Amy Rigby Coming to the Catskills

CATSKILLS - Amy Rigby brings her witty songwriting and years of stories to the Catskills on September 24th. She'll be making a stop at her old stomping grounds as part of her month-long American tour promoting her upcoming book, Girl to Country. Girl to County, which hits bookshelves on September 23rd, picks up where Rigby's first book, 2019's Girl to City, left off. Rigby, a witness to the legendary late 1970s NYC music scene, chipped away at a music career for years before her breakthrough album, Diary of a Mod Housewife, found a broad audience in 1996 amid an indie music boom that revered the mythological CBGB's days that Rigby emerged from. Rigby documented her journey from growing up in Pittsburgh to the thriving 1970s music and arts scene to finally breaking through in 1996 in Girl to City. The coming-of-age memoir was well received, prompting Rigby to challenge herself to dig deeper and write a second book, which she describes as one of the most difficult things she has done. "Nobody does a second book," she joked during our recent phone interview. "It's a really hard story to tell, you know? With a coming-of-age memoir, you can kind of excuse yourself. You're kind of  messing stuff up and stumbling along because it's all new and you're figuring it out." Confronting the messiness of adulthood was not so easy. "When you're in your 40s, you feel like you should know all this stuff." 

Ribgy, a former Catskill resident, now lives full-time with her husband, English rocker and songwriter Eric Goulden (aka Wreckless Eric) in the United Kingdom. Still, she looks forward to returning to the Northeastern United States for her string of gigs. "I still feel very connected to the Hudson Valley," says Rigby of the place she called home for years. Amy Rigby's stop in Greene County will be on Wednesday, September 24th, at Left Bank Ciders in Catskill. For more information about her tour, music, and memoirs, visit www.amyrigby.com.