Amy Adams

Second chances don't come around all the time. When they do, wisdom says that you take them and run - as fast as you can.

Amy Adams might not be able to run in the same way she did before she had a husband and kids. But it doesn’t mean she’s any less free. She’s running with a sense of purpose and a renewed spirit. She’s not running blindly to what or where she thinks the finish line should be. She’s not running because that’s what she thinks she’s supposed to do. She’s running because she loves to run. She loves to sing.

Adams grew up like so many young East Texans, singing for the first time in front of a church congregation. The only thing was, she grew up in California until she was 12, her parents moving with their six children to San Bernardino County to escape the city life of Los Angeles.

“I was exposed to music because my dad was a minister and we did music in church,” Adams recounts. “That was very much a part of our life. And then my grandfather, who’s from Kentucky but lived out in California, he listened to country music. That was pretty much my exposure to … music, other than Christian music. But every now and then, I’d sneak in and listen to music on the radio, which I wasn’t supposed to do.”

At 13, the Adams family moved from Southern California to Quitman, Texas. During that time, Adams said her parents were traveling a lot between wholesale and trade shows throughout the region. “They made things like Southwestern art,” she said. “So, we’d go to gift shows around the area and all six of us kids would go too – to the fairs and festivals, and I began to hear live music played. … In Quitman, I could also listen to KMOO, a classic country station,” Adams trails off for a moment before finishing, “I just fell in love with it. So I was about 14 years old when I decided, ‘I want to sing.’ I mean, I had always loved singing, but it was kind of … that was my thing, I found my niche.”

Adams began to cultivate her talent, working with John Defoore – a Mineola-based guitar and songwriting instructor who’s worked with many of the best musicians to come out of East Texas, including Miranda Lambert.

“I went in to meet him, and I had this little cassette tape and it was a karaoke track that I had recorded – it was The Jets – so I just let him listen to it and he told me, ‘There’s just something about your voice.’ And of course, he wanted me to play guitar and he worked with me for a little bit, gave me a lot of good advice. One of the best pieces of advice he gave me has allowed me to have my own unique sound, and that is, ‘When you learn a song, don’t sit and listen to that artist sing it over and over again. Learn it, turn it off, and then find your style. Sing it the way you feel it.’”

She worked with Defoore for only about a year due to her travel schedule with her parents’ businesses, but has carried that insight with her to this day. When she’s covering someone else’s songs at Ricks on a Thursday night, you might recognize the song – but Adams makes it her own.
“That’s kind of where it started,” Adams said. “ And ... what next? I sang at church and I sang in weddings and things like that. I worked a lot with my parents and so it was really hard for me to break away and do my own thing. But when I got married in 1994 my husband really supported what I was doing and pushed me to do it.”

At that point, Adams was trying to round herself into form as a musician, as she said, just learning her way. “Just trying to figure out where I was in the midst of life. If I had it to do over, I probably would have packed up and moved to Nashville and just did my thing there, but since I was the oldest of six kids, I had this responsibility. I was kind of the second mom – and I still am to my siblings – so it wasn’t easy for me to just do what I wanted to do and follow my dream, because I felt like I needed to be there for them. I didn’t sing all that time, but I did other things that I feel helped make me who I am, so I definitely wouldn’t change anything.”

But Adams did make it across the country to Nashville, with her husband and children in tow. While living in California, her family had some friends who knew an attorney in Nashville, so she contacted the attorney and flew to Nashville and met with him. After hearing her sing, he set up some interviews with a series of songwriters, producers and other artists in town.

“It was just to kind of get my feet wet,” remembered Adams, “because when you go to Nashville, it’s very overwhelming. Fortunately, we did it the right way. I met with a talented producer named Jeff Huskins, and basically what he did was produce some demos, and we were going try and shop them to a label.” During this time, Huskins was developing a record label of his own, something Adams didn’t know about when she met him. But after only a short time working together, he snapped her up on the newly formed Vivatone Records. They cut a complete album and set it for radio play. Adams was poised and ready at the starting line – but, there was a false start. Vivatone was on the look out for established artists to bring onto their roster to bolster their creative forces. When the fledgling label had a chance to bring on Chely Wright and Mark Chestnutt, two successful and vested artists, they jumped.

“Unfortunately,” said Adams, “they put me on the shelf for about a year. I think they just felt like they needed to work with some more established ‘names’ in the business. But, they ended up spending all their resources promoting those acts.” Vivatone Records went under not long after, with Adams' record locked away. She continued living and playing in Nashville, though, spending her time writing and playing open mics and songwriters’ showcases, mostly – until everything reset.

In 2006, her family was struck with a series of emergencies that demanded she move back to East Texas to see them through. It’s not something Adams prefers to discuss, but she will say that the nature and intensity of her family’s struggles, as well as the birth of her youngest son, pressed her to take several years off from music altogether.

