Amy Speace – Contemporary Folk and Americana Storytelling at its Finest, with Our Guest Jesse Lynn Madera

Amy Speace brings her acclaimed songwriting and clear, compelling voice to Godfrey Daniels for a night rooted in story, craft, and connection. Recognized by Rolling Stone, NPR, Billboard, and The New York Times, she has become a defining presence in contemporary Folk and Americana. Discovered and championed by Judy Collins, Speace has earned major accolades, including AMA UK's International Song of the Year and multiple chart-topping releases. With a new solo acoustic record on the horizon and a rich creative life spanning music, poetry, and teaching, she continues to shape the genre with depth and insight.

Our guest, Jesse Lynn Madera is a multi-faceted singer-songwriter who weaves a blend of pop, folk, blues, americana and jazz influences into her piano-driven compositions.

Join us for an evening with an artist whose work resonates long after the last note.

Amy Speace
amyspeace.com

Amy Speace is a wonderful artist, a writer of songs, a performer who has beauty and transformation in her music and her writing. Amy Speace was one of the first people that I chose to sign to my label, Wildflower Records, and her songs have transformed my audiences as well as transformed my life.” — Judy Collins

Heralded by Rolling Stone, Billboard Magazine and The New York Times and featured on NPR’s “Weekend Edition”, Amy Speace is one of the leading voices of contemporary Folk and Americana songwriters. She was discovered 2005 by Judy Collins, who signed her to her record label and has recorded her songs. Amy is the 2020 winner of the AMA UK’s International Song of the Year.  “The American Dream,” was released in 2024 and became the #1 record and the title track was named #1 song in the FAI Radio Charts for its first month out.  Her upcoming November 2025 release, “The Blue Rock Sessions,” was recorded in three hours during a songwriting residency at The Blue Rock Studio and Retreat in Wimberley, TX and is her first completely solo acoustic record of 11 songs. A “writer’s writer,” Amy’s debut collection of poetry, The Cardinals, will be published by Red Hen Press in September 2026. Her writing has been published by The New York Times, American Songwriter, Salon.com, The Guardian, No Depression, Working Mother, 2 River View and Eunonia.  In 2025, she published To The Performer: A Singer-Songwriter’s Handbook, based on her 20 years of teaching performance.  In addition to her performance career, she teaches English and Writing at Cumberland University in Lebanon, TN

“Amy Speace is an accomplished singer-songwriter, so she knows how to tell a story, how to make the listener care, and how to create something beautiful and meaningful that will live inside a person for years to come.”—Maggie Smith, author of Goldenrod

Amy Speace’s debut collection of poetry, The Cardinals, is a lyrical investigation of marriage, divorce, mothering, and mysticism told through poems that read like intimate conversations but evoke the complexities of love and loss through the natural world.

An award-winning songwriter, championed early by Judy Collins (who has recorded her songs), she is an established presence in the Nashville songwriting scene and has been playing concerts throughout the world for the last twenty years. Her songs have always been celebrated for their poetic lyrics, and during Covid and a break in her touring career, Speace received her MFA in poetry from Spalding University. She was mentored by Maggie Smith and clearly comes from the lineage of Smith and Sharon Olds. Speace tackles the internal language of coming together and splitting apart, evoking rivers and birds, the South and the North, weather and racism and family history and it all comes together like birdsong.

jesselynnmadera.com

“Madera’s lyrical and piano-driven songs are passionate and alluring, with a dramatic, ethereal, and almost other-worldly tone.” ~ American Songwriter

“Jesse has a voice as clear and mellifluous as the first songbird of Springtime. Her songs are intoxicatingly hypnotic. Close your eyes, let it all go and listen. When you wake up, the world will look a little brighter.” ~ Robert Earl Keen

Jesse Lynn Madera is a multi-faceted singer-songwriter who weaves a blend of pop, folk, blues, americana and jazz influences into her piano-driven compositions. Her vocals are powerful and haunting in one instant, and light, whimsical and sweet in the next as she moves seamlessly and effortlessly across genres. A brief listen to just a few of her songs - the accordian-driven, colorful and catchy “Hola Papi!"; the melodic, optimistic, acoustic pop song “Revel”; the dramatic virtuosic “Dante” – immediately telegraphs that this is an artist who goes where her muse takes her.