Page 44 - ION Indie Magazine NovDec 2020

Album Review by Scott Wikle
https://www.facebook.com/mykindofcountrymkoc
Photo credit: Randy Lindley

When Amber Digby sings, people listen. “Amber is a great traditional
singer,” says Vince Gill, who knows whereof he speaks. And like his
following observation — “which is so hard to find these days” — it’s just
the simple truth.

Yet, it also doesn’t do his subject real justice because Amber Digby’s
singing touches the heart…not just of anyone who appreciates a traditional
country song, but of anyone who’s ever known heartbreak, happiness,
regret, loneliness, or just the compelling desire to get out on the dance
floor for a night of fun. And the fact is, with each passing month and year,
as she enjoys growing airplay and tours farther and farther from her home
in Texas, Amber Digby and her music are reaching out to more and more
and more of those hearts.

To an outside observer, Digby’s career has an appearance of inevitability.
After all, her father, mother, stepfather, and uncles have all been in the
ranks of professional musicians, notable for their own careers or for their
contributions to the music of Loretta Lynn, Connie Smith, Faron Young,
Ronnie Milsap, Hank Williams, Jr., the Osborne Brothers, and many more.
But though she frequented the wings of the Grand Ole Opry House and
the sets of Hee Haw and Nashville Now as a child watching her parents at
work, singing “was just something I did,” she says with a laugh. “My mom
and my dad and my stepdad encouraged me to find my path and to be
creative, not necessarily to sing.”

Indeed, it wasn’t until she was in her mid-teens and living in Oklahoma that
Amber even began to sit in with her stepfather’s band, much less think
about music as a career. And even then, it wasn’t an easy road. “I actually
graduated from high school in Missouri and then I got sidetracked;
detoured,” she says with the frankness of someone who’s been through
what she calls “rough times.” “I made some bad choices, and really, the
only good thing that came out of that five-year block was my son.”

That turns out not to be quite true, because in the midst of that turmoil,
Digby began visiting her mother and stepfather in their new home in the
Texas hill country, and before long, she’d made her first album.

“I started sitting in with artists like Jake Hooker and Justin Trevino,” she
recalls. “And once I heard what all these guys were doing down there, I
thought, ‘Yeah, this is really different and it’s really good!’”

Now with 7 albums under her belt, including a duets project with the
aforementioned Justin Trevino, Grand Ole Opry performances, and plus
appearances all over the world, Amber returns with her 8th offering. This
time she's paying tribute to the legends that inspired her career. Indeed,
many have become her personal friends and consider Amber one of their
peers.