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Girl To Country: A Memoir
Broken-down vehicles. Premenopausal libido. A punk rock-loving teen to share the culture shock with. I don’t think Hank done it this way.
A few years after her 1996 breakthrough album Diary Of A Mod Housewife, singer/songwriter Amy Rigby is still figuring out who she is. Closing in on forty, a newly-divorced mom trying to tour, work temp jobs, and keep a car running, Amy is ready for a change. She trades her beloved NYC for Nashville, where she navigates music, men and motherhood to learn the hard way that outside validation is no substitute for self-belief.
Girl To Country details what happens after the coming of age and first flash of achievement. Following on from her acclaimed debut memoir Girl To City, where Amy fumbled her way to becoming an artist in late twentieth century NYC, Girl To Country depicts the tricky second act of a creative how do you keep doing the work you love into your forties and beyond in a game everyone told you was only for the young? What’s the price for juggling parenthood with fulfilling your dreams? And how about love—will it knock you off balance or help you keep going?
From one of America’s enduring underground artists known for her honest, kinetic songwriting, Girl To Country is a touching, clear-eyed journey full of unexpected detours.
A few years after her 1996 breakthrough album Diary Of A Mod Housewife, singer/songwriter Amy Rigby is still figuring out who she is. Closing in on forty, a newly-divorced mom trying to tour, work temp jobs, and keep a car running, Amy is ready for a change. She trades her beloved NYC for Nashville, where she navigates music, men and motherhood to learn the hard way that outside validation is no substitute for self-belief.
Girl To Country details what happens after the coming of age and first flash of achievement. Following on from her acclaimed debut memoir Girl To City, where Amy fumbled her way to becoming an artist in late twentieth century NYC, Girl To Country depicts the tricky second act of a creative how do you keep doing the work you love into your forties and beyond in a game everyone told you was only for the young? What’s the price for juggling parenthood with fulfilling your dreams? And how about love—will it knock you off balance or help you keep going?
From one of America’s enduring underground artists known for her honest, kinetic songwriting, Girl To Country is a touching, clear-eyed journey full of unexpected detours.
282 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 23, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 10, 2025
Amy Rigby keeps it real. Whether it’s lyrics for her songs or details for her memoir, she takes us deep into her thought process and what it’s like to cobble together life as musician. Girl To Country is a stellar sequel to Girl To City. It’s grounded in the grit of daily routines—rent, temp jobs, decisions about where to live, and who to live with—all while embracing her role as mother to a daughter, Hazel, whom she clearly adores.
Here’s a spoiler: nothing is easy. Even with a highly acclaimed debut album under her belt before the start of Girl To Country, nothing is easy. Rigby recounted the move from her youth in Pittsburgh to finding her way in New York City in Girl To City, and in the new volume we follow as Rigby heads to Nashville (at least, at the outset) and tries to find career traction in a city she knows is a “mythical lair visible only to insiders.”
Rigby knows she needs to produce a follow-up to her debut, “Diary of a Mod Housewife,” which drew considerable praise and buzzy attention. (Dean Robert Christgau rated it “A.”) In Nashville, she signs a publishing deal and starts recording songs for what will become her sophomore effort, Middlescence. “The struggle seemed built into my New York,” she writes, “and to break free, I’d start fresh in a town that must be the place where they invented the term ‘mailbox money’—royalty checks delivered by the postman that mean you were getting paid to sit home and do what you did best.”
In Nashville, Rigby also looks for love. “My whole life, I’d been a mass of hormones and hope, a lightning rod for romance or, barring that, some sex. It’s what I lived for … The upside of the obsessions, the crushes, the thrill of the chase and the agony of the disappointment was that I never ran out of things to write about.”
In fact, that’s part of the intrigue of Girl To Country, seeing how she turns moments and attitudes into her signature, blunt style on songs like “Give The Drummer Some” and “Keep It To Yourself.” Rigby, as noted, tells it like it is. She’s self-effacing (who else tells a story about driving away from a gas pump with the hose still shoved down your fuel filler?) and wry. She’s got a keen eye for absurdities. That’s her brand. (In 2019, for instance, she wrote and recorded an obvious song: “The President Can’t Read.”) A review of Mod Housewife on Salon.com declared that the album “is as liberating as the first Pretenders record was, voicing womanly concerns with no punches pulled. This is a record that feels so lived in, it hurts.”
