he titles them.

If you enjoyed this Amy Stroup interview and would like to know more, visit her official website. She is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I started taking classical piano in 2nd grade from my grandma’s bestie Mrs. Cadenhead. In the 90s she was the town piano guru in Florence, AL. I played in classical piano competitions at the University of North Alabama, etc. from 3rd grade through 7th grade. It wasn’t until I went to the local music store and bought a book called How to Teach Yourself Guitar and started teaching myself guitar on our family’s Willie Nelson-style classical guitar that I started writing songs.

Starting in about 5th grade, every time I learned a new chord I would write a song to help me remember it. I was inspired equally by watching VHS tapes of Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged and Jewel’s Live at ACL at a friend's house as I was my first concert—which was James Taylor.



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?  

I just feel calm in my body, and my mind wanders in the best way, like a nostalgic cinema.

It’s sort of an everything-everywhere-all at once ultimate satisfaction when I hear a song I love.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

How much time do you have? Ha! I think my career has definitely been a different one. I remember watching a documentary about Dolly Parton growing up, and she said If you can, own your songs, your publishing, and your masters.

I have been independent my entire musical life. Sure I have had record deal offers, and bad publishing deal offers, but because I have remained independent, I have had a lot of unique career experiences.

I moved to Nashville to be a songwriter, and after twists and turns and failures, I developed an indie artist career instead. After a Music Row executive told me, “Your voice is too different to get demo cuts on Music Row; you should sing these yourself,” I tried to. That particular meeting made me cry, but I ended up getting brave enough to try my own voice instead of writing songs for other people.

From touring with Ingrid Michaelson to Kasey Musgraves to starting a band called Sugar & the Hi-lows to releasing my own music to having just shy of 1,000 songs on TV… it’s been a wild ride— and like Dolly said to, I’ve owned my masters and publishing the whole time which I think has allowed me to make a sustainable living and chase what I love to do.



Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

I try my best to tell the truth from what I know and experience in every song, and follow this advice: “Two words aren’t better than one, clear as light firm as stone” - Madeline L’engle.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Connecting with people and giving color and capture to the tiniest moments of life. From the two minutes before you close your eyes to sleep to the delights of the most mundane moments, to the sweeping times you feel most alive and possibly okay for two seconds before the sun slips into the ocean at sunset.

I try to capture all of these in little three minutes-ish melodies.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

At risk of an inadequate analogy, it’s like an old story that can be retold 100 ways but still is true. The themes are true, but how you tell the story, the characters, the times, and the place - change.

You can color the production however you want - futuristically and traditionally - as long as the song captures something authentic about the human experience distilled into brilliant melodies. Production puts things in time capsules. Songs, melodies, and ideas are timeless. I think there is room for both, perhaps.

As to “perfection,” it makes me think of looking out a window of a plane and noticing that the only straight lines are man-made. Everything else out the plane window is wild, spacious, enduring, always changing and perfectly imperfect. That’s how I prefer music, perfectly imperfect and always changing.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

Adaptability and collaboration are two huge tools. I think music is always changing. For example, when I first released music, it was to CD, then to iTunes, now to streaming, and now maybe to social media, NFTs, who knows what the next medium will be?  

At first, because of my upbringing, I played everything on a real piano or guitar and recorded it with microphones and some computer. I still use it all, but the computer does offer an endless amount of capability that is really fun—I will say it’s because I understand the piano and guitar, which has helped me be able to adapt.

I also collaborate a ton. I love to. Co-writing, co-producing, etc.— I love playing to the strengths in the room and outsourcing my weaknesses. There are geniuses in so many rooms, and I love seeing how amazing my collaborators are and what we can make together.

I love how one thing leads to another and then there is a song I would’ve never written if it were just me in a room with four walls.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

Every day is different, but there are some bookends if I am home. I start my day with coffee and a good 1½-2-mile walk with my dog. Frank has more friends than I do and likes to make the rounds to all his friends in the neighbourhood, so it’s always nice to say high to Mango, Fauna, Raena, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Dylan to name a few regulars. In the late afternoon, I walk my dog on another loop and he does the same.

