From a teenage debut to performing for Trump
Amanda St John impressed President Trump and the Taoiseach at the 2019 St Patrick’s Day festivities on Capitol Hill and was in the frame to do so again this year but the Covid-19 virus put paid to that.
This year’s Capitol Hill appointment would have been a stop off on a tour to promote her Muscle Shoals Sessions album, instead the 41-yearold from Co. Antrim is just keeping things ticking over with live broadcasts on social media and spreading the word of this particular St John.
Amanda made her first album when she was just 14. She went to music college after school. But years of progress
‘I had no pulse when the fire brigade arrived...I was drifting in and out’
were matched and surpassed by the knockbacks and speedbumps she encountered.
By her early thirties Amanda was at a career crossroads, performing music yes, but not the original songs on which she’d grafted. However, after one particular journey nearly ended her life, Amanda had a musical epiphany.
‘I had a really bad car accident when I was 31. I went over the edge of a road and ended up 300 feet down a mountainside,’ she says
‘It happened near Ballycastle. Apparently, there was oil on the road, but it was just a freak accident. I had no pulse when the fire brigade arrived. I was drifting in and out… but I remember asking myself, “what do I need to do to get out of this?”
‘I am not religious but I would be a very spiritual person. My daughter was only two or three and I just thought, “I’m not ready to go.” Then this voice, as clear as day, came back and said, “Sing!” I thought to myself if that’s all I have to do, if I get of this alive, then I’m going to record my songs. It was as if all these insecurities about my music and taking risks seemed very insignificant compared to actual life and death.’
Amanda was, at the time, still only coming to terms with the divorce
from the father of her child, Sophia. She returned with Sophia from the home she had made in Dublin to live with her father, who had been diagnosed with bone cancer. He and her mother Angela had helped her kickstart her musical ambitions when she was a teenager.
‘The fact that I recorded my first album when I was 14 was all down to my parents,’ she says.
‘My grandfather was dying of cancer and he had always said that he would love to hear me recorded. My mummy and daddy took me to a studio and I recorded two songs for him then he passed away. The Marie Curie organisation had been very good to him, so then we decided to record an album with all the proceeds going to Marie Curie.’
Over two decades on, while balancing her caring responsibilities, and work outside the home, she pursued her musical ambitions. She self-funded Grow, her first album as an adult, in 2016. Her father sadly succumbed to cancer in 2019 while Amanda was trying to raise the funds for what would be her new release. Then the PledgeMusic platform on which she had crowdfunded money for the project went bankrupt resulting in the loss of half of the money raised. Ever determined, Amanda secured a grant from the UK Arts Council and took out a loan to fund the recording of the album.
‘I thought if I want to build my name, I am going to have to take a risk,’ she says.
The songs on The Muscle Shoals Sessions reflect the influence of the likes of Dusty Springfield, Etta James and Bettye LaVette and maybe Mr Trump might get to hear them eventually.
‘It was very surreal walking into a room of 100 people and one of them is Donald Trump,’ she says recalling her 2019 appointment on Capitol Hill.
‘The Taoiseach was sitting right in front of me too. We were there to sing a few songs to entertain them after dessert at a kind of lunch party.
‘I was very challenged by meeting Donald Trump; I wasn’t sure if I wanted to shake his hand. But I was there to represent my country as an ambassador of the arts. When I walked in, he got off his seat, came up and shook my hand and welcomed me. I wasn’t expecting that.
‘One of the songs I sang was Danny Boy and I heard later that he said he didn’t normally like the song but liked the way I did it. He went out of his way to be friendly and I don’t think he had to do that. But it was still very strange.’