JENNA OUTCALT
Staff Writer
When Amy Grant started writing The Me That Remains, she was more concerned with getting in touch with herself and her creativity than creating an album.
“I didn’t realize I was making a record,” she said. “I was leaning back into things that had been helpful to me in my life.”
Grant wrote the album during her recovery from a 2022 bike accident that caused a traumatic brain injury. Two years after the accident, she received test results from a neuropsychologist that discouraged her all over again.
“I feel like I’m down the hall,” she explained. “Like everybody’s hanging out in the family room cracking jokes, and I am down the hall in a back bedroom and I cannot keep up.”
Now back on tour, Grant will perform at 8 p.m. tonight in the Amphitheater with the goal of connecting Chautauquans to themselves and one another through music.
Grant said she used songwriting as a way of accepting what she had experienced and to help her healing journey.
“I just took a long hard look at myself in the mirror and I created a creative space for me that was private and [at] home,” she said. “And when I had organized that space, I sat down and wrote top to bottom the lyrics to [the song] ‘The Me That Remains.’”
As Grant wrote more lyrics, she began to show them to friends and eventually decided to record them.
“I started leaning back into songwriting because that’s always been so life-giving for me. You know, it’s cheaper than therapy,” she joked.
Grant said the album ended up being very conversational and made her feel like “a witness to this life.” According to her, the album connects her to her contemporaries and the audience who went through so many different stages of life with her.
“Those of us that started out together, we’re all at this place of life we’ve never been at before,” she said.
The album explores themes of healing, community and faith. As someone raised in church, Grant explained that her faith involved deconstructing what she was taught and “embracing what still holds.”
She said the mystery of a loving God is something that always inspires curiosity and wonder. Grant explained how her own creative process reflects the “intention in everything” God created.
“I know as a creative that it takes intention to actually make something,” she said. “You can play guitar, you can be able to carry the tune, but to create a song requires real intention.”
Grant said she wants Chautauquans to feel restored by the music tonight.
“I think we need music to articulate every stage in life,” she said. “Go and put a soundtrack behind it, and even cleaning the house gets fun.”
Grant said she is looking forward to the welcoming community and the natural beauty of Chautauqua.
“Hats off to anybody that’s coming to that show, because they already are putting themselves in an environment that’s beautiful,” she said.
Grant said she is excited for people to show up and “just let music do what music does.”
“I feel like music connects us to each other, to ourselves, to love, to good things,” she said.
