I really like her music, she has an amazing talent and it's great that she uses it to express herself and it makes people happy; I know 'cause it makes me happy!
Anonymous - Fan Review (Jul 30, 2010)
Opening for SafetySuit was William Smith junior Merrill Amos, who has just recently finished recording her first CD. Most of her set was made up of original compositions but the most impressive aspect of her performance was that she was both a self-taught singer/songwriter and guitar player. Despite her respectively amateur status and the professional equipment at her back, Amos strode onto the stage as if she were the main act and proceeded to wow the crowd with her original ballads and an acoustic performance of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive."
The crowd was originally very subdued but her dialogue with the crowd and the increasingly upbeat nature of her music soon had the crowd bopping in their seats and shouting encouragement at the end of her set.
Belinda Littlefield and Jennifer Hollander - The Herald (Apr 2, 2010)
"Local female sensation"
Willie Kiernan - Cazenovia Republican (Sep 27, 2007)
Merrill Amos at The Smith:
An Exclusive Interview
Khalym ―the music guy spends
this part of the martini keeping you
philistine pricks educated on the exis-
tence of art in the world.
Twenty-one-year-old
Merrill Amos might just be
HWS‘ best kept musical secret,
but not for much longer. The
multi-instrumental singer/
songwriter has just released her
debut album, Cold Hands,
Warm Heart and performed as
the opening act for SafetySuit
at their recent concert at the
Smith, where she shone much
brighter than the headlining
act.
Merrill and I had arranged
to meet in the Cellar Pub for
the interview. What with its
warmth and dim lighting, it
was just a cloud of cigarette
smoke and a jazz band shy of
being the perfect place to inter-
view an artist. When I stepped into the
Pub, the early dinner crowd was just trick-
ling in. I found Merrill and thanked her
again for doing the interview. I also apolo-
gized in advance for anything that might
go awry, since it was my first interview
and all. Like a sweetheart, she assured me
not to worry as this was her first real inter-
view as well.
Charming, humble, and genuine
throughout—even after a student inter-
rupted our interview to ask Merrill for a
copy of her album—Merrill spoke about
her album, potato chips as a vocal rem-
edy, and how much of a bitch Sara
Bareilles is (explanation below).
Find out more about Merrill Amos at her
official website: http://merrillamos.com/
Martini: How old are you?
Merrill Amos: I‘m twenty-one. I just
turned twenty-one, actually.
Martini: What day?
MA: The 20th of March, so...
Martini: Oh, I see. How did you cele-
brate?
MA: I was down in Atlanta visiting my
friend who graduated last year and we
went out to a couple of clubs, you know
[laughs].
Martini: All right. Nothing too wild.
MA: Dance the night away [laughs].
Martini: And where are you from origi-
nally?
MA: I‘m from Cazenovia, New York. It‘s
right outside of Syracuse. So, only like an
hour and a half away, so it‘s not too bad
of a drive.
Martini: How was your performance with
SafetySuit? Did you get to speak to the
band?
MA: Yeah, yeah. I met them earlier be-
cause I, I actually had my first dressing
room ever [laughs]. And so...
Martini: I can‘t imagine there were that
many changes you had to go through.
MA: No, but I got to hang out down there
and prepare myself for my performance,
and just have my stuff down there. But
they were all downstairs too and we hung
out a little bit before the show and just
talked and they were extremely nice. I
didn‘t really know what to expect, but I
was expecting the worst because, I don‘t
know, sometimes you just expect a band
who's seen relative success to be kind of
divas. But they were just really nice.
Really genuine guys who were genuinely
happy to be playing there and, you know,
they thanked me multiple times
for opening for them and I‘m just
like, yeah, ―no, thank you!‖ Seriously.
But yes, they were really nice guys.
Martini: And they put on a good
performance.
MA: Definitely.
Martini: And this wasn‘t the first
time you‘ve opened for somebody,
right?
MA: Right. I opened in Rochester
at RIT for this band called the
Jack Swift Band and I‘ve done
basic performances around cam-
pus. But this was definitely my
biggest gig to date, so it was a
pretty awesome opportunity for
me.
Martini: Do you have any prac-
tices before you get on stage?
MA: Yes [laughs].
