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"They say pain is the doorway to spiritual awakening. If that’s the case, then Kerrville Folk Festival holds my spiritual doorway."

In 2006, I was a finalist in a very famous songwriter’s contest at The Kerrville Folk Festival. If you know anything about folk music or legendary Texas songwriters like Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith, you know about this festival. It’s been going on for a bazillion years. And Guy and Lyle famously won that contest (they pick 6 winners out of 32 finalists). I hear Nancy and Steve Earle famously lost. Townes Van Zandt won. Mindy Smith lost. Shawn Colvin lost. Many have never even got to the finals.

I was in it that year. It was the same year I got signed to Judy Collins’ record label, so it was a big year for me and to many, I was a shoe in. I lost. But by the time they announced the winners, I didn’t really care. I made lifelong friends in my class of finalists and discovered the magic of the Kerrville Folk Festival. My year was a good year. Diana Jones, Antje Duvekot, Gorde Quist (Band of Heathens) won. My new friend Jud Caswell won. Jud and I would go on to write “Weight of the World” (together with Jon Vezner), a song that Judy Collins recorded. KC Clifford was a finalist and she’s a lifelong friend. The winners, as I recall, had amazing songs. I had pretty good songs.

It was there in the late night campfires of Kerrville that I learned to write a song, sitting up till 3am (or later) with incredible songwriters, some famous, some complete unknowns, all masters of the craft. Tom Prasada-Rao, Buddy Mondlock, Michael McNevin, Michael Lille, Jonathan Byrd, Anais Mitchell. I judged the contest a few years later and met Robby Hecht and BettySoo by (ugh) judging them. There were great artists in the contest that year (and the other years I judged) who wouldn’t make the final 6 who have amazing careers. Some came back another time to win (Ordinary Elephant), some just went on to have great careers of their own without the win.

Winning would have been nice. It’s nice to be thought of in the company of Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark. But just getting to Kerrville was the win. There’s a spiritual thing happening here for 3 weeks every summer, where people leave their ‘ordinary/extraordinary’ lives and gather under the Texas stars, and sometimes storms, and share songs and wine and food and stories. I used to camp at Camp Nashville until that one folded into others. Then Camp Coho was my home. We had a lovely spot in ‘the meadow’ where we’d watch the hummingbirds while Gary would bring out his accordion and play some old Scottish ballad with a thousand verses. Or Alan Gann would recite one of his poems (he’s still one of my favorite poets), or Jack Hardy would play one of his amazing folk songs. Gina Forsyth would bring her fiddle out, Karen Mal her mandolin. Or we’d all go to the Medina River at Richard’s place, where Eric Schwartz would entertain us with Motown and we’d all sing along in the tall soft grassy lawn with the hammocks and the impossibly clear green still water. Those years were beautiful and I grew up there in so many ways.

I was also deep into my addiction and ego and insecurity. I drank too much (so many of us do there so I didn’t know I had a problem) and I know, as I say with Huck, I made ‘bad choices.’ I also had so much fun. RJ Cowdrey and I stayed up all night on Chapel Hill (the highest point at the camp where many have been married) with a throng of hippies passing a whiskey bottle dancing and singing and stumbled down the ridge a little too loudly making up bawdy folk songs. I did that a few years prior with Jonathan Byrd, sliding into Camp Coho at 6am announcing to nobody that we had just written a song and they had to wake up to listen. It was “It’s Too Late To Call It A Night,” and Alan Gann was up and remembers it. So many sunrises on Chapel Hill, beautiful moments of connection, deep alcoholism and infidelity and shame. And beauty. It does sometimes happen together and so my darkest days were also beautiful days.

They say pain is the doorway to spiritual awakening. If that’s the case, then Kerrville holds my spiritual doorway.

Here, I learned to write songs. Here, I learned to be humble and listen. Here, I learned maybe I wasn’t the NYC shit that I thought I was. Here I was humbled into getting good. Here, I fell in love and fell out of love, and got drunk, and ate pot cookies and took a magical tour of the camps I didn’t know about with Brian C and Robby Hecht. Here I watched my friends get married. Here we celebrated the life of Vic Heyman and Reba Heyman, who were huge supporters of mine and the festival. Here I stood next to the marker of my dear friend Tom who invited me into the circle at Camp Nashville and gave me cred. Here I stood under the stars in magical circles and heard the most glorious songs. Here I lost God and found God all at once.

This year, I’m playing the festival. I’ve played it many times, but it’s been 7 years since I’ve been here and I wanted to bring Huck this time. He came with me as a one-year old last time I played. Now he’s 8. We took a road trip and decided to stay a few days so I could show him the magic. My guitar player, Dave Coleman, who’s also a great songwriter flew in on Saturday. There is a worship service on Chapel Hill on Sundays that I never knew of and had never attended in all the years I’ve come. I’m 12 years sober, so I have been here sober, but I still stayed up late to swap songs in circles.

But since Covid, so much has been broken and put back together in my life, soul, heart and I’m different this year. I knew about the service and I wanted to go. Dave wanted to go. Huck of course. So we went up to Chapel Hill and a small group was gathered under the beautiful blue sky. The priest is a young singer-songwriter and an Episcopal priest so the service would be Episcopal, which is my church. It was beautiful service. We had communion and sang and I did a lot of my own silent conversation with God. Thanking her for me just getting here. And I don’t mean just the hike up that hill.

As I sang my set last night, they sky was bright and the sun shone on the stage. Chris Jacobs was out there on sound, as he always is, as he has been since I met him 20 years ago. Sparkle Joe (Joe, a lawyer in real life, wears sequined capes and dances and has a bucket of them for other dancers and kids capes too… Huck loves him) was dancing and interpreting the songs. My friends Sarah Beth and Nathan and Buddy and Polly were there smiling. Robby was waiting backstage to sing with me on our song “Sea and the Shore.” A song that would not have been written without us meeting here. Rebecca Loebe was the MC, a beautiful soul who has a lovely career despite the fact that she was in the contest the year I judged (and didn’t win…although she came back to crush it another year and has played mainstage many times). James McMurtry would be playing later with my friend BettySoo. Huck sat backstage watching, just waiting for his ice cream. Dave’s guitar swirled in reverb, a bed of harmonics that I could play with and sing to and I felt like we created our own little world sonically together, in a kind of musical communion that may have been blessed that morning with our own communion on the hill.

My personal “God” is a starlit sky at the crossroads here in Kerrville with Tom singing our song “Have Faith In Me.” She’s in the Medina River. She’s in Dalis Allen’s flowing kimonos. She’s in a song Steve Fischer sings up on the rocks. She’s in the poetry of Allan Gann. She’s in Brian Cutean’s eyes.

They say here “Welcome Home,” and when I first heard it I was a cynical NYC chick, cooler than cool and I thought it was hippie bullshit. But it is in the best way. It’s true. There’ s a ‘coming home’ that happens here to everyone. A non-denominational spirit in songs and community.

I guess if you’re gonna face your demons anywhere, a folk festival in the Texas hill country is a good enough place to do it. And it’s a beautiful place to come back and give honor to that broken girl, who was just searching for something outside of herself that was always inside, waiting for her to come home.

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Amy Speace is an award-winning Americana folk singer and songwriter discovered by Judy Collins. Her songs have been recorded by Ms. Collins and many others and she has won International Song of the Year from the Americana Music Association (UK). Her writing has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, Working Mother, and Salon.com. She received her MFA from Spalding University and teaches English at Cumberland University. She resides in Nashville, Tennessee, with her son, Huckleberry, and her dog, Dusty Springfield. The Cardinals, coming Sept 1st with Red Hen Press , is her debut poetry collection.