Solo Gal

Amy Gallatin is Home alone

by Brian Goslow

Any country or bluegrass musician who's picked up an instrument has dreamt about making it big in Nashville. Amy Gallatin has made the pilgrimage twice,

and, while she hasn't scored commercially, she's fulfilled her heart's passion on her first solo CD, The Long Way Home (Happy Appy). She appears with her group Stillwaters this Saturday at the Cafe Fantastique.

The Connecticut-based country bluegrass group, who formed in 1993, have released two albums, 1993's Northern Girl and 1995's Sweet Gatherings. Unlike the majority of performers on the acoustic coffeehouse circuit, Gallatin doesn't write the songs she performs. She's non-apologetic about choosing to dive into the vast pool of American singer/songwriters.

"Singing and songwriting are two distinct talents -- I do original material, it's just not mine," she says, adding that she has a simple criteria for selecting songs. "They have to touch you in a certain way to sing it with conviction -- I have to relate to it personally."

When she first arrived in Connecticut (from Idaho) in 1993, songwriters tried to sell her their songs. "I've had people give me stuff because of where I came from, stuff like `The Lonesome Cowgirl from Montana.' Only I wasn't lonely -- I was having the time of my life." Nowadays, she tries to avoid the process. "People give you songs that are their heart and soul; and it's hard to tell them you're not connecting personally."

Instead, she keeps her ears open for new songs by her favorite performers, including Dave Mallett whose "This City Life" and "Here We Go" (cowritten with Allen Estes) appear on The Long Way Home. The seed for the album was planted at a New Hampshire concert by the New England songwriting legend.

"I went to see Dave do a concert at Del Rossi's knowing his engineer was Rich Adler [who had previously worked with Johnny Cash, Alison Krauss, Tom Paxton, and Neil Young and won a Grammy Award for his work on Doc Watson's Riding the Midnight Train], and I forced my first two CDs on him. I told him my dream was to come down there [Nashville] and do a solo project. Two weeks later, he called to say he would produce my album." The disc was recorded over a three-week period last April.

Gallatin benefited from having already experienced Opryland firsthand. "I had done the big Nashville thing, staying at the Fiddler's Inn Campground in 1990. I went when it [country music] was getting homogenized -- it wasn't about being in the country anymore, and I said, `This isn't me.'"

She did, however, form a kinship with the thriving singer/songwriter scene at the Bluebird Cafe. "It certainly wasn't what you heard on the radio. It turned me onto what's become the Americana and Triple A scene." She knew whatever music she played in the future, it would be filled with mandolins and dobro guitars.

Adler helped her select the songs that comprise The Long Way Home, and he enlisted some of bluegrass music's leading musicians, including guitarist Steven Sheehan, upright bassist Missy Raines, and dobro player Rob Ickes (both winners of 1998 International Bluegrass Music Association awards for "Instrumental Performers of the Year"), mandolinist and fiddler Randy Howard, and percussionist Pat McInerney.

The musical train ride begins with Guy Clark and J.C. Crowley's "Baton Rouge" (her syllabled pronunciation of the Louisiana city sticks in your head just like the original), while Gallatin's take on Clark's "Immigrant Eyes" has a tougher time reaching the depths of the Texan's version. The beautiful title track, written by Steve Sheehan and Claire Lynch, is the tale of searching for your heart's center. And there are a few compositions that should be familiar to local folk audiences -- Peter Keane's "Waiting for You" and "Pete's Lovesick Blues" and Hugh Moffat's "I Get Lonely for You."

The day after Gallatin returned from Nashville, she reunited with Stillwaters -- dobro player Matt Nozzolio, guitarist Kevin Lynch, and bassist Bob Shaw -- and boarded a plane for a five-week tour of Europe. Though they understood her reasons for going South without them, some of her fans didn't. "I've had some misunderstanding from the outside," Gallatin says. "But they [the band] understood it was a chance for me to go and stretch myself musically and get different ideas and inspiration."

That career move has paid off, gaining Gallatin wider airplay, greater press (including a complimentary review in the influential Bluegrass Unlimited), and a summer full of bookings, which begin with an appearance at the already sold out Strawberry Park Bluegrass Festival.

Amy Gallatin and Stillwaters appear at 6 and 7:30 p.m on April 10 at the Cafe Fantastique. Call (508) 755-5276.