Amie Penwell - Bio
Windows
“Beast and beauty ride in tandem.”
(lyric from the song “Window”)
Amie’s music walks a fine line between piano-driven pop, soul and country while maintaining an alternative aesthetic which allows her the freedom to mold, shape, bend and blend the various styles which influence her the most, joining the likes of Annie Lennox and Aimee Mann, Ray LaMontagne, and Peter Gabriel,
I believe all of us are trying to better navigate and understand our roles, plights, masks, defenses, and reactions to a world in an increasingly, desperate need to experience more of ourselves in these confines, real or imagined. Giving voice to our own truths, our realities, our power, our fear of that power, and the paradox of the need to admit powerlessness before true change proceeds.
I’ve spent the last few years working on a collection of songs that came out of conversations I had, and experiences I’ve shared, with women of diverse ethnic, economic and religious backgrounds.
With the help of my collaborators, that collection has become my new record, Windows. It’s an intimate, firsthand look into the lives of nine women on nine different journeys. Each song is a portrait of individual and collective exploration through acceptance, power, will, humility, denial, willingness, faith, surrender, and freedom.
The ultimate goal of this work is to stimulate conversations with one another, to help each other be more awake, objective, vocal, and free. To walk with one another through the sometimes brutal inventory of facing of ourselves, through the confining societies we find ourselves in.
My underground hit single, “Mercy,” was featured in the award-winning 2012 documentary, The Eyes of Thailand, which was narrated by Ashley Judd. In 2013, my EP Under City Lights was featured on Season 2 of Web series “Bloomers” and The Ask BonBon Show. In 2015, I was a semi-finalist in the International Songwriting Contest (ISC) in the Adult Album Alternative category for my song “Dogfight On The Moon”. In 2016, my song “Somewhere The Sky Is Blue” with Grammy Award-winning Producer Ricky Kej, in the Dominica Scorsese film Almost Paris, my song Unstoppable made it into the Mary Janes The Women of Weed as it's credits song. I am currently writing and recording an EP with Vicente Rodriguez (Chuck Prophet).
I was raised in Massachusetts in a cult style religion, poverty, love, alcoholism, mental illness, and daily soap operas. My core influences are Peter Gabriel, Prince, Sinead O'Connor, Danial Lanios, Radiohead, and Chris Whitley.