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IT'S FRIDAY AFTERNOON, and Amy Grant's ten-year-old son, Matt, bursts home from school, itching to play drums with a drummer friend who's come over to give him a lesson. "Hey, Mom, is it alright?" Matt eagerly asks Amy, who's sitting on the flowered couch in their great room, strumming a guitar and smiling for TCW's photographer. "Sure, Matt, go ahead," Amy, grinning, replies.
Before long, the sound of drumrolls reverberates through the rambling, sixty-year-old farmhouse Amy, thirty-seven, shares with husband Gary Chapman, Matt, eight-year-old Millie, and five-year-old Sarah. "Today's his first real lesson," Amy explains. "He's loud and fast, but he's catching on!" Amy's delight in Matt's experimentation is an emotion this fellow mom instantly recognizes.
During the time I spent with Amy at Riverstone Farm, her sprawling 250-acre spread outside Nashville, it was obvious she's someone who treasures family and friends. Snapshots and framed portraits—Sarah among wildflowers, Gary on his Harley, assorted nieces and nephews—adorn walls, furniture, even her refrigerator. Millie's prescription bottle sits on a kitchen windowsill; kids' stickers plaster a computer monitor. I'm reminded of the common bond we share as busy wives and moms.
But it's also obvious the life Amy leads as gospel-singer turned pop-star is hardly typical. Her fourteen albums have sold more than twenty million copies worldwide. She's won five Grammys, twenty-three Dove Awards, and has been named "Artist of the Year" four times. Currently Amy's finishing up her tour for her fifteenth release, Behind the Eyes (Myrrh), after a successful "Amy Grant Christmas" tour last winter; she golfs (one of her recent passions, although she claims she's not that good) with the likes of Arnold Palmer and other assorted celebrities; performs on popular television talk shows such as Rosie O'Donnell; and recently appeared in the national Milk Mustache print ad campaign. Amy—and her music—are cropping up everywhere.
Perhaps best known for such classics as "My Father's Eyes" and "El Shaddai," Amy's long been contemporary Christian music's most recognizable, perhaps even most scrutinized, recording artist. Her move to go mainstream, evidenced in 1991's Heart in Motion (which included the Billboard chart-topping hit "Baby, Baby") and 1994's House of Love, is most apparent in Behind the Eyes. Instead of penning lyrics that praise the Lord, Amy touches on weariness, loss, longing—yet ultimately, fidelity and optimism.
Because of her crossover from gospel to pop, in recent years Amy's been something of a lightning rod for criticism. Yet she remains a positive force in a mainstream music industry rife with questionable role models and lyrics. A committed Christian who opens her home several times a year to terminally ill children for the Make-a-Wish Foundation, Amy also acts as spokesperson for relief agency Compassion International, and recently donated proceeds from one of her concerts to help tornado victims in Alabama. In this exclusive TCW interview, held before Amy kicked off her current tour, we talked about life on and off the road—with all its twists and turns—as well as her music and mothering.
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