Amilia K Spicer - Fill Me Up

It may be her haunting, husky voice that first grabs a listener, the way it glides over melodies like smoke, but it’s the songwriting that Spicer really wants you to hear- the turns of phrases, the wistful poetry, the smart (and sometimes smart aleck) lyrics.
They are intimate and visual, like walking into a movie. There is a grit in many of the places Amilia writes about, but not all of them. Her songwriting fuses together the different places she calls home. Raised in rural Pennyslvania, currently residing in California, spending half the year in Austin, the topography covers languid farm landscapes,red dirt Americana, and an occasional turn down a dark alley with flickering neon. Her new record makes a stop in Harlan, Kentucky for the first time in her writing.
The musical DNA is crowded.
And- that oft mentioned new record is almost finished. It has been an epic project for Spicer, as a producer and an artist, covering several years and many almost-there's.
Over the time of creating this project, Spicer stepped away from the piano, picked up a guitar, and taught herself how to play. Other stringed instruments came next, and each one inspired her writing. A mixed blessing Spicer will confide, because these newly minted songs each clamoured to be added to the record.
A dichotomy of light and dark, small-town wonder with big city noir, colors the map running over her melodies, with a twist of melancholy in the storytelling.
Given the cinematic quality of her music, it makes sense that Spicer’s earlier works can be heard in several movies, HBO, Showtime, and has been featured in multiple TV shows ("Dawson's Creek", "Roswell", "Party of Five").
Equally at home from the cozy confines of Hollywood's Hotel Cafe, o the Kennedy Center in DC, on a Steinway with an orchestra, or playing a 4-string banjo at an Austin Honkytonk, Spicer’s defiant poetry never gets lost in the mix.
Her studio prowess as a producer and vocal arranger has become the co-star to the songs themselves. It's a role she relishes, even if the multiple hats increase the stakes. As much time as she spends creating lush recordings, her live shows allow her to immediately shine, with all the layers coexisting on the stage. There, after the cerebral lyrics and the last, barely audible line, she invites the band up and reveals a quirky, light-hearted humor, either by her homespun stories or her left-of-center ditties.
It's a packed room on a Saturday night, with the dance floor full of smiling people, and Spicer looks like she's channeling the next, much bigger stage.
Not by accident, she calls her own record label Free Range Records, described in true quirky fashion:
"Born a small, fierce critter in the midst of Hollywood sharpshooters”. From whisper to wail, there is more than a little attitude under that trademark cowboy hat.
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"Seamless, like Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water, sucks you in and doesn't let go until the last note" Flint Journal
“The Like an Engine CD is a masterpiece. The songs convey a sense of musical grandeur honed to perfection with a razor-sharp edginess... One can easily imagine viewing the tales of these tunes through a film director's editing machine. ” Jim Guyette WRUW-FM/91.1, Cleveland
Live at Lockett's is an intimate concert series filmed in Christopher Lockett's living room in Los Angeles. It features artists from LA's eclectic roots music and poetry scenes. The performers are grounded in a roots tradition, but are not bound by it.
One camera, one lens, no zooms, no cuts, not even a microphone in frame - just a lone shotgun mic mounted overhead in a c-stand. Nothing between the performer and the audience.