Girl To City: A Memoir

by Amy Rigby

GIRL TO CITY follows one young woman's progression from Elton John fan in the Pittsburgh suburbs to Manhattan art student; from punk show habitu� to fledgling musician to cult singer-songwriter who caused a sensation with 1996 debut solo album Diary Of A Mod Housewife.

Set in a ramshackle twentieth century New York world of homemade clubs and bands, through love affairs, temp jobs and motherhood, GIRL TO CITY describes the screw-ups and charmed moments it took for a girl in the crowd at CBGB to pick up a guitar and sing her truth on stage, creating an identity as an artist back when female musician role models were still rare. For anyone who ever imagined trying to make a life out of what they love.

Verbatim reading of the book released as 20 podcast chapters

Genres: Music, Memoir, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, Punk, New York

13 pages, Audiobook

Published August 12, 2020

About the author

Amy Rigby has established herself as one of America’s enduring underground/cult/indie artists, combining the insight and humor of country and folk songwriting with classic rock craftsmanship and punk DIY spirit. She started bands Last Roundup and the Shams in NYC’s East Village before launching a solo career with 1996 classic album Diary Of A Mod Housewife. Her most recent album Hang In There With Me (2024) was called “…an absolute masterpiece, a career best” in Louder Than War. Rigby writes on Substack at Diary Of Amy Rigby. Her first book, GIRL TO CITY: A Memoir, was published in 2019. The follow-up, GIRL TO COUNTRY, comes out in Fall 2025. She and husband and sometime duet partner Wreckless Eric recently relocated from New York to Norfolk UK.

Reviews

[Still · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's a heartbreaker for you.
A memoir by a successful rock & roller/singer-songwriter who can move you close to the point of tears then turn right around three paragraphs later and have you laughing to yourself.

This is Amy Rigby's own tale of trying to make it as a music performer/songwriter, her ups and downs climbing sideways across the ladder of success almost reaching the pinnacle at least three different times. Lots of big league rock & roll names dropped shamelessly in almost every chapter yet it's a must read for any music fan who came of age in the late-70s to late-90s.

I have to admit that I happen to be a fan of her music.
I enjoy almost all of her catalogue from her work with The Shams in the 80's to her masterpiece Diary Of A Mod Housewife released in 1996 and her most recent album, The Old Guys -which is practically a companion piece to this book.

Highest Recommendation.

[Catherine Gigante-Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic read. I related. So much to this book, being a woman if a certain age. So evocative of the time and place. Brought back great memories of CBGBs (the smell of the bathroom!) and NYC in the 70s. So well written, I didn't want it to end! Hopefully there will be a follow-up bringing us up to date. If Cara, the singing female drummer protagonist of my novel "Different Drummer," had married and had a child, this might have been her story!

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

It finished so strong. I’m so glad I read this—it’s one of the best memoirs I’ve read.

[Jack Silbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was it John Flansburgh's Mono Puff cover of "Don't Break the Heart" that hipped me to Amy Rigby? Whatever the case, I quickly became a big fan, to the point of being teased about it by my buddy/production editor Daryl. I remember a show at Fez, with many drummer jokes, and hearing "Summer of My Wasted Youth" for the first time (still one of my great friend the Mapman's all-time favorites). So I was a natural to read this memoir. That it is so delightful — honest, sweet, down-to-earth, and very funny — was a nice bonus.

We meet her growing up in Pittsburgh — which I also related to, having gone to college there. And like so many of us, Amy felt she had to be in New York. For me it was to be a writer; for Amy it was to be… an artist. (I did not know that!) And as the girl comes to the city, her adventure truly begins.

Often in books and movies, I find a character that represents "us" as we explore an unexpected environment. In this memoir, I am Amy Rigby, the "good girl" making her way through the evolving downtown music scene. Even though I didn't arrive in the city until 1990 as opposed to Amy's 1976, I found a lot to connect to here (though I got a lot less action), even living in the same Brittany dorm on 10th Street as a Scholastic intern that Amy initially stayed in. Then of course as she dipped her toes into performing music, she'd intersect with the Maxwell's/WFMU world I would come to know so well.

