Songbird
A singer/songwriter sets up
residence in Cambridge

by Greg Lalas, Sr. Editor
These days, it seems songbirds come and go with the annoying regularity of a broken record. (Where are you now Tracy Bonham?) But with 6 years already logged, Amy Fairchild has been in the air for a while, albeit mostly at the lower altitudes. If her new CD Mr. Heart is any indication, she should soon be flying higher. Emerging from Northampton's pool of talented singer/songwriters when she released her debut album She's Not Herself, in 1996, Fairchild has since played Lilith Fair's New York City concert, won the Kerrville New Folk Competition and gotten critical raves for Mr. Heart. This month the Hoboken transplant headlines a Tuesday night residency at Porter Square nightspotToad, including what is sure to be a raucous celebration on the 30th, her birthday.

Fairchild's voice has a honeyed smoothness that belies its whiskey-and-cigarette grit. Her lyrics are uniquely modern takes on pop music's standard themes - listening to an abusive relationship in the apartment upstairs, grooving to a Beck CD with a new lover, "… F-16s in the September sky." And, best of all, like any good songbird worth its wings, she knows how to deliver a performance.

Amy Fairchild - Tuesdays in July, Toad, 1912 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge 617-497-4950 or visit www.amyfairchild.com
BOSTON MAGAZINE - July 2002
Page 136
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