Amy Grant stays poetic in song and memories

When catching up with Amy Grant, it’s no wonder an interview turns into a friendly conversation.

The multi-award-winning, longtime contemporary Christian and pop artist, who will make her only area appearance at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Francis Marion University Performing Arts Center in Florence, spoke last week about her new CD, “In Motion: The Remixes.” The collection takes her fans and her with some new variations on hits as far as the 1980s and turn of the 1990s.

With the CD’s 10 numbers including several that originated on her “Heart in Motion” album in 1991, such as “Baby Baby,” Every Heartbeat” and “That’s What Love Is For,” Grant said the project capped off “kind of a long haul,” but she enjoyed hearing each submitted remixed song “one at a time.”

Speaking by phone from home in Nashville, Tenn., Grant downplayed her role in the endeavor, stating that the “only job” shared with her manager to get the process going entailed “pitching and repitching” the idea. In the end, the Universal Music Group release in August brought “a nonstop, throbbing dance beat” that Grant finds “so much fun.”

Pausing to check what sat on her kitchen turntable, a solo album by the late Lowell George — also known for his work with Little Feat — Grant said she has been “making my way” through her vinyl “stack,” and she just came across Christmas collections by Elvis Presley and Ray Charles.

She called George one of her husband Vince Gill’s “favorite artists,” and when finding the George LP at a second-hand store near a coffee shop where her son lives, she couldn’t wait to put the needle on that record back home.

Surprise in the mail

Next year will mark two decades since Atlantic Records put out “Tapestry Revisited: A Tribute to Carole King,” a compilation of hits covered by such artists as Aretha Franklin, Faith Hill and the Bee Gees. Grant contributed “It’s Too Late,” the third of 12 tracks, right after Rod Stewart’s “So Far Away,” and shared her praise for the closing number, Celine Dion’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”

Grant also couldn’t forget a surprise that arrived shortly after sales for that CD started: a signed, original copy of the “Tapestry” album from King herself.

“When that came in the mail, I ran around the house, jumping around,” Grant said. “I called my mother and my sixth-grade boyfriend.”

Remembering his fanfare for “Tapestry” after it hit stores in 1971, Grant said, “He and I would listen to it.”

Married to Gill since 2000, Grant said their daughter, Corrina, “the youngest of a blended family of five” children at age 13, “loves to sing” and occupied her mind one night last week.

“I could not fall asleep,” Grant said, pondering the inevitable empty nest down the road. “I’m already missing her, and she’s not even gone yet.”

Having “fun with all the kids, who are all so different,” Grant said, including Gill’s daughter and Grant’s two girls and son with former husband Gary Chapman, “they all stay quirky enough to keep you guessing.”

Grant said she and Gill added grandparenthood to their repertoire last month when the eldest of the five, Jenny Gill Van Valkenburg, bore a son in August.

Family never falls out of focus for this couple.

“We work so much from home,” Grant said, explaining how Corrina also found fun in their workplace.

A schoolfriend said, “Miss Amy, Corrina’s singing in the studio now,” Grant remembered from “eight or nine years ago.”

Yuletide plans under way

Another annual Christmas concert calendar already has filled Grant and Gill’s to-do list for December.

Grant, who on her second Christmas CD, “Home for Christmas” from 1992, wrote a third verse for “Grown-Up Christmas List,” with the blessing of David Foster, one of its two composers, said she and Gill will headline Music City’s historic Ryman Auditorium twice a week. Grant also will join Michael W. Smith for several symphony dates and some solo concerts in other cities.

Without any pressure to generate hit singles, and simply doing the projects to arouse the heart — as Trisha Yearwood has enjoyed as a host on Food Network, and Martina McBride traveled this summer with a big band — Grant said with this freedom she and Gill each savor, “it feels like being a kid again.”

“You’re not trying to do something for the end result,” she said, “ but you’re really free. That is a recipe for contentment right there.”

Grant also concluded that “life is always changing.” For Christmastime 2011, Good Housekeeping detailed how she and her sisters braced for their mother’s passing, in the comfort of home with Gill.

“It’s tender any time you lose your parents,” Grant said. “I just think life is the great tenderizer.”

This subject prompted Grant’s thoughts of penning a poem in her 20s at her mother’s request to deliver at a speaking engagement.

“I was going, ‘OK, Mom, sure,’” said Grant, recalling her coming across that poem again when she reached her mother’s age, the late 40s.

Grant brought up those words she wrote, ultimately, about her mother, and she then rewrote “the back half.”

Grant read aloud a poignant passage: “Who would have known the road of life would twist and turn so much? The journey makes me strong and weak, and tender to the touch.”

“Life makes you all those things,” Grant said, “but mostly tender, if you let it, in the best-case scenario.”

This story was originally published September 26, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Amy Grant stays poetic in song and memories."