On director Craig Brewer's new Web series $5 Cover, Amy LaVere portrays a real-life Memphis Belle, a sweet-voiced singer-songwriter who pens songs in her underwear and has had her heart broken one too many times.
In the real world, she's exactly the same. Though we can't vouch for the whole underwear thing.
Growing up on the Texas/Louisiana border, LaVere drifted to Detroit as a teenager, fronted a punk act, then eventually landed in Memphis, where she released a Country-tinged solo album and eventually caught the eye of Brewer, who cast her in his 2007 film "Black Snake Moan" (she also had a roll as Rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson in the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk The Line"). But acting isn't her first love ... music is.
Which is why, despite her burgeoning film career, LaVere shifted her focus back to writing and recording. She didn't want to be known just as the pretty little actor/musician with the upright bass ... this was Memphis, after all. And cute doesn't cut it.
For more on LaVere, read on.
In 2007, she released her second album, Anchors & Anvils, produced by Jim Dickinson, who has worked with everyone from the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan to the Replacements and the Mississippi Allstars. It's a rich and rewarding listen, full of softly brooding tales of love and loss, earning LaVere critical raves and placing her firmly at the front of the Memphis scene.
Which was somewhat fitting. Because Memphis -- or, more precisely, the decades-old musical legacy it carries with it -- helped shape the record. Like she says, "we're not screwing around here."
And we think she's pretty wonderful indeed.
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