That same gritty essence permeates Girl To Country. You can feel the tug of war. Rigby’s yearning to climb up another notch or three in the music business to a level where she could tour at a more lucrative level pushes and pulls again her desire to maintain some sort of homelife stability for her daughter. Of course those aren’t either/or propositions. If anything, Rigby tours—and tours hard, occasionally opening for Warren Zevon. She makes it work (and clearly so does ex-husband Will Rigby, who had his own career as a drummer with The dB’s and Steve Earle.)
How does an artist measure headway? “I was losing money out on the road, what with airfares, renting vans, and paying a band, but I was making progress, too, connecting with audiences through new songs that were almost eclipsing the old ones I thought were my classics.” Progress, sure—and then your turnaround the next day to find out that your record label is letting your first three albums go out of print. “The hatchet I never knew existed had fallen—I’d bought cheap discs in cut-out bins before, but hadn’t know the feeling of being cut out myself.”
There are two subplots in Girl To Country. The first is Charlie, a new boyfriend with lots of money who showers Rigby with gifts but also turns into a controlling, manipulative force. The second is the growing presence of Wreckless Eric (“I’d Go The Whole Wide World,” “Semaphore Signals,” “Take the Cash (K.A.S.H.”), a famous former punk rocker who Rigby meets on tour in England and, well, any Amy Rigby fan today knows they’ve been a long-time couple and no doubt their relationship will play a key role all through Rigby’s third memoir.
But it’s the struggle with Charlie that forms a core underlying tension to the middle chunk of Girl To Country. Even at the outset of meeting Charlie, Rigby is wary. “Like a child, I took everything Charlie offered, alternately doubting his intentions and thanking God for my good luck … I wanted to be adored, to be worshiped, to be noticed—and here was a man who seemed to be offering that kind of attention, every minute of the day, every day of the week, whether we were together or apart.”
Later, Rigby concedes that “Stockholm Syndrome is real—you can question your identity, live isolated from friends and family, your whole world turned upside down, but still feel unable to let go of the person who brought it all on. Because you’d let it happen, so in banishing them you risk losing yourself, again.”
That could not have been easy to write about yourself. Rigby gives us a real sense of Charles’ smothering ways. The release, and relief, of finally letting Wreckless Eric into her life is palpable.
But as Rigby makes her way around to new digs in Birmingham and Cleveland, occasionally yearning for a return to New York City, making music is the main theme of Girl To Country. Songs, songwriting, songwriters, producers, fellow musicians. Lyrics, song ideas, melodies. There are appearances from Lucinda Williams, Susan Cowsill, Ben Vaughn, Kim Richey, Chuck Prophet, Ira Kaplan, Todd Snider, Peter Case—Rigby’s music connections are deep, thanks in part to her earlier work with The Last Roundup and The Shams before she went solo. (Also, someone needs to make a killer playlist from all the tunes Rigby mentions in Girl To Country, including X’s “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts” and Wire’s “Mannequin,” two songs that Rigby covered with her daughter on stage—with Hazel on guitar or a simple drum kit—during one of her many British tours.)
Even near the end, with a new record (“Little Fugitive”) out in the world, Rigby wonders about the grass being greener in a non-creative career. On a pre-gig hunt for hairspray in the streets of New York, Rigby concedes to envy of an office worker’s life—“the routine, the Au Bon Pain coffee and bagel, the extra shoes under the desk. It was easy to impress people with your talent when no one expected anything of you. Now I caught sight of myself in the mirror above a Revlon display, my hair fizzy and skin shiny with sweat. I remembered so well wanting to have it all together, running home from a temp job and back-0out to a gig. Hadn’t my dreams come true at least a little bit?”
In Girl To Country, insecurity lives side by side with triumph. Self-doubt goes hand-in-hand with moments of artistic and creative brilliance. Telling it like it is simply part of the process. “The wounds that spur us to create are the same ones that make us doubt ourselves,” writes Rigby. For sure. Girl To Country is a book that feels so lived in, it hurts.
In the best way possible.
Here’s a spoiler: nothing is easy. Even with a highly acclaimed debut album under her belt before the start of Girl To Country, nothing is easy. Rigby recounted the move from her youth in Pittsburgh to finding her way in New York City in Girl To City, and in the new volume we follow as Rigby heads to Nashville (at least, at the outset) and tries to find career traction in a city she knows is a “mythical lair visible only to insiders.”
Rigby knows she needs to produce a follow-up to her debut, “Diary of a Mod Housewife,” which drew considerable praise and buzzy attention. (Dean Robert Christgau rated it “A.”) In Nashville, she signs a publishing deal and starts recording songs for what will become her sophomore effort, Middlescence. “The struggle seemed built into my New York,” she writes, “and to break free, I’d start fresh in a town that must be the place where they invented the term ‘mailbox money’—royalty checks delivered by the postman that mean you were getting paid to sit home and do what you did best.”