Martini: Any mantras you repeat to your-
self?
MA: See this is where the dressing room
comes in handy [laughs]. I like to just look
myself in the eye, in the mirror, and just
give myself a little pep talk—you know
like, a ―you got this‖ type thing. Just men-
tally preparing myself. Just really positive
reinforcement and just telling myself posi-
tive things and things like that. And also, I
guess not as far as like mental things, I
always eat potato chips before I perform.
Potato chips actually are really good with
clearing out my throat.
Martini: Is that true? Really?
MA: Yeah, and so I always have to have
potato chips and tea before I perform any-
where. So that‘s kind of my little ritual,
yeah.
Martini: Whatever works. Obviously,
you sounded great.
MA: Thank you!!
Martini: The album has a very folky
sound. Was that intentional? How do
you approach your music? Do you write
your music first, do you come up with
the lyrics first and then, for this album,
was that the sort of tone you wanted to
set for it?
MA: I write the music first and then I
put lyrics to it. I have a notebook that I
carry around with me where I‘ll get some
sort of, like a little lyrics idea or some-
thing and then I‘ll write that down. And
then after I‘ve written music or some-
thing, I‘ll turn back to my little notes
sheet and then see if anything will fit in
there. That‘s usually how I go about
writing something. I don‘t think I‘ve ever
written a song the words first, just rhyth-
mically, I can‘t. It‘s easier for me to do
the music and then the words. It‘s funny
because when I first started writing, I
was listening to punk-rock and just not
the acoustic genre and I think that defi-
nitely has a lot to do with, I guess, the
kind of ambiguous nature of not really
being able to pin down what genre my
songs fit into, at least for me. And I
know that folk isn‘t the most popular
genre, so I guess it‘s just more about what
musically feels good to me.
Martini: Sort of backtracking to the con-
cert, is there an artist, specifically, that
you‘d like to collaborate with?
MA: Okay. My favorite artist—and peo-
ple kind of laugh at me sometimes for
this—but her name is Sara Bareilles and
she wrote that song: I’m not gonna write
you...
Martini: ...a love song.
MA: Yes. love her. She came out with her
CD Little Voice and I first bought it only
having heard her one song that was popu-
lar on the radio. And I just bought it like,
oh, you know, she sounds pretty good
and through it, I was like, ―that bitch!‖
She wrote the album that I wanted to
have and so I [laughs]... That‘s basically
what happened, and so I would just love
to be able to tour with her, collaborate
with her in some way just because I think
that her music that‘s not commercial...
her other music is very different from
that. But I just mainly love the way that
she puts her lyrics together and just the
way that she works with words. So she‘s
definitely the person that I most look to as
far as maybe a path that I‘d like to follow
musically. And I also really, for pretty
much the same reasons, I really enjoy
Ingrid Michaelson‘s music. And then Ja-
son Mraz also; I‘ve been listening to him
for a while. And just the way that the
three of them all work with their lyrics, I
think that it‘s very subtle where you have
to listen to it and pay attention, rather
than just let the music hit you. And so I
really admire that about the singer/
songwriter genre, just more having to pay
attention to what someone is saying and
how they‘re working with what they‘re
saying.
Martini: With your work, lyrically, your
songs come across witty. When you go in
to just write the lyrics of your songs, do
you try to concentrate on imagery? Do
you try to come across more conversa-
tional?
MA: I like to write lyrics that are real and
true to something that would actually go
through somebody‘s head. So a lot of my
lyrics come from my normal thought
process and me stopping myself and being
like, ―oh! I should write that down.‖ A lot
of the hooks or something like that, lyri-
cally, come from maybe an everyday say-
ing or something that I think would work
cool in a particular situation, and so I
guess that‘s a big goal for me when I‘m
writing: trying to make it something that
could feasibly go through someone‘s
head.
Martini: In that same vein, at the show
you said the best piece of advice you
could give someone is ―don‘t forget to
breathe,‖ and that‘s also the name of one
of your songs from the album. So is that
an instance? Did you say that to people
before you wrote the song?
MA: I actually don‘t think I had ever said
that to anyone. But it was one of those
things where I was thinking about it and
just like, you know, you breathe auto-
matically and I guess that would be an
example of me trying to be kind of witty,
I guess. It was just like ah, ―don‘t forget
to breathe‖ [laughs].
