Me And The Ghost Of Charlemagne finds Speace focusing on the other side of that so-called dream. The real side, filled with an ever-shifting balance
of struggle and joy. Produced by longtime collaborator Neilson Hubbard and recorded during the final weeks of Speace's pregnancy with her first son,
Me And The Ghost Of Charlemagne captures Amy Speace at her most nakedly honest, with sparsely-decorated songs that double down on her larger-than-life
voice and detail-rich songwriting. It’s an album about the colliding of dreams and reality, full of characters making sense of their lives when something is
lost and then found. Really, it's an album about the trials and triumphs of an artist's journey — a journey that's no longer focused upon the destination,
but upon the actual trip itself.
Discovered and mentored by folk-pop icon Judy Collins during the early 2000s, Speace left her career as a classically-trained Shakespearean actress and,
instead, kicked off a string of acclaimed albums, including Songs for Bright Street, The Killer in Me, and How to Sleep in a Stormy Boat. Championed by
The New York Times, NPR and other taste-making outlets for her solo work, she received further acclaim as a member of Applewood Road, a harmony-heavy
trio whose self-titled album became a critical success in the UK, earning a five-star review from The London Sunday Times.
Years before Americana music received its own category at the Grammy Awards, Speace was one of the genre's earliest champions, mixing the best parts of
American roots music — gospel, alt-country, folk, classic pop — into her own songs. Me And The Ghost Of Charlemagne follows in that diverse tradition, but it
also shines its light on a new Amy Speace: a clear-eyed, reenergized songwriter who's done with chasing things that don't matter…but isn't anywhere close to
being done with her art.