But this book is not just for me! It's really for anyone who has pursued a passion, finances or the worries of one's parents be damned. Luckily there are friends and kindred spirits (including her hilarious brother Michael, whose Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co. old-timey combo you can see the last Thursday of every month at Otto's Shrunken Head on 14th Street, 8 to 10 p.m., no cover and free salty snacks) who make her journey a lot easier and enjoyable. It's fascinating to follow Amy's very organic transition from art student to music fan to casual performer to band member to solo artist. Her personal life has ups and downs — and certainly being a professional musician has its downs and occasional ups. But Amy never gives up; she can't give up. The music drives her. And that's inspiring.

Most of the backstory was new to me, and the book concludes in the era just when I was becoming a fan. So I'm ready for the sequel, Amy Rigby!

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this memoir from the wonderful musician Amy Rigby. Granted it made me nostalgic for my time in NYC in 80s & 90s. I lived in the same NYU dorm that Amy did when she was first at Parson’s, albeit eight years later. I was at the Urge Overkill/Shams at Irving Plaza show that she writes about. I really didn’t want the book to end. Maybe the next one will be about her time in Nashville.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a fan of Amy Rigby’s music, of course I’d want to read her memoir … and knowing her lyric writing skill, I knew it would be a solid read. But it’s so much more than I expected: raw, real, insightful, entertaining, enjoyable, funny, informative, and more!

Part way through, I realized Ms Rigby and I are the same age, so I loved reading about her college years and the clubs she frequented on the East Coast. I was having similar experiences on the West Coast, seeing, often, the same bands in sketchy clubs and concert halls in Berkeley, San Francisco, and LA.

It’s a terrific book that I highly recommend for anyone … but especially music lovers.

[John Spiller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if --like me -- you are not familiar with Amy Rigby, "Girl To City" is a great read. She grew up in a Pittsburgh suburb, living a fairly conventional upper middle class existence. To Rigby, the gritty urban environment of mid-70's lower Manhattan spoke to her in a way that Pittsburgh never could. Leaving high school a year early, she enrolled in Parsons School of Design and became a habitue of the burgeoning punk and No Wave scene in the lower East Village. Although she moved to New York with aims of being a commercial artist, she becomes a musician whose career resides in the liminal space between critical respect and commercial success.

Rigby's memoir worked for me because she maintains the right balance between dewy-eyed nostalgia and clear-eyed realist reporting. The thrill of navigating the late-70's/early 80's club scene, yet living a hand-to-mouth existence in walk-ups with no air condition and your bathtub in the kitchen. Moving to Williamsburg not as an urban hipster but out of economic necessity because your tenement went co-op.

Although Rigby describes events that do not seem that far removed to this 55 year-old, she documents a way of life as foreign to kids of today as the Gilded Age. We often hear people telling you to "chase your dreams" and "do what you love". "Girl To City" chronicles the joys and perils of such a journey.

[Danimal · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great music memoir! Reminded me of an American (midwestern) version of Viv Albertine's first autobiography about being a punk girl in the 70s/80s. It's not surprisingly that Rigby's writing is draws you in - her songwriting has been doing the same for 20+ years as well. Good stuff.

[Mandy Honeyman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coming back to reading actual books, starting with Amy's. I first discovered her books by going to one of her gigs. She was reading from her newest book and playing songs that appeared in the book too. It was a great night out. I hadn't realised she was so funny! And her writing is great too.
Here she's telling stories of her musical and other journeys.
I think what i liked the most, oddly, was the seesawing between joy and utter vulnerability. A true insight into creative drive.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this might be one of the best rock memoirs I've read, but it is a little to close to my generation's growing up with music, so I don't have a lot of distance. I guess I'm going to have to wait until one of my non-rock-obsessed friends read it: If any of them give it 5 stars, I'll upgrade it. Amy Rigby was on the scene in punk-era and no wave New York, post-punk London, then back in New York where she started to assemble her own bands, Last Roundup and the Shams. I probably saw both bands because she mentions Last Roundup opening for Sleepy LaBeef at what was probably Johnny D's in Somerville, and then the Shams opening for Urge Overkill on the latter's '93 tour, which I think I saw. But I don't remember her bands.