In Nashville, Rigby also looks for love. “My whole life, I’d been a mass of hormones and hope, a lightning rod for romance or, barring that, some sex. It’s what I lived for … The upside of the obsessions, the crushes, the thrill of the chase and the agony of the disappointment was that I never ran out of things to write about.”
In fact, that’s part of the intrigue of Girl To Country, seeing how she turns moments and attitudes into her signature, blunt style on songs like “Give The Drummer Some” and “Keep It To Yourself.” Rigby, as noted, tells it like it is. She’s self-effacing (who else tells a story about driving away from a gas pump with the hose still shoved down your fuel filler?) and wry. She’s got a keen eye for absurdities. That’s her brand. (In 2019, for instance, she wrote and recorded an obvious song: “The President Can’t Read.”) A review of Mod Housewife on Salon.com declared that the album “is as liberating as the first Pretenders record was, voicing womanly concerns with no punches pulled. This is a record that feels so lived in, it hurts.”
That same gritty essence permeates Girl To Country. You can feel the tug of war. Rigby’s yearning to climb up another notch or three in the music business to a level where she could tour at a more lucrative level pushes and pulls again her desire to maintain some sort of homelife stability for her daughter. Of course those aren’t either/or propositions. If anything, Rigby tours—and tours hard, occasionally opening for Warren Zevon. She makes it work (and clearly so does ex-husband Will Rigby, who had his own career as a drummer with The dB’s and Steve Earle.)
How does an artist measure headway? “I was losing money out on the road, what with airfares, renting vans, and paying a band, but I was making progress, too, connecting with audiences through new songs that were almost eclipsing the old ones I thought were my classics.” Progress, sure—and then your turnaround the next day to find out that your record label is letting your first three albums go out of print. “The hatchet I never knew existed had fallen—I’d bought cheap discs in cut-out bins before, but hadn’t know the feeling of being cut out myself.”
There are two subplots in Girl To Country. The first is Charlie, a new boyfriend with lots of money who showers Rigby with gifts but also turns into a controlling, manipulative force. The second is the growing presence of Wreckless Eric (“I’d Go The Whole Wide World,” “Semaphore Signals,” “Take the Cash (K.A.S.H.”), a famous former punk rocker who Rigby meets on tour in England and, well, any Amy Rigby fan today knows they’ve been a long-time couple and no doubt their relationship will play a key role all through Rigby’s third memoir.
But it’s the struggle with Charlie that forms a core underlying tension to the middle chunk of Girl To Country. Even at the outset of meeting Charlie, Rigby is wary. “Like a child, I took everything Charlie offered, alternately doubting his intentions and thanking God for my good luck … I wanted to be adored, to be worshiped, to be noticed—and here was a man who seemed to be offering that kind of attention, every minute of the day, every day of the week, whether we were together or apart.”
Later, Rigby concedes that “Stockholm Syndrome is real—you can question your identity, live isolated from friends and family, your whole world turned upside down, but still feel unable to let go of the person who brought it all on. Because you’d let it happen, so in banishing them you risk losing yourself, again.”
That could not have been easy to write about yourself. Rigby gives us a real sense of Charles’ smothering ways. The release, and relief, of finally letting Wreckless Eric into her life is palpable.
But as Rigby makes her way around to new digs in Birmingham and Cleveland, occasionally yearning for a return to New York City, making music is the main theme of Girl To Country. Songs, songwriting, songwriters, producers, fellow musicians. Lyrics, song ideas, melodies. There are appearances from Lucinda Williams, Susan Cowsill, Ben Vaughn, Kim Richey, Chuck Prophet, Ira Kaplan, Todd Snider, Peter Case—Rigby’s music connections are deep, thanks in part to her earlier work with The Last Roundup and The Shams before she went solo. (Also, someone needs to make a killer playlist from all the tunes Rigby mentions in Girl To Country, including X’s “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts” and Wire’s “Mannequin,” two songs that Rigby covered with her daughter on stage—with Hazel on guitar or a simple drum kit—during one of her many British tours.)
Even near the end, with a new record (“Little Fugitive”) out in the world, Rigby wonders about the grass being greener in a non-creative career. On a pre-gig hunt for hairspray in the streets of New York, Rigby concedes to envy of an office worker’s life—“the routine, the Au Bon Pain coffee and bagel, the extra shoes under the desk. It was easy to impress people with your talent when no one expected anything of you. Now I caught sight of myself in the mirror above a Revlon display, my hair fizzy and skin shiny with sweat. I remembered so well wanting to have it all together, running home from a temp job and back-0out to a gig. Hadn’t my dreams come true at least a little bit?”