Martini: The song I first heard from you,
―The Business of Saving Lives,‖ was the
song with which I first got your vibe. And
since you play that song a lot, it sort of
came across as maybe the first song you
wrote for the album, I‘m not sure. Is that
the most important song to you? On this
album, I mean.
MA: It‘s probably the song that I play
frequently first on my setlist because I‘m
the most comfortable playing the song
and I‘m not sure why that is. It wasn‘t the
first one that I wrote for the album. It‘s
tough to explain why I frequently put it
first. It was a product of a lot of really
pent up musical inspiration because I
wrote the song after coming home from
being abroad. I had brought my guitar
with me while I was abroad and I hadn‘t
really written a song while I was there
and then I ended up having to leave my
guitar in Italy because the airline wouldn‘t
let me take it and it was just this awful
progression of events where I ended up
having to leave my guitar on the airport
with my friend who dropped me off. And
so I got back to the States and I didn‘t
have a guitar. And I was reflecting on this
whole months and months of being
abroad and self-discovery...
Martini: You were musically backed-up.
MA: Exactly. And not being able to ex-
press that. Music is my outlet of my emo-
tions because I‘m a very introspective per-
son and so that‘s how I get my feelings
out. So I was going crazy for at least a
month, maybe two months after coming
back from being abroad. So I finally got a
new guitar and then that song came out. I
think that that song definitely has the
most thought out emotion in it because I
had a lot of things to pick and choose
from to put in that song. I had a lot of
ideas, a lot of inspiration all at once and
then that all went into that song. So I
think that‘s why I feel more confident in
that, because I feel like the content is
pretty sealed in that song.
Martini: Aside from ―The
Business of Saving Lives,‖
my other two favorite
songs, and maybe the top
songs on the album are, in
no order, ―Far and
Away‖—I‘m a ballad per-
son—and I like ―Awake
Tonight.‖ Can you give me
some insight into how you
feel about those two songs?
MA: Sure. I‘ll start with
―Awake Tonight.‖ It‘s actu-
ally the first song that I set
out to write from the per-
spective of someone else.
All of my songs are really from my own
perspective in one way or another and
then ―Awake Tonight‖... I started actu-
ally, last semester was when I first started
taking a bunch of Women Studies classes
and I actually switched my major to
Women Studies this semester because it‘s
a subject I really connect with. And so, I
wrote ―Awake Tonight‖ from the perspec-
tive of someone who has been affected by
sexual assault or just some sort of, a hard-
ship in general. And I wrote the song be-
cause there‘s a need for solidarity among
any type of social movement or among
any type of group of people. And so the
notion that there‘s someone else awake
tonight is supposed to be just kind of like
―you‘re not alone‖ and finding strength
through that. I ended up playing that song
for the first time in public at the Take
Back the Night candlelight vigil just be-
cause I think that it is an important mes-
sage. I was very proud of that song. I
think that song is more of a poem than
anything. I actually, when I was writing
it, I was kind of reading it aloud without
the music and I was like: ―This could be
like a new slam poem, or something.‖ So
that‘s the basic story behind that song.
And then ―Far and Away.‖ That‘s my
second newest song. ―The End‖ is the one
I‘ve written most recently and ―Far and
Away‖ came from one of my good friends
who graduated last year. I was down in
New York City visiting her over fall break
and I was with my other friend, so there
were three of us. And we were all stand-
ing around and we were all in the subway
waiting for the subway [sic] to come and I
was just off in my own little world and
she‘s looking at me. She‘s like: ―what the
hell are you thinking about?‖ And I don‘t
even know. I was just thinking about pos-
sible song lyrics and I frequently just al-
ways get so caught up in my head and I
just get caught in such a thought process
where I‘m thinking of new lyrics, and new
concepts, and things like that where I
never really stopped to think about how
that must look to other people and so basi-
cally where that song came from, espe-
cially the first lines, is kind of the message
I wanted to convey from it: ―I prefer the
words that lay in between all the breaths I
breathe.‖ So it‘s what‘s going on inside
my head is what keeps me going is what
that song started as and then the rest of it
just came out. That took me a while to
write, actually. A couple months. So that
song is more of a progression of my life
more than one instance. But that‘s how it
started, anyway.
