Interview: Amy Jay Is Back, and She Brought Billy Joel’s Heartache With Her

Singer/songwriter Amy Jay’s take on “And So It Goes” is hauntingly simple, making Billy Joel’s 1989 hit otherworldly.

Stream: “And So It Goes” – Amy Jay

After a year of preparing, the soft-spoken indie etherealist Amy Jay is slowly walking listeners towards her next project with a cover of Billy Joel’s 1989 ballad, “And So It Goes.”

The track is a dreamier take on the heartache ballad, accompanied by pianist Andrew Freedman.

In conversation with Atwood Magazine, she’s getting ready for a conference in Maine, and she’s earnest about overcoming any shortcomings – though you won’t find any of those on her release.

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A CONVERSATION WITH AMY JAY

Amy Jay: I’m good. I’m on my way to NERFA, which is the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance. I’m in Maine right now, feeling good, visiting some friends and hoping to make some connections at the conference.

Jay: You can sign up, and everything’s run by the musicians in the industry, so it’s pretty insular. There are only a few things open to the public. There’s official showcases and then there’s private, unofficial ones, and they basically rent out three floors of a hotel and host in the hotel rooms. People host showcases and then you kind of bop around so everyone’s sharing songs and running around till, like, three in the morning. It’s pretty wild.

Jay: Yeah, it’s gonna be a crazy time. I hope I can find naps in between. I’m a pretty sleepy person.

Jay: I think I really have a personal connection with this song. I sang it in choir in high school. The particular choir arrangement, but also the lyrics are really poignant and hit me deep, even as a pubescent teen.

I remember singing that song and getting emotional, and I was listening to Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits, but I was like, “Oh, my God, I should cover this song.”

I’ve never done a cover before. I’ve been a bit intimidated by covers because of the rights and everything, and making sure that the accounting goes to the right parties, and not wanting to ruffle any feathers or do anything illegal. But it’s a lot easier now these days, and I was like, “All right, I think if I’m gonna do a cover, this should be the one because it has personal meaning to you.”

It’s kind of revisiting like my childhood self, um, which is part of a theme, actually, for my album at large that I’ve been working on. I wanted something in between the album and my last release to kind of reintroduce myself. Kind of slow, like, “Hey. I’m still here.” But also do something that felt meaningful and, um, also… I didn’t have to write. (Laughs) So yeah. Great!

Jay: My friend Andrew Freedman, he is insane at not just skillfully playing the piano, but also emotionally playing the piano and feeling it. It’s almost like it’s an extension. If my voice is obviously a part of my body, the piano is a part of his. He’s so into it. He was very much reading my signals and there was a lot of synergy — kind of hate that word, but for lack of term — while recording, so he captured that feeling.

I was like, I have to reach out to him and see if he wants to do this because it seemed like a perfect matchup.

Jay: The timing is very stretchy, and that’s the great thing about the piano and the effects. You can add to the piano because it can create that atmosphere, that space, and you can make it be percussive and also atmospheric, which is a really beautiful balance for something that needs that dynamic arc.

It’s a long song with repetitive melodic phrases and it could have gotten kind of boring or mundane, but the piano helped structure it and give different textures to each section.

Jay: “But if my silence made you leave, that would be my worst mistake / But I will share this room with you and you can have this heart to break.”

Jay: I think it’s a testament to great songwriting and when you can capture a raw human emotion, that becomes timeless. I think that goes to show when he wrote it, versus when he released it, versus how many people are still singing his songs.

I don’t feel personally connected to Billy Joel. I think my introduction to him was that song, actually. I have all the respect for his songwriting because of it. Heartbreak is a universal feeling, but what he was going through, what I’m going through, it all is conjuring up something very personal in me. It’s a very heavy woe that I can’t even put words to the feeling.

Jay: My version is much more simple. There’s still moving parts, definitely some textural stuff happening, but it’s really voice and piano. And so I wanted to capture the stretchiness and the emotion of the choral piece. But also, Billy Joel’s a pianist, so using piano made sense. Normally, I’m focusing more on the guitar, so it was a bit of a change for me to do something piano based. They each have their flavor.