In Girl To Country, insecurity lives side by side with triumph. Self-doubt goes hand-in-hand with moments of artistic and creative brilliance. Telling it like it is simply part of the process. “The wounds that spur us to create are the same ones that make us doubt ourselves,” writes Rigby. For sure. Girl To Country is a book that feels so lived in, it hurts.
In the best way possible.
March 21, 2026
This book follows on from where Ms Rigby's first book ends which was about her youth growing up in Pittsburgh and then going to art college in NYC and eventually settling into a bohemian life in that city. This book opens with a Prologue, Amy visiting Nashville in 1994 with meetings set up and friends to visit, dreams of getting her songs with a publisher to push onto a big country star to record. The meetings go well, she gets encouragement to reconnect when she moves to Nashville. On her last day she's invited to a church service, because that's what folks living in that city do on Sundays. It is the Church of the Scientific Mind. At the end there was music, songs, and then a motivation to write down a wish on a slip of paper and walk up to someone and hand it to them. That person would try to make it come true. Amy wrote: "I want to move here." While not happening at a church service, I could relate to this, as I had visited Tucson for the first time in 1990 on tour with one of the artists I represented at the time - and it felt like I'd been before. I went back to visit a couple more times over the next few months and wondered how I could move there just like Amy did - this being in the days before the internet where you could do research online. The book itself then begins in Chapter 1, and it is 1996, her debut solo album did well and so she decided the stars were aligned and she packed up to move. And after moving, she finds and is advised that it will take time to build relationships with people, to gain their trust. And so she settles in and makes the rounds of songwriter swaps, writing sessions, all the while battling her Catholic upbringing of guilt and self-doubt. More of what I could relate from my upbringing. And the adventure continued as she found a publisher, made a couple more recordings, toured with bands and losing money on those tours, but kept her nose to the grindstone. Eventually being able to scrape up the money and financing to buy a house, giving herself and her daughter some security if she can continue to make enough to pay the mortgage. And she continues to write killer songs and receive rave reviews from the press but also her peers. The book ends with the move to the south of France at the end of 2006. The journey between is a wonderful deep dive into the life of the artists and their struggle for acceptance. I can't wait for the next installment
May 13, 2026
In this rich, emotional, wonderful follow-up to her brilliant “Girl To City,” Amy Rigby continues on her journey as a singer-songwriter who leaves her beloved, formative, artistic home of New York City for the music Mecca of Nashville, Tennessee. Between writing, touring, raising her remarkable daughter Hazel, Amy Rigby does not hedge on the rough edges of the road she’s chosen, and the reader’s heart soars and falls and lifts again with every heartbreak, every triumph. Amy is a master songwriter and performer and her determination and passion are awe-inspiring, the love in her heart for her family, for the man who is her soul-mate, and for music itself is transcendent. I cannot recommend both books highly enough. And I will miss reading her words. But I can listen to those glorious songs that come to her in dreams transcribed, and for all these treasures I am so grateful.
November 24, 2025
Amy Rigby passes through Pittsburgh at least once a year, and it was through attending her combination book readings and gigs over the last decade that I discovered both Girl to City (which I absolutely loved) and its follow-up, Girl to Country. Amy's early midlife adventures and misadventures as an artist, mother, and human are totally relatable (hello, broken down cars), not always comfortable (destructive relationships and family drama), and occasionally hilarious (Hello, Cleveland!). Amy poises the ending at the perfect moment, allowing this segment of her life story to end on an upbeat, albeit madcap, note.
Best of all, Amy's life doesn't show any signs of slowing down, so there's the promise of another book to come.
Best of all, Amy's life doesn't show any signs of slowing down, so there's the promise of another book to come.
May 8, 2026
"I wanted to keep making records and playing for people who appreciated what I did, people like me who grew up with rock music but also loved writing."
Brutally honest, self aware, hilarious and heartbreaking. All words that could be applied to Amy Rigby's unique songwriting... so it's no surprise that the second volume of her memoirs follows suit.
It's tempting to ask why she's not a household name... but if she was, she'd lose the very thing that makes her work so special.
Brutally honest, self aware, hilarious and heartbreaking. All words that could be applied to Amy Rigby's unique songwriting... so it's no surprise that the second volume of her memoirs follows suit.
It's tempting to ask why she's not a household name... but if she was, she'd lose the very thing that makes her work so special.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews