Past Internet Articles About Amy Grant

Amy Grant's palette
The Christian-pop singer can attest to the words of a wise old friend who said dark times create depth in the portrait of a life.
By GINA VIVINETTO
Published January 23, 2005

Amy Grant won the hearts of mainstream music fans back in 1985 with the hits Find a Way and Wise Up . Until then, Grant had been a Christian music phenomenon, but soon more hits on the pop charts, including The Next Time I Fall (a duet with Peter Cetera), Baby Baby and collaborations with country star Vince Gill made her a bona fide pop star.

The road turned bumpy for Grant in 1999 when her marriage to Gary Chapman, her husband of 16 years and the father of her three children, ended. When the divorce became public, Grant announced that she intended to marry Gill. Many of Grant's Christian music fans were up in arms. Christian radio stations boycotted Grant's songs.

Grant, 44, bounced back with 2003's Simple Things , an introspective album of faith, love and forgiveness.

Calling from Colorado, where she, Gill and their daughter Corrina, 3, were enjoying a six-day vacation, Grant answered 10 Pressing Questions about her secret vices, the music she loved growing up and the funny things her kids say.

(1) I know you're a Christian woman, but tell me some secrets. What are your vices? Your bad habits ? (Laughs) Well, gosh. I'm sitting here thinking, "Who in their right mind would tell you all their dirt?" I'm not a hard liquor drinker, but I do like wine.

Red or white? I like both, but I prefer red. I'd be fine if the only three liquids I had were coffee, water and wine (laughs). In fact, I'm slugging coffee now.

(2) Were you a good kid growing up in Nashville, or did you get in any trouble? The only thing that got me in trouble is that I am easily distracted. By everything. ... That's probably a little bit of an ADD thing. Creatively, it's a great thing, but not in other matters. I was always being late.

Did you daydream in class? I loved school, so I don't really know that I did that. But I would love to gas up my car - I had an old sports car that my dad got me - and I would just drive through the country and listen to music. I loved taking pictures. I was always such an observer of life. I was just happy. I don't think I ever really acted out. Did I get sloppy drunk a couple times growing up, sure (laughs). But it was more by accident than intent.

(3) What did you do as a teen to hone your creativity? I loved art classes. Still do. Really what I loved was music. I loved how it crosses all barriers, age, race, religion, and if you love music, there is something to appreciate in every kind of musical form.

(4) You named your second daughter Sarah Cannon, after Minnie Pearl's real name. How did you come to be close friends with Minnie Pearl? Well, I don't know that I would say we were close friends; she was my grandmother's age. I went to a really amazing school in sixth, seventh and eighth grade. I was in a public school before that. This was back in the days of busing, and my parents put me in a private school so I wouldn't be on a bus from morning until twilight.

That school finished in the eighth grade, and they had a closing exercise type thing for us, the big dogs, and Minnie Pearl was our speaker that year.

Of course, I'm thinking, "Oh great, what's this gray-haired lady going to say?" You know? Because eighth grade is just on the front kind of cusp of the pompous and arrogant age of youth. Anyway, she was so disarming and so encouraging. She talked to us as if we were contemporaries.

As the years went by, I did some fundraising work with her. What struck me was how many notes she would write me. I would go to the mail and recognize her stationery, and she would write, "I saw what you did" or "I was proud of the way you did this." She was always very encouraging.

Anyway, my favorite thing - this was after she had her stroke and she had good days and bad days - I was pregnant with my daughter Sarah, the daughter I named after her. She was having a good day, and she was fairly lucid.

She said to me, "Amy, you know what the most important color on an artist's palette is, don't you?"

And I'm thinking, "Uh, primary colors?" (laughs). I said, "No, I don't know that I know that. I tend to like colors that you find in nature."

She said, "Honey, it's black. Always remember that. It's black." She said, "Without black, everything is two-dimensional. It's when you mix the black in with every other color that you can create depth."

She said, "That's the same as your life, Amy. It's all the dark times that create depth in a person."

(5) Is it true you own Minnie's piano? Yes.

How did you acquire that? It was sold at auction. I wasn't there. I was connected by cell phone, and I had a friend there going, "Okay, I've got my paddle raised." She didn't give it to me.

(6) Are you a talented pianist? No, not at all. I took lessons as a kid. (Brightly) I can play Chopsticks! But if I'm working on a melody, I'm just basically playing melody and a bass line.

(7) Tell me how you felt when Christian music stations boycotted your music after you announced your engagement to Vince. I feel like people do what they are compelled to do. It's all I can do to live my own life. All that is beyond my control. It is. It's not even worth expending a lot of energy over.

It didn't seem a very Christian way for your fans to react to your happiness together. Well, you would be surprised when you get inside somebody's head, why they make the choices they make. People make the choices they make because they feel strongly about it.

Even if things don't go the way you want them to go, part of maturity is trying to understand that people do things because people are compelled to do things, and you just have to respect that.

Does something like that ever shake your faith, being so rejected by your community? No. I just say to myself there are consequences to every choice we make. To have my songs pulled was a consequence to some choices I made. That's just life.

(8) Did you grow up listening to country? Not really. I didn't buy country records.

What music were you into? The records I would spin nonstop were Elvis' greatest hits. I loved the Beatles, early Elton John, the Honky Chateau record. I loved early James Taylor. Jethro Tull's Thick As a Brick was my favorite record for a long time. I loved Todd Rundgren, Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Van Morrison. Cat Stevens.

I was always drawn to singer-songwriters because you felt like you were getting not just the performance, but a peek into how they felt about life. Oh! And Carole King. I loved Carole King.

(9) You are quite a humanitarian and, obviously, very spiritual. Who are some people in history who inspire you? I'm always inspired by an act of generosity. Probably the people who have the most profound, lasting impact on me are people you have never heard of. People that I had the chance to meet through music and I see how they live their lives in secret. That's what impresses me, because these people have zero fame and they do beautiful things with their lives and their money.

I've always got my feelers out, because I like to be moved by these sorts of people, and you can't help but celebrate when somebody is compelled by the better angels of their nature.

When I woke up and I heard about Sandra Bullock's gift (of $1-million to the Red Cross) after the tsunami, I thought, "Thank you, God, for that woman, that she's made a lot of money and continues to act on her generous impulses."

You feel that way about everybody. The kid that did the penny drive in Houston because his teacher has breast cancer, he is just as impressive to me.

(10) Your children with Gary are nearly grown. Corrina is not yet 4. Is it fun for you to have a young child again? I love it. I love it. Children are 100 percent in the moment. We have so much fun with her. The older kids - we all get older, sure - but it's so fun again for all of us to experience that wide-eyed wonder where everything is new and strange.

I have to tell you this, though, the funniest thing Corrina said the other day.

I had to wash Corrina's hair and then dry it because when it's wet, it just goes all the way down to her rear end.

So, I'm in the tub, and I'm trying to wash it, and I can just tell I'm irritating her to death. I'm trying to get the job done, she's trying to enjoy it, you know.

Suddenly she turns around and says (curtly), "Hey, Mom, I'm needing some space, and you're not giving it to me" (laughs).

Where did she learn that? Well, I don't know that I'm controlling, but my next-older daughter said the same thing to me when she was 4. She was helping me make a bologna sandwich, and she was taking so long to pull that red plastic trim off of the bologna, and I took it out of her hands, and I took it off of the bologna, and she said (dramatically), "Please, let me have my own life' ' (laughs) .

Do you believe that? Of course, it does make you wonder where they get it.

PREVIEW: Amy Grant performs with opener Lorna Bracewell at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater. $36-$45. (727) 791-7400.