I do remember, though, when her album "Diary of a Mod Housewife" (1996) came up. It blew away everyone who listened to it. Since then, I've seen Amy Rigby 4 or 5 times, including a couple of times with her partner, Wreckless Eric. But I was always there for Rigby.

This book provides the narrative, and it remembers so much and recounts a lot of detail people of her music generation may have now forgotten. Rigby was born in 1959 and this book takes us up just past her success with "Diary" about 40 years later. It's incredible how much she went through. If I had to pick out one thing, it was taking her baby Hazel on a tour for the Shams. Wow. Fortunately her band members were like co-moms, and that child got a lot of support. Really amazing. I'm not sure you could do that these days.

This could be a movie: And I would bet that her next chapters could form a great sequel.

[Bookish Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been a fan of singer/songwriter Amy Rigby ever since I gave her debut album, Diary of a Mod Housewife, a spin in my CD player. Instead of being an untouchable diva, Rigby proved to be a relatable every woman. She sang about marriage, the workplace, breakups, and childrearing. Songs like “The Good Girls,.”20 Questions,” and “That Tone of Voice” slipped into my bloodstream and became part of my DNA. What can I say? I’m a fan.

Being a fabulous storyteller via her songs, I figured Rigby would be a fabulous storyteller when it came to her life. And after reading Rigby’s memoir Girl to City, I’m 100% correct!

Before Amy Rigby became songstress extraordinaire, she was Amelia McMahon, the only daughter of an Irish-Italian American family. She grew up in Pittsburgh, a place she felt was neither glamorous or exciting.

Young Rigby’s escape was music and a way of escaping the dreariness of Pittsburgh. A huge fan of Elton John when she was a teenager, Rigby later discovered punk. And through early admission to study art at Parson’s, she hightailed it out of Pittsburgh and ended up in Manhattan.

Rigby thrived at Parson’s and it wasn’t long before she discovered the music scene, spending rock and roll nights at iconic places CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City, and the Bowery. She saw bands and artists like the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, and the Talking Heads. And instead of just listening to music and going to shows, Rigby wanted to be on stage.

It wasn’t long before Rigby started a band with her brother, Michael, and a bunch of friends called The Last Roundup. They couldn’t quite play their instruments, but being on stage was electric. Rigby just knew she had found her place in the world of music.

After The Last Roundup ended, Rigby formed The Shams. By this time, Rigby and her bandmates were much more fine-tuned and The Shams found some modest success. They even opened up for the band Urge Overkill.

But The Shams never quite reached the rock and roll stratosphere of platinum albums and sold out shows at Madison Square Garden. Rigby spent a lot of time in the trenches of 9 to 5 working a lot of temp jobs so she could pay the bills. But the dreariness of the office wasn’t for nothing; it inspired her to write a lot of great songs.

Rigby also had deal with a lot on the home front. She married dB’s drummer, Will Rigby, and together they were raising a daughter named Hazel. Life was a jumble of set lists and shopping lists, guitar cases and diaper bags. Often her bandmates would act as de facto nannies to wee Hazel.

Sadly, Rigby’s marriage to Will didn’t survive, which she writes about with brutal honesty. But her and Will’s devotion to their daughter remains steadfast and true.

It was the topsy-turvy world of domesticity that also inspired Rigby’s songwriting. Nothing was too mundane for Rigby to write a song about. But soon it was time for Rigby to go solo, which gave us the stellar Diary of a Mod Housewife. Rigby spends quite a lot of pages describing what it was like to record this album, and it’s an eye-opener.

Rigby is brutally honest about the various aspects of her life including spending time in England with a man she calls “The Manager” to her mother’s horrific car crash. She’s truthful about her Catholic guilt and her troublesome skin.

Girl to City is a tremendous read. Rigby writes with exquisite detail and clarity, which makes you feel you are experiencing every moment of her life. You really get an idea of a New York City that doesn’t really exist, a gritty Manhattan and a Williamsburg in Brooklyn before it became a hipster haven.

Girl to City isn’t just a memoir; it is a truthful and touching tale of one woman’s struggles, triumphs, and need to express her unique voice.

Originally published at The Book Self:
https://thebookselfblog.wordpress.com...

[David Partikian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set mostly in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Girl To City is a poignant account of the life of a singer songwriter almost entirely out of the spotlight, at the fringes of the alternative music scene during the 80’s and 90’s. Despite a mundane existence as a decade-long office temp, Amy Rigby perseveres, writes, and sings triumphantly, with sardonic wit and searing honesty. Her descriptions of the seediness of various East Village and Lower East Side locales of the mid-70’s through the 80’s will make any native New Yorker or anyone who moved to the big bad city and stayed, like the author, rue for the past and feel a twinge of melancholic nostalgia. Amy Rigby resurrects the Lone Star Café and other long-gone stages as well as Alphabet City during the heroin and coke years with an eye for detail and the absurdity of an artistic existence best summarized when her parents from the wilds of Pittsburgh pay infrequent visits to her and her brother. The results are vintage New York: the shat on hood of a late model car on Avenue B and a clueless father leaving the Lone Star mid song over some perceived slight.

Girl To City is beautiful on so many levels: As the memoir of an innocent(ish) girl from Pittsburgh who makes the leap to a city at its economic nadir, but artistic acme, and then fights out an identity among a nascent punk rock music scene. She sees New York through the eyes of a Pittsburgh teen and, later, suburban America through the jaded eyes of a New Yorker.

As an exposé of just how unglamorous a life on the margins of the music industry is: Rigby or her band is—as a rule—the opening act; she is married for well over a decade to the drummer of the Db’s, Will Rigby, who is often away on tour with both the Db’s—who never get the recognition they deserve—or as a session musician touring before email and cell phones made staying in touch easier. Despite steady gigs, there is the typical poverty that often accompanies those remaining true to an artistic vision while also having to work day jobs; Amy Rigby’s tone is never bitter and she does not take pot shots at her husband or any boyfriend. She does not blame or tattle. She simply relates how difficult life and parenthood are, much as she does in her lyrics.

The memoir also stands as a testament as to how hard it is for a young woman with modest talents to go to art school, Parsons School of Design, and then eke out an existence in a callous city; jobs were not plentiful except for the bold and visionary. It is the story of so many New York couples just trying to get through the day.

Memoirs by female musicians have been prominent since Patti Smith’s Just Kids with Kim Gordon, Debbie Harry and Chrissie Hynde—who makes a memorable cameo in Girl To City—all publishing books. Ribgy’s offering is—at least to me—the most compelling. Gordon’s has conspicuous absences due to a recent divorce. Where Just Kids seemingly crosses the line of name dropping, the more notable characters in Girl To City often make brief appearances and then disappear, as they do in the lives of someone who doesn’t hit the big time, but eventually finds a niche performing wry, self-effacing songs that owe a debt to country music.

Girl To City was over a decade in the making, since temping, parenting and touring took priority. Thus, Rigby relies on a strictly linear and chronological account, which, though a bit mundane, works in so far as the culmination is not so much success as acceptance of one’s fate. Perseverance as means to perseverance.

[Scott JB · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a blast - Rigby writes scenes like she writes her songs, with humour and insight and a certain breathlessness to her imagery and sense of pace; she puts meaning and feeling into her writing of interpersonal dynamics and she presents her emotional state clearly and incisively.

