Amy Gerhartz isn’t really a new artist—you just haven’t heard of her yet. Back in 2006, a blogger claimed that Amy Gerthartz was a gem who was “making everyone in NYC feel stupid for not having heard of her earlier.” Gerhartz’s music has been described as everything from country to rock to soul, but to herself, she’s just a singer/songwriter without the limits imposed by a specific genre. “I really like the term singer/songwriter because of the fact that it allows me to be able to touch on a bunch of different categories. I love writing all different types of music,” Gerhartz says. “If I wrote the same thing every day, I’d drive myself crazy.”
In high school, Gerhartz started writing her own music and was also baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In time, she became more serious about music, making the daring decision to pursue a career as a solo artist. As the years passed, she became less active in the Church, but her music career grew to the point that she could quit her day job to become a full-time musician. More and more musical doors started opening, and that led to some personal reevaluation.
“I ended up sitting down and thinking about all these great things that were happening with my career,”says Gerhartz. “I’d signed on with a new manager and I had all these opportunities coming up. Life was really starting to look up and I kind of sat back and looked at myself and I thought, ‘Okay, what do I want for me in my personal life? Where do I want to be down the road?’”
At this point, Gerhartz made the decision to start letting God have more control. “I do believe it’s good to try to get direction from God and from someone other than yourself, but you can only take that so far,” she says. “It’s not just, ‘Hey, I’m going to let God do everything for me.’”
As she continues to become more well-known in the music industry, Gerhartz recognizes that she’s been blessed with opportunities that will give her career a boost, but she’s willing to do the work it takes to become even more successful. “Ever since I’ve put a conscious effort into thinking about what I believe in,” Gerhartz says, “life has been great. So many opportunities have been coming forward.”
Gerhartz knows from firsthand experience that change can be hard, but some sound advice from her bishop has kept her on track. “He said, ‘Nobody’s perfect. We’re not expected to be perfect. The idea is not to be great at everything. It’s about making the daily changes; it’s about making the effort every day to try to be a little bit better.’ I don’t have to be perfect all the time. Even if I do just one thing every day to try to be a little better, that’s good.”
While Gerhartz acknowledges she isn’t perfect, she was good enough to be chosen to be in the top ten of an online music contest taking place on playpromedia.com, a website teaming up with Sony music to find new talent. “It’s a great opportunity because it opens up a lot of doors for me as a songwriter,” Gerhartz says. “It’s so strange how you start getting your life back on track and everything starts coming in.”
As the opportunities flow in and her career grows in ways she’d only hoped for previously, Gerhartz keeps herself stable on a foundation of faith—in God, but also in herself.
“It’s not an easy road to chase after something you believe in,” Gerhartz says, “but if you have faith in yourself, you’ll be able to do it.”
You can check out Gerhartz’s music at amygerhartz.com or vote for her at playpromedia.com.