A Look Into the Life of Amy Grant

in my mental playlist the theology rich el-shaddai written by Michael card is always sung in the voice of the woman sitting opposite me she's credited with putting contemporary Christian music on the map and it is a joy here at break forth to be sitting with Amy Grant thank you you are responsible for so much of the music of my life and of so many watching today and it's just a treat to catch up with you thanks it's great to be here I have to brag on you a little bit here first artist to have a platinum record contemporary Christian first to hit number one pop and first contemporary Christian artist to perform at the Grammys give is it six now six Grammys I think so you don't have to be shy to count Amy mm-hmm numerous Dove Awards and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame hmm we are so proud of you well thank you it's fun to do something you love your whole life you were just a girl young girl when you made a recording that the right person got to here and at 15 you were off and away mmm it was a different time you know it was an unobserved time back in 1976 you know we didn't have all the hoopla with social media and so I often away was really you know I finished high school and college and just wrote songs and did music and toured in the summertime and so it was really a very nurturing quiet way to start um unlike the high pressure cooker but people find themselves in today where was home Nashville when you grew up and you were the youngest of how many girl four girls are they musical well we all can carry a tune we all took piano lessons three of us played a little bit of guitar you know my first two instruments were borrowed from my sisters and parents must have encouraged this music in the family they did my earliest memories are of singing in church the church that we attended didn't have a choir or a piano so we all just sang if you didn't saying it was silent uh-huh and I remember standing next to my great grandmother who was tiny and hearing her really shed a low warm alto voice and and really even now we my mom passed away almost two years ago but in the at the end of her life and even with my father now singing hymns is really the best way to connect it was the best way to connect with my mother and that and even still with my dad cuz music it stays it stays and he can't do any of the lyrics anymore cuz he has dementia but I'll even really complicated songs like we used to sing this song he was a song leader occasionally at our church and there's a song called break thou the bread of life and the melody is has some really crazy intervals and he can't call them the lyric anymore but he'll he could call her no I mean with me yes and sometimes he'll do this just like it kills me yeah and so I'm so glad for the gift of music I'm so glad for all those old hymns that I don't have to have a songbook to know the lyrics for when I was oh my goodness maybe 21 my mother was about the age I am now and she was supposed to introduce a speaker at a just a women's luncheon in Nashville and the speaker was going to talk on Aging and my mother was just such a she was a beautiful gracious woman but she was a little nervous to be in front of people and she asked me would you write a poem or something for me to read on Aging well I was despair Lee legal you know let me imagine and I wrote a poem picturing my mother and I mean is this corny for me to you know here please anyway the reason I say that it was going to tell you about it's because I found the poem in my 40s and I was amazed at how my imagination had really hit the nail on the head until the back half and there's some things you only learn by living and so it was just um it occurred to me this morning as I wash this face of mine how quickly come the changes with a little passing time a wrinkle here a hair turned gray a not so lilting step I see me getting older but I don't quite feel it yet times I nearly feel my age at others I'm sixteen so full of my all the thoughts and feelings in between and the rewrite who could have known the road of life with twists and turns so much the journey makes me strong and weak and tender to the touch and so today I face the choice that I have faced each day will I be will I be open teachable unafraid of change yes I'll embrace this moment forgive my past mistakes realize just showing up as sometimes all it takes and I'll look for the kind of beauty that time cannot erase wisdom and experience resting on each face so I you know I look at all that and go I mean we all have an arsenal of stories of what we did right and what we did wrong and you know for a believer it really just makes the amazing puzzle of what God can create and recreate even more magnificent redeem absolutely for his glory always yes Amy I'm so glad you've gone to lyrics because I just I want to know if there's a memory if there was a particular motivation or a phrase that has been with me I'm thinking over 30 years I know I can go on YouTube and see this very young girl with a lot of curly brown hair and a guitar singing arms of love what what year was that let me see that came out and I recorded that in 1981 came hold on 82 30-plus years ago that's later than I thought but but here's the line lord please help me raise my hands so you can lift me up I love it because it's not Lord I'm reaching it's I don't even have it to get my hands in the air yeah but I know where to turn in this very low place fabulous lyrics doing all of what you do it is there a story behind the writing of this well if