Overall, this a non-fiction bildungsroman: it's the story of how a girl from a large Catholic family in industrial Pittsburgh came to New York just in time for punk to break, how this set her on a new path to discovering who she was, and the ups and downs of trying to put that new self into practise. With this, 'Girl to City' is at its strongest when it's doing what it says on the tin - in the first third, when Rigby is young and adventurous, falling in and out of love, bar-hopping in the East Village as she sees every punk band at CBGB's and reinvents herself away from her family. Rigby writes downtown New York wonderfully, mixing the cult-celeb spots with all-night diners, drug dealers, crime and broken sidewalks.

But like youth itself, like punk as a movement, this Peters out, and after a detour to London, Rigby returns and starts trying to make it as a musician herself, mixing the punk/indie/DIY ethos with the classic country and western genre she's always loved. Here, the book loses its initial focus and becomes more of a travelogue - less a portrait of how exciting it was to be in New York at a moment in time, now a more personal, picaresque catalogue of the highs and lows of playing, touring, forging a voice and a style, trying to find success and validation, while also living your life.

'Living your life' for Rigby means balancing marriage and motherhood with creativity. Here the book has its other big subject, and best insights: Rigby isn't trying to have a family and a career - she's trying to have a family, a job, and an outlet for her creative spirit. The degradation of work, the struggle of trying to get by, and how this eventually explodes into her creative and commercial peak - the critically loved and moderately successful album 'Diary of a Mod Housewife' - caps off the memoir beautifully.

I do think the book is a little unfocused at times. After the first third, the stuff about her struggling to make music and have some success with Last Roundup and The Shams sometimes has a scattergun approach, anecdotes dropped in among chapters without a clear sense of purpose for the story Rigby is telling, seemingly included because they happened to occur at the relevant point in time. Rigby also speeds through certain motivations, or only reveals something once it's already started to happen - even getting her longed-for solo record deal. The scenes and segments of each chapter are always pithy and easy to read, but strung together they sometimes need a little tightening.

But that's possibly asking too much of a book that is a life story, and especially one that works as a spirited portrait of coming of age in 70s New York, and the female side of trying to make it as an artist in the late 20th Century. Lately I've felt like I've read quite a few books, fiction and non-fiction, that don't even manage to do one thing well. Reading one that does two things so, so well (filling me not just with nostalgia for Rigby's first solo album from my teen years, but with spirit and vim for pop music's potential to distil and transform life) was a treat.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great capture of what the music industry was like in the later part of the 20th century in the US. Ms Rigby grew up in Pittsburgh in the era when Steel was still king, and the city was rather gritty, polluted and the dirtiest city in America. It also had a surfeit of libraries, winning sports teams and world class museums. As many growing up in the 60's, she was pulled into the power of music, in her case pop and especially Elton John. But her real revelation was while attending Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, her first college boyfriend, Bob, drags her to CBGB's, the now legendary club in lower Manhattan to see the Ramones. The music had a physical effect...."I gripped the back of a chair, glad the floor was so sticky it kept us from being lifted and tossed around beneath the dusty beer lights." As she was leaving the club to go home, she turned to Bob and said "Can we come back tomorrow." She describes the blossoming music scene in lower Manhattan of the late 70's, as venues continued to open: Mudd Club, Max's Kansas City, Club 57 and many others. In the late 70's and early 80's NYC was a dangerous city, with a high crime rate and rampant drug use. Ms Rigby continues along, working temp jobs, trying to fit into the work world with her art degree at ad agencies and expertise at drawing illustrations in an industry moving more towards photography. Through various chance encounters, she falls in with several women along with her brother, forming a band from a love of old country music. That band was the short lived Last Roundup, who released one album. While at a party, she meets Will Rigby, drummer for the dB's and falls in love and eventually they marry. The Last Roundup went their separate ways, and Ms Rigby finds herself organizing a new group, The Shams, a trio of like minded female singers. Life for a pair of touring musicians, who are in different bands is always difficult, as one or the other is almost always on the road. Finding time to maintain the relationship is hard and especially after they have a child. She discusses the difficulties she was having on a personal level with the failure of her marriage leading to a lot of self-doubt. She describes the times thus: "Self-flagellation is the first refuge of the lapsed Catholic, the lingering belief that if you aren't suffering, you aren't deserving of any rewards." Being a lapsed Catholic myself this line really struck home. The book nears the end when she records her first solo album in the 90's with Elliott Easton, guitarist for The Cars, producing. The resultant album got rave reviews, led to a well received tour, that saw bigger audiences than her two previous bands, but still small numbers. And despite all the raves, radio play and hope, the album only sold about 20,000 copies, huge by today's standards of a small label release, but disappointing in those heady late 90's. What it did give her was the confidence to keep going.
I have to admit came to Ms Rigby's music later in her career, missing the early 90's, as at that time, I was only listening to KXCI in Tucson for music. However I did see her group the Shams open for the Waterboys at the Beacon Theatre in 1989, not long after I moved back to the area to work with my brother.

