Pain. Poetry. Resilience. Resolve. It’s all part of Amy Speace’s new album, The American Dream—out now on Windbone Records. Reflections from every era of the lauded songwriter’s life are represented—a childhood bike ride with friends, an artistic awakening as a 20-something New Yorker, a painful divorce—and turned into fuel for chasing down her own bolder, brighter present; all made possible by Speace’s triple-threat talent as a songwriter, storyteller, and otherworldly singer.

With the jubilant, open strum of her acoustic guitar and a host of visceral memories circa the American bicentennial, Amy Speace kicks off her upcoming album with its apolitical, patriotic title track, “The American Dream.” A new sonic frontier for Speace, the heartland rocker captures its narrator as a young girl in the middle of a carefree summer, surrounded by a world that feels weightless and infinite.

It took Amy Speace just a day and a half to record her new album, Tucson, out April 8 via Proper Records/Windbone Records. Don’t think it’s some rush job, though—Speace spent most of her life finding her way to write it.

Looking back on a twelve-month span between her son’s first birthday and the loss of her father, award-winning singer and songwriter Amy Speace culled eleven new songs directly from her depth of personal experiences—childhood memories, coming of age in New York City, and losing a parent while learning to become one—to create her new full-length album, There Used to Be Horses Here; out April 30th on Proper Records/Wind Bone Records.