Amy Rigby
Hang in There with Me
(Tapete Records)
“I don’t think I knew when we started recording back in 2021 that we’d be leaving, although we had started spending part of our time in England,” says Amy Rigby about the making of her 11th album. She and her husband and sometime musical duo partner, Wreckless Eric, taped the 11-song set in the living-room studio of the Catskill house they’d called home from 2011 until last summer, when they packed up and relocated to Eric’s homeland. Written by Rigby during a time that was tumultuous not only on a grand scale (Covid, the 2016-2020 administration) but also individually (the passing of her father, the near-death of her spouse), Hang in There with Me is a time-and-place-specific collection of tunes that betrays the ragged optimism of its title.
Amid chiming electric and knotty acoustic guitars, crisp drums, and occasional fuzzy synths, the songsmith’s sweet-honey voice weaves words that read like cool ‘n’ clever diary entries. In “Bangs,” she pines for a hip haircut (“Don’t call it fringe / That’s way too tasteful / I want to channel Marianne Faithfull”), while “Hell-Oh Sixty” marks the milestone of another decade’s dawn and “Dylan in Dubuque” was inspired by a disorderly concert by the titular icon. “Writing songs and working in the studio is a small way to make order out of the chaos,” says Rigby, who’ll return to play the Spotty Dog in Hudson on April 12. “It keeps on giving me hope.” And as a parting gift of hope to the Hudson Valley, one couldn’t ask for a more redemptive release than Hang in There with Me.
This article appears in February 2025.
