Amy Grant Prepping First Solo Album in Decade, Talks Return From Brain Injury: ‘Life Is Dynamic, People Are Dynamic’
Amy Grant is getting ready to release her first new solo album in a decade and the singer’s first foray back into the music scene since a devastating brain injury suffered in a bike accident in July 2022.
The Christian pop star spoke to The Today Show on Wednesday (March 1) about the incident near her home in Nashville, in which she hit a pothole and slammed into the pavement, knocking her unconscious for 10 minutes. The resulting traumatic brain injury and memory loss forced the cancelation of a string of 2022 shows during her recovery, which is ongoing. The singer told Today that she filled a spiral notebook with writing just to help reboot her memory, including the names of her family, which she could not recall at first.
She couldn’t even remember her song lyrics at first, including such hits as “Baby, Baby” and one of her holiday staples, “Tennessee Christmas.” “The first night of the Christmas tour, which was my first time back on tour, TelePrompter, and I was on heels. I was like holding onto the piano. Before the show I was like, ‘I’m so scared, I’m so scared,'” she recalled. And though she’s made lots of progress, doctors have told Grant that it could 18 months to fully recover from the cognitive issues from the incident.
Now, though, she said she feels “fantastic” and “re-revved up in a beautiful way,” revealing that in addition to heart surgery in 2020, she also underwent throat surgery to remove a cyst in January. She described working with a vocalist who asked what her was going on in her throat and Grant said she felt like she had an Adam’s apple that kept growing. As it turns out, that growth was a thyroglossal duct cyst that she successfully had removed earlier this year.
Afterwards, Grant holed up in a trailer in her driveway to practice singing, where she discovered that her voice was stronger than ever. Now, she’s set a 70-date tour and plans to play some of her new songs for fans on the road before the release of her new single, “Trees We’ll Never See,” on March 24. The song was written by Michael White and Marshall Altman, who also produced the singer’s 2013 album, How Mercy Looks From Here.
“So much creativity has been put on hold in my life, for all kinds of reasons,” Grant said in a statement announcing the single. “Last summer I was asked to sing on a new Cory Asbury song yet to be released. This might be one of the best songs I have heard in a long time. I was so glad they waited for me to heal up and get back to the studio. Inspired by Cory’s beautiful song, Altman and I started talking about songs that we’ve written recently that affected us. I played him one of mine. He played me one of his. His song was ‘Trees We’ll Never See.’ I loved it immediately and asked him if I could record it, and within two weeks, both songs were mixed and mastered!”
The tour kicks off tonight (March 2) at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California and is currently slated to run through an Oct. 26 gig at the Plymouth Memorial Hall in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
“To me it’s been a great reminder that life is dynamic, people are dynamic. Nobody’s all good, nobody’s all bad. A circumstance is not all bad or all good,” she told Today about her recovery and the re-ordering of her life following the accident. “Even in the worst, awful, worst trauma, beauty and goodness are still present.”
Watch Grant talk about her recovery and see her statement about “Trees” below.
Gil Kaufman
Billboard