there was I'm sure I've long forgotten it but um I think um you know I owe so much of my understanding of my early understanding of my relationship with God I owe it to my mother because she was so she was a very private person but she was so honest and not from a platform but with me I'm sure I guess she was honest with my sisters too but I wasn't part of that those conversations and she just she observed without judgment which is really an amazing thing to watch your entire growing up so um and I and I just think um I don't know I think she just helped me understand that my relationship we got with God was never based with Jesus was never based on my performance and your love just because just because yeah you know and she would she's always kind of wetting my appetite too you know if you know we'd be driving home from church and I was probably middle school and she said you know honey he doesn't have any grandchildren just children and that was all she said you know but basically now I know she was saying you cannot be the child of somebody a faith you have to make a choice you have to make a choice and then when I was older and she would say things like if you can learn to hear his spirit and follow your life will be so much more exciting than any double-oh-seven movie you could ever watch what kind of influence do you feel you have in that whole music world there you're you're in the heart of it and you're you're a christ-centered couple do you do you find that people know what you represent that you have opportunity to talk about the real deal shrink God and country are just a connection all the time but right you know I say well Nashville is really a songwriting town and you know I I talk about oh my goodness I mean to me the most interesting way to pique someone's curiosity about faith is just to tell story about something that happened and that's that's all songwriters are storytellers and I was telling somebody not long ago that I said I'm I'm so scattered when I was younger my sister's called me the black hole don't lend her that it'll get lost in the black hole I said but you know as I've gotten older I've gotten better but I said you know it's and I've told somebody this recently it's amazing if I had really just asked for God's help earlier I think I wouldn't have been so scattered and I told this story about a friend of Mines I made friends with a family that moved from Trinidad our kids went to the same school and they're very musical and anyway they had a special needs son one of their six children who passed away at 13 anyway they asked me to sing at the funeral and it was on a Sunday afternoon I was supposed to speak to a mother-daughter philanthropy group anyway I was just trying to juggle not forgetting my guitar and as I was walking out the door I thought about the father who's my age for his 50th birthday everybody had made this book for his wife had put together a book letters and all that stuff and he'd given it to me about a month earlier because I wanted to read it and I didn't want to lose that book and so I was bad I was going to the door I had my guitar on my back and I just went get the book and it was so not what I was thinking and so um I went that well I'm not gonna get that book okay I'm gonna get the book and I wouldn't grab the book and got in my car I went to the spoke at this thing and the friend met me there and she said are you going to Michael's funeral and I said I am she said well it's just it's a long drive let's just go together so I said I've got to get my guitar out of the car I got my guitar I slammed the door and I'm getting in her car and just the book came to mind and went huh hold on I went back and got the book we park at the church and I'm going in I almost leave my case in the car it's an old church with not a lot of room but I grabbed a case almost closed the door book I grabbed the book but it seems so inappropriate to me or just bad timing and so I get my guitar I have the book I said about half way back and usher comes and says Debbie the mom once you right behind her well they were wailing and not having any trouble expressing their feelings and grieving understandably and her two older sons who were the ages of my daughter's are getting up to eulogize their brother and dip turns around and snaps her finger and says hand me the book I know when she's at the book and I just grabbed the only book I have with me and I hand it to her and her sons take it up there because they wanted to read something three days later I'm checking my mailbox my voicemail which of course was full no one can leave a message and embedded in the voicemail is Deb saying don't forget Sterling's birthday book my sons want to read from it and I mean for a week I told people that story and I said okay so can you believe how immediate God's proj prompting is mm-hmm you know and so that over cup of coffee I mean believers non-believers and they went what you know cuz to me though anything that God's doing is always so curious what we're doing is not always fascinating yeah but well Amy you've had a number one hit in each of the last three decades and it's just exciting that you're going turning your attention again to writing we just look forward to what's coming from Amy Grant thank you for this lovely visit thank you

Channel: 100huntley

Views: 622,740

Rating: 4.8267622 out of 5

Keywords: interview, huntleystreet, oct-28-13, HS9488, 100huntley, christian, music

Id: Wa7emYItSrI

Length: 14min 52sec (892 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 28 2013