In between that, I usually have a co-write, or owe a producer a vocal, or my social media team a post. I have a studio in Wedgewood Houston in Nashville that I go to and work from. I try to keep consistent hours, like 10-3, if not longer, there. I rotate trail running, hot yoga, and swimming laps, as well as rounds of dinners with friends after studio time.

Moving my body via a variety of workouts is where most of my song ideas and starts come from. There is something about a walk with my dog Frank that unlocks things for my creative brain.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?  

On a song from my new album “As Long As You’re With Me” - I had a write with Carri K, an amazing young producer / writer / engineer in Nashville.

We wrote at my Wedgehouston studio, Milkglass, and she brought a cool piano track. We wrote a song that day in a couple of hours, but later after I re-listened a couple of times I knew it wasn’t quite what I really wanted to say …so over the course of the next couple of months, I would re-open the song in logic and re-sing / record new ideas over the song. I was super patient with myself and just allowed myself to “get it wrong, to get it right,” if you will.

Pretty soon, it took an entirely different personality from where we started. I took the song to my producer Chad Copelin, and we reworked it again. We tracked real drums, piano, bass, and new vocals at Sound Emporium in Nashville, TN, and then recorded more overdubs and things at his studio months later at Blackwatch Studios in Norman, OK.

As you can see … this song was written, recorded, re-written and re-recorded so many times over the course of more than a year, but I love what it says now and how it feels. It was worth chasing the reframe.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I use to write by myself a lot, but a whole new world opened when I allowed myself to collaborate.

My first co-write in Nashville was with no other than Nathan Chapman. A friend who was playing guitar with me at the time introduced us and we clicked. We created a lot of music together and I still give him credit for teaching me how to collaborate.

Nashville and Los Angeles are where I work from the most, and are both collaborative cities. I love top-lining to amazing tracks, or starting from scratch, really just being what I need to in whatever room I’m in. It’s not always for my personal solo work, which helps me be more free to chase whatever the individual song needs to be.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?  

I think what is sometimes the smallest human detail captured in a song is the most universal and it’s how I connect and feel seen. I think I write to connect, to try my best to authentically capture a feeling or moment that someone else feels too.

It’s crazy in our world that is so “connected,” online at least, so many of us struggle with depression, anxiety, or at base, feeling disconnected from ourselves and other people. I write to connect to myself and what I really feel and to hopefully help others feel a collective “ok” too.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

I remember hearing Alison Krauss perform and she said, “Well here’s another sad song, I love sad songs,” and the whole audience including myself laughed.

Said another way: songs don’t make us cry, they give us permission to cry. Songs have given me the space to wrestle with uncertainty and the uncomfortable.

I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say songs have saved my life, not only hearing them but writing them. I can think back to moment after moment of feeling a certain emotion to a song and known that’s what got me through. From Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” to Patty Griffin’s “Rain” to “Are You Alright” by Lucinda Williams, to “His Eye Is On The Sparrow” from Lauryn Hill’s Character in Sister Act 1 … to “Expecting to Fly” by Buffalo Springfield to The Beatles’ “Something in The Way She Moves” or Solomon Burke’s “That’s How I Got To Memphis” or “Come on Up To The House” by Tom Waits.



All have had significant impact on me and sort of saved me in different seasons of my life. Writing new ones has allowed me to feel emotions I’ve needed to feel and unstuff to stay sane.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?

I think it’s real. Music is science and science is divinity known.

I think frequencies influence mood and feeling and scientifically, there is a reason why a dementia patient may not recognize their own partner but can sing a song from childhood. Or why certain beats inspire dancing and movement and some dissonance and sadness.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I think it’s all love. A great cup of coffee, a great meal, a great song. A song as simple as “Over the Rainbow” or “You Are My Sunshine” can make people weep if performed with a certain authenticity. When love is absent that’s when things feel dead, uninteresting, or void.

I am just as inspired with connection elbow-to-elbow with friends around a table with a well prepared meal as spinning vinyl in a living room with a great glass of wine. If it’s done with love and meaning, it’s truly the best things we will experience in life—especially if its an ordinary moment.