Martini: That‘s beautiful. How was work-
ing on the CD? How did you come about
making the CD?
MA: It had been something that I wanted
to do for such a long time and I‘d always
been... I‘ve made like rough recordings on
the computer. Actually, the first re-
cordings I ever made of my music was, I
didn‘t even have any type of program for
recording, so I used to, there was like a
program on my Dell that allowed you to
record thirty-second clips of whatever,
audio. And so I used to record my songs
thirty seconds at a time. And then I
moved up—I got a MAC. And so then I
started using GarageBand and stuff and I
would just sit in front of my computer and
play my songs and record them that way,
but it just wasn‘t the quality that I was
looking to have. And so I had been just
wanting for a very long time to get in the
studio and record my music, but I kept
putting it off because every song that I was
writing I was liking better than the one
before it. So, I delayed a little bit until I
had a really good batch of songs that I
was really confident in. Then I just sprung
and went into the studio. I did a Google
search for recording studios in the Syra-
cuse area and I came up with this studio
in Skaneateles where I listened to clips
online of stuff that they‘d done and they
had some decent quality recordings and so
I decided to go with them. The studio is
really, it‘s just cool for me to be sitting in
there, around all this stuff, all these instru-
ments hanging on the wall, just like, ―oh,
this is legit. Finally. Cool.‖ The studio
was a huge step for me because having
that recording now has enabled me to
really market myself and really be able to
put myself out there and see what comes
back. So we‘ll see. Now that I finally have
my CD I‘ll see who likes it.
Martini: In the studio, did you record
your music live or did you lay down a
track first and then...
MA: I recorded it live, which actually is
kind of against the norm. But it‘s my goal,
next time I go in the studio, I do want to
lay down the instrumentation and then do
the vocals. But, for this purpose, I think
that I was just more comfortable doing the
live track, singing and playing at the same
time. But I think for my next recording I
will do the separate tracks just because in
the editing process it makes it a lot easier
when you have the two separated things
to work with.
Martini: So, the music that you‘re writing
now, or the music for your next CD—is it
going to be in the same sort of genre, the
same sort of tone, sound? Would you
want to experiment with something else?
MA: I would love to. I would listen to a
lot of dance music and so I would love to
experiment with that genre. I don‘t know
if I would be any good at it whatsoever,
but I would love to produce my music in a
different way. I definitely don‘t want to
change my writing process, but I just want
to see what different sounds I might be
able to get with my music. I actually just
bought a set of harmonicas and one of
those things that goes around your neck to
be able to play the harmonica and play the
guitar, or piano or whatever at the same
time. And I‘ve got a ukulele that I‘m
working on and trying to play that. Those
would stay within the same genre, defi-
nitely, but I definitely want to see what
type of different sounds I can manipulate
my songs into having. So that would be a
cool thing to work on in the future, I
think.
Martini: What are you listening to now?
MA: What am I listening to right now?
There‘s this girl actually. She just goes by
the name Jaren: J.A.R.E.N. And she actu-
ally has done a lot of dance music collabo-
rations, but she has a CD that‘s my style
of music that she came out with and so
I've been listening through that, trying to
get a little bit of inspiration, I guess. And
I've been listening to Adele a lot...Yup I've been listening
to a lot of these new...People who are trying
new things with their music, I guess. Ingrid
Michaelson came out with a new album in December. It's
called "Everybody" which um, it was different from her older work.
It's a little more produced-sounding, but
you know, nonetheless she's just awesome. I've
been listening to Motion City Soundtrack lately. I
tend to just obsess over certain things for a while.
Yeah that's what's been on my iTunes lately.
Martini: One last thing. What's one word you would want
any up and coming artist to keep in mind? Something you want
them to repeat to themselves.
MA: I don't want to sound completely cheesy, but it's just
"love," I guess. Just because what I do, I don't know,
writing music just comes really naturally for me.
I mean, not naturally for me, but it just feels natural
for me and so...One word is hard. I guess I would
pick love and maybe couple that with confidence
and passion in what you're doing.
Khalym Burke-Thomas - The Martini (Apr 7, 2010)