Jay: I was taking photos for my album and I did want it to be a transitional song between my last project and this one, because my last project was a bunch of singles and then this one is another album. So we did a few outfit changes at my apartment, and it came time to do the single art, and I was looking at the Billy Joel cover and I was like, “Oh, this is interesting.”

It’s simple, it’s monochromatic. I was looking at the images that I had, and I was wearing a black dress. It’s a bit monochromatic and then using this prismatic plate that I found at a random antique store.

My friend Brittany Buongiorno was the photographer, and she was like, “Hold it up to your face,” and I was like, “Sure?” and we kind of experimented with it. And so yeah, I messed with the crop to see what felt right and balanced, and then it kind of looked like Billy Joel’s artwork, and I was like, “This is perfect.”

There’s a lot of white space, and it’s more of his head and he’s wearing sunglasses. I’m wearing a glass! Like, I’m literally using a glass dish.

Jay: I’m a graphic designer.

Jay: I fell into design because of music. I was working in music publishing after college, and that was like a little bit soul-sucking doing administrative email based tasks. I liked working with people, and my clients were cool, but I was like, “How do I make more time for music, because I think I want to do music?”

I liked doing graphic design with my other projects, so I went to this intensive program and switched careers. I worked in an office for a little while, but this year is my first year going totally freelance.

Jay: Thank you. It’s the most I’ve dedicated to music-focused creativity in my whole life.

Jay: It’s not included on my next album, but it is using sort of the same branding. It’s from the same photoshoot that the album will have, along with all my press photos. So it’s kind of like the start of the next chapter, but kind of a soft start.

Jay: Yeah, I think this whole entire year has been a journey on my own, refining myself again. I spent a lot of the last decade discovering who I am, but now it’s owning who I am. I feel like I’ve done a lot of self work this year in particular to really lean into what I am feeling and being okay, and making sure that’s something worth honoring, and it not being a good or a bad thing.

I’m maintaining that feeling that I have a place at the table. I have a voice that’s worth hearing and an allowance to take space. It’s really anti-my-nature. I don’t like being the center of attention, I don’t like taking space. This whole next album is this exploration into that, which I’m kind of unraveling and peeling back the layers of like, “Oh wow, I’ve maybe felt invalidated and need to validate myself again.”

I say all this because in order to face life’s uncertainties and in order to grapple with things that may not have a resolution, the questions that may not get answered, things that like you feel you want like an endpoint to but will not have an endpoint, those types of things are really hard to sit in, but the only way to sit in it is to find your own sense of security within yourself, and that comes with honoring your voice. It’s been, honestly, a really long journey.

Jay: Yeah, I hope to start releasing stuff in February next year, if it goes according to plan. Then the album itself, summer-ish, maybe early fall of next year.

These things take a long time, and I want to stretch out. I put a lot of work into this process, so I want to be able to stretch it as long as possible. But also, to give me time to keep working on other things. (Laughs) There’s always something brewing.

Jay: So it sold out! We’re adding a second night on December 8. It’ll be a girl trio. My friend Cecilia Glenn is also a songwriter and lives in Nashville, and Grace Bernardo, it’s actually at her apartment, so we host the show at her beautiful brownstone space, and her landlords are amazing. She she is also an actor and singer and does a lot of different things.

You can expect silliness, Christmas spirit, and lush harmonies made between friends, a cozy, classic New York evening that you will remember forever. I feel like there was something magical that happened last year that we were like, oh my gosh, this is we have to do this again.

I love singing with other people. If ever I can get a chance to share the stage, I will take every opportunity. I know I write songs alone and processing my own innermost thoughts, but really deep down, I love connecting with other people and I’m so excited.

Jay: I recently discovered Lily Talmers. She’s incredible. “Best Witness” by Sinai Vessel. I’m listening to a lot of Christmas songs right now because I need to practice.

Jay: This was great! Thanks for taking the time.

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Stream: “And So It Goes” – Amy Jay

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