[Nestor Rychtyckyj · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who is Amy Rigby? For quite a long time I just knew her as the very cool singer who created the brilliant “Dancing with Joey Ramone”. It’s hard to imagine that anybody can encapsulate the heart and spirit of Joey Ramone in a “Ramonesque” 2 minutes and 51 seconds, but this is pure perfection.

But Amy Rigby is way more than 3 minutes of pop-punk brilliance and her memoir, titled “Girl to City” is an entertaining and inspirational look into the life of an artist who should be way more familiar to all of us. Starting with her childhood growing up in a very “uncool at that time” Pittsburgh, Amy winds up moving to New York to start her education as an artist. This 1970-ish New York City is full of problems, but we all know what it going on at CBGB’s and Max’s. Amy’s first trip to the icon in the Bowery is also the first time that she sees the Ramones. She slowly starts transforming from an artist into a musician.

Her story is not unique – my bookshelf is filled with memoirs written by people who played all sorts of roles in that magical time period when punk was just starting and the “future was unwritten”. But this book just grabs you as most others don’t. It’s a combination of the insecurity and the perseverance that she shows throughout her career. Amy’s writing also refuses to let you go and she manages to combine both humor and heartbreak often in the same sentence. When she is forced to leave Manhattan for Brooklyn, the line about Manhattan being the only place in the world where “you can get borscht and cocaine at 3 in the morning” is priceless.

But this is a story of Amy’s life: her relationship with her family, her marriage to Will Rigby, raising a child when she is a musician who needs to tour all make this memoir so real for us. It shows how difficult it is to achieve commercial success, but it also opens the door to explore Amy’s many excellent recordings and let us experience some of what she went through.

That’s it for the review – I feel privileged to have read the book and hope that you will do the same. As for “Dancing with Joey Ramone” – it’s not even mentioned in the book. The book more or less stops with the release of Amy Rigby’s first solo album “Diary of a Mod Housewife” and Joey will come later – hopefully in a new book.

[Vance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been a fan of Amy since picking up “Diary of a Mod Housewife” a few years after its release, I was impressed with her memoir. My copy was purchased at her first performance since COVID, where I was intrigued by her reading passages from the book to introduce the song she was about to play. This was a powerful introductory mechanism for both the song and the book, inspiring my purchase afterwards. Reading her autobiography on the heels of seeing this performance allowed me to revel in role reversal, for in the printed word she employs snippets of her brilliant lyrics to support current subject matter in the book.

This is very reminiscent of “Just Kids” by Patti Smith, but in Amy’s case it was a huge surprise. I had no idea how embedded she was in the NYC music scene. It probably helps if you are a fan of her music to appreciate this very personal story, but those who are enraptured by the beauty and power of music will find satisfaction. The microscope on the NYC music scene warmed my heart with stories where she intermingled with so many favorite artists, but there were quite a few I was unfamiliar with that are rapidly gaining traction now! More importantly, this is a story of triumph by relentlessly following one’s heart, another reason why the book can still resound with those who are not yet in harmony with her art.