But now, the new race starts fresh. She’s throwing herself back into music with passion and focus after a chance meeting with a would-be fan in Winnsboro. “I was back in church playing, using the gift I have to bless people,” Adams remembered. “I met this gentlemen at a gun show, and he came up and started talking to me. He was so friendly and so persistent .... He was just asking all these questions, ‘where are you from’ and ‘what do you do.’ He asked me how long I had lived here and I told him that I had just moved back from Tennessee about three or four years ago because of music. He told me I needed to go sing up at Crossroads in Winnsboro, a venue set up by Adler and Hearne – those guys are known around here and are more Americana, folksy.”

The fan was very invested in Adams’ return to music. He’d call and call, but Adams was just as persistent in her refusal. “I just really wasn’t there yet,” she said, in an effort to stem the tide of calls. “Finally, I told him, ‘Well, I need a guitar player first,’ and his response was to find me one.” Adams hooked up with Wes Hendrix, a professional musician who played with Ty Herndon for 10 years before taking a break much like Adams’.

“He’d gotten off the road from playing with Ty and was just done,” Adams laughed. “He didn’t want to play any more, at all. But after a few years, he’d gotten the itch again and was playing with Kacey Musgraves locally, before she left for Nashville.” When the two met and Adams called to see about getting onstage, Crossroads was holding an annual songwriting competition.

“I didn’t really want to do the competition at all, and I was pretty much playing as a favor to this fan,” Adams said. “But, Wes and I got together and practiced some songs. I had just written a song it’s called “He Says He Loves Her” with Scott Harbor who lives here in Tyler ... I did that song and I did another song that I had written a few years back in Nashville.”

Adams ended up placing first in the preliminaries, then returning to the finals and winning those too – and it got her thinking, “‘I really want to get back into this again.’ Everyone was liking what I was doing, so I thought I can do this around here and keep it fun, and my kids are here ... so why not.”
What followed were a series of gigs at coffee shops, a bakery and pub called Brew Bakers, Moore’s Store and several other venues in East Texas. During one show in Gladewater, Tyler’s Rick Eltife happened to be in the crowd and approached Adams after her set. “He’d never been there before, I had never met him and I had never been to Rick’s. He asked me to come play at his place. He called and said to come up on Thursday night and play. I asked around and was told it was a really good place to play, but I realized it was kind of a jazz bar.”

Adams and Hendrix went to work adding to their repertoire, including some blues and other standards – and a whole new avenue opened up for Adams. “I really liked singing it, and I realized I actually can sing it,” she said. “We played there on a Thursday night in the middle of May 2010, and it went well. After meeting people and working through Facebook, I was able to grow a little bit of a following for those shows and others around East Texas.”

With her foot back in the door, Adams has been expanding her audience with shows at Ricks, Cimarron, Moore’s Store – with shows coming on better and better nights. She explained, “Really I am just trying to build that following and go from there, then release my album and see what happens … but the main thing is just to keep it fun.”

Adams got the rights to her own record just recently and is planning on releasing it locally. It’s the same songs, the same music as before. However, for Adams, the methodology and means are far removed from her time just starting out in Nashville.

“When I was in Nashville I had the mindset of trying to become somebody, and I was very vulnerable to being molded and shaped into what they wanted me to be,” Adams said, with clarity. “Since I came back here, I – in my words – really just gave it back to God. I’ve been a mother to my children, a wife to my husband, a friend and neighbor to the people around me, now it’s different. I don’t care what anybody thinks of me. I am me and I’m comfortable in my skin. In Nashville, I wouldn’t tell anybody my age or how many kids I had because it can be looked down on. Here I am just honest: I have four kids. I love them and they are my life. I am happy. I’m about people and family. I love people, and that is what I have really enjoyed more than anything is getting out there and meeting all these people and connecting with them. That’s the big difference: I’m already somebody; I don’t need anybody to validate me, and I am comfortable with being where I am on the way to where I am going. I don’t know where it is I am going, I just know that I put one foot in front of the other, and I’m just enjoying the journey … I’m really not approaching it like I’m trying to become big and famous. I’m not looking for that. Right now, it is what it is, and I’m enjoying that. We will see where it takes me.”

Looking back with a fair amount of perspective, Adams does see this as really starting over. She isn’t trying to learn to sing or to write. In a business sense, certainly it’s a new venture. But spiritually, mentally, emotionally? Adams is going to another level.

“Every step of the way, whether good or bad, has made me who I am today,” she said confidently. “So how can you start over if it’s been a step by step process? It’s been part of my journey and, of course you make mistakes and you learn from those mistakes. I don’t know if certain things are meant to be or not meant to be, I’m not really one to say that, but I believe you make your choices and you sew your seeds ... I believe that if you sew the right seeds and you work hard and you are diligent, then it is going to produce fruit, and that’s how I approach everything...

“I look at it like this: when I connect with people it’s dropping little seeds. I don’t do it just for that; I do it because that is who I am ... You can get caught up in the stress of the fear of failure, but I am not afraid of failing. I have failed so many times and I have learned so much already. I think if you are afraid to fail, you will stand still and won’t go anywhere. If you are going to fall you might as well fall forward, fall when you are moving forward and at least you’re going somewhere.”