Amanda McDowell

ARTICLE BY VANELIS RIVERA

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW BAILEY AND CASSIE LIVINGSTON

Music allows us to escape our troubles, but when you are a songwriter, you are often getting your troubles outside of you. This has been Amanda Mcdowell’s experience as a singer/songwriter. With a vivacious spirit, Mcdowell leaves an impression in the spaces she frequents. She’s a hugger with a welcoming laugh. Rocking a pixie cut characterized by her silver tresses, she exudes a bit of rock and roll. And though her stage presence is magnetic, her energy reflects in her songwriting. Part memoir and part creed of faith, Mcdowell’s music is meant for searchers like herself. 

“My dad had his own band, and was good enough to play in Radio City Music Hall,” informs Mcdowell. Her grandmother, an instrument aficionado, taught five different instruments. “She taught my dad how to play. She taught all his brothers and sisters how to play, and so I grew up with them, gathering together, standing around a piano and singing harmony,” she recalls. At around nine years old, Mcdowell made up harmony parts in her school choir. At eleven, she had a “deep conversation” with herself to make the decision that if she was going to be “one thing or the other,” then she would rather be a songwriter than a singer. “Because, you know, if you say something meaningful and other people want to say it too, then your words go all over the world. I mean, I was making that decision before I was a teenager about who I was going to be as a musician and an artist,” she affirms. 

The first instrument Mcdowell learned was the bass ukulele. She remembers being at her aunt’s house, opening a music instruction book, and figuring out the chords on her own. Over and over again, she pressed on the strings to get the chords just right. “My fingers felt like they were bleeding, but I was so into it,” she says. She called her dad and aunt into the bedroom to play them a song. “When I did that, they both looked at each  other, and then my dad offered to buy me a guitar.” It wasn’t a very good guitar, but soon she would be able to listen to songs on the radio and figure out the chords to simple songs. By the time she turned thirteen, her parents offered to buy her a professional guitar because she had shown that she was diligent and serious about music, already writing songs at that point. When her parents told her that she could get any guitar she wanted, she chose a 1974 Martin D-35, which she still has. As soon as she was old enough, around the age of eighteen, Mcdowell started performing at bars solo and, throughout her early playing days, with a few bands. 

In 1997, Mcdowell recorded her first album, but she has had over fourteen songs recorded by other artists. “Which, you know, I feel like that’s the biggest honor of all, when someone feels what you feel, and wants to say what you’re saying,” she gleams. One of the big names that adopted one of her songs is Christian country singer/songwriter Candice Myers. The song “Daddy Was a Texas Ranger (and My Mama Was an Outlaw)” got to number five on the Christian country music charts. Mcdowell’s devotion for writing Christian music traces to her acceptance of Jesus into her life at age 13. “I sold out to the Lord, then fell away,” she says. For a stint, she played secular music at bars, but she returned to her spirit-filled ways around twenty-three and only wrote Christian music for twenty years. “So, all of my one-hit wonders, are Christian country,” she adds. 

At the age of twenty, Mcdowell began her own music publishing company called Hummingbird House, which her daughter Brianna Calhoun, local singer/songwriter, uses for her publishing. “So, when these [artists] wanted to record my music, I  wrote up contracts and sold them the publishing rights,” she informs, adding, “When you’re an artist, a lot of doors are shut to you, and so you’re trying to make your own way, and trying to make a living.” To create another avenue of revenue that would allow her to earn money on her own music and support herself, she took a chance, one that thus far has benefitted her art and pocket. “If you’re a serious musician, you’re trying to find different ways that your artistry is going to make money for you,” she affirms. In order for her publishing house to be better established, she joined organizations that would help her with networking, such as the International Country Gospel Music Association. At one time, she was their Female Songwriter of the Year. She also belongs to the Dallas Songwriters Association where she received the Children’s Song of the Year award. Being a member of such influential organizations has increased her exposure, allowing more fellow artists to approach her for songs. 

With such a rich volume of work, it’s difficult for Mcdowell to look back and select her favorites, but she does have a few that still resonate with her at a heart level. In the song “Dust to Dust,” the overarching theme is that “at the end of the day, nothing else really matters…Christ is the beginning and end of all things.” She still resonates with this deeply, particularly because she believes that music is the vehicle for the lyrics. “The lyrics are my story.” Here, she thinks of all her failures and all her glories, getting emotional when reminiscing about some of the events that inspired her music. She wrote “Dust to Dust” when she was unhappily married to a controlling man. “It’s like he just kept me on an imaginary leash, jerking me back and forth, telling me I could play at a certain church or venue, then changing his mind, sometimes on the day I was supposed to go. I probably wrote that song during one  of the down times because I had to remind myself who matters the most,” she recalls, finishing with, “I had to keep going no matter what.” 

The songwriting process for Mcdowell is simple. She turns her recorder on and lets “fly” whatever comes out of her heart. “If I see the song if the song catches my interest, and it has merit, I’ll work on it until it’s finished. If it doesn’t, I’ll let it go.” Even if a song has merit, it may take her a few years to finish. In the past, she has gone back to songs with the purpose of completing them. “I Don’t Wanna Go to School,” is one of those songs. She wrote it across a three to four-year period because she believed in it, but a few details needed to iron out. “It’s very subjective because with any art, you’re not finished until you know you’re finished, and I just couldn’t finish that song until I knew it was finished,” she says. At times, she would sing it on the way to school (Mcdowell is also an elementary school teacher at Union Parish). “It’s just a funny song about growing up not wanting to go to school and then becoming a teacher and how I didn’t want to be one, which is also the truth,” she says. Currently, it’s one of her top played songs, internationally.

Led by emotion and faith, Mcdowell’s music is ultimately a release. “For instance, if I  don’t get what I feel out, I will literally start getting sick,” she says. Lately, her songwriting has diminished because of her focus on her nonprofit organization Arrow Maker Outreach, which aims to help pay Title 1 students when they successfully improve their i-Ready Reading and Math assessment scores. “There are probably 50 to 60 songs, maybe even up to 100, that I’ve started since last year, but there’s probably been only two or three that I finished,” she confesses. “It’s time, you know.” Though life has taken over, as it is bound to do once in a while, her muses still call. “I need to come back to it because that’s my true calling. Whether anybody ever hears [my songs] or not.” In her case, songwriting pays, as she receives royalties from her songs and will continue to for at least 100 years.

When Mcdowell thinks of this number, she thinks of her children, grandchildren, and the generations to come. In that way, her music is her legacy that encompasses her trials and tribulations as much as her triumphs, which she notes: “And, not only that, but your words are out there for whoever will listen, whoever it touches.” 

Follow Amanda Mcdowell on her Facebook page and check out her music on Spotify and iTunes. You can find her every Thursday night at La Bamba in Ruston, Louisiana. Go show her some love!