[Jeff Mellin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don’t know what to do now that I’ve finished listening to Amy Rigby’s podcast of her memoir, Girl To City. It was like hanging out with an old friend; honest, funny, poignant, with well-drawn characters and places, great storytelling and narrative structure — all stuff any fan of her songwriting would expect. The snippets of music throughout, from stuff with Last Roundup, the Shams, through Mod Housewife, put it all in context. Obviously recommended for fans, but also for anyone nostalgic for the NYC of the 70s, 80s, & 90s, anyone who’s been in a band or the music biz, or anyone who loves a good “you’re gonna make it (maybe) after all” story. And, as much as it was a vicarious diversion from pandemic-bound dishwashing and kid-watching, it was an immersion, or re-immersion, in all those ever-more elusive reasons to believe in rock & roll.
Thanks for writing and sharing it, Amy.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A warm, funny, insightful tale of Amy's gradual journey to and through the wildness of New York. I already knew her as a great songwriter from "Diary of a Mod Housewife" - this is an often unflinching look at her life, which paints a vivid picture of how the Lower East Side moved from a lawless crime zone (robbed at gunpoint in the apartment she shared with D) to gentrified co-op apartments.

Sharp on how bands work, and built on her slow realisation that she was on a musical quest. Like all good music books, this has sent me off to find out more about the music she writes about, both her own, and also the tributaries that fed it in different ways - Urge Overkill, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, The Del-Lords, and many others

[Maurice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been a fan of Amy Rigby for a long time. This memoir takes us on her long journey from leaving Pittsburgh as a teen to the release of her first solo album, "Diary of a Mod Housewife." Amy is unflinchingly honest in talking about the challenges she faced personally and professionally as she struggled to make it in the music business. She is a witty writer and now, looking back, finds humor in some of the more heartbreaking moments. I don't know if she saw the humor in those moments at the time, but Amy certainly turned them into beautiful songs.

[Felice Silk · Rating 4 out of 5]

love Amy Rigby as a musician

Although I love Amy Rigby as a musician I found the book tedious at times. A lot of lists of clubs but I felt the real story behind her life and songs were missing. It was self deprecating but not introspective. Why did her marriage fail, what really was her relationship with her daughter like. There’s too many questions and not enough answers
However, it’s an interesting read for a fan of her songs

[Holden Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book and the accompanying podcast of it are terrific. Amy unflinchingly recounts her past life and loves (especially music). If you want the flavor of pop culture NYC in those heady days of the early 80s this is for you. Amy does a great retrospective solo performance where she reads from this book and performs related songs.

[R.A. Cramblitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

You don't have to know Amy Rigby's music (although I think it could make your life a little better) to love this book. Laced with charm, self awareness, wit, and just damn good story-telling, it harkens back to the tough days of NYC in the mid-80s in all its ragged glory, when a DIY artist could make her mark on the city and beyond. It's genuine to the bone, without a hint of hubris.

[Wendy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Run, don’t walk! Far away! This book has everything: romanticized poverty, addiction, AND racism in NYC in the 1980s, all from the point of view of someone who writes like Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way. There are much better books about women in the music scene, ignore this selfish and self-indulgent one and find something else.

[David Kovner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved. As witty and warm as her songs. I love reading memoirs by contemporaries (we're only five months apart) who have live very different lives than I have. And influenced my life along the way. This and Allison Moorer's Blood are two of the best books I've read during this pandemic.

[Karen]

Around 75 pages in, after reading 75 name drops and 75 descriptions of outfits worn, I gave up on this book. Perhaps I missed out on what the author had to say later in the book. It was ok pace-wise, but didn't grab me. I wasn't reading it as a fan so I just lost interest.

[Fred Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed it...I had no idea how deep AR's roots were in the late 70s NYC scene! She's had a fascinating life with several brushes with musical success before "Diary".

If you love Amy's songs, you'll enjoy this book.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great memories of 70s & 80s NYC

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warm. Honest. Refreshing. Unafraid. Unabashed. Friendly. Detailed. Poignant.

[Todd Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

a great story, Amy

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best musical memoirs I've read.