Amy Grant shares story of new song ‘6th of January (Yasgur’s Farm)’

The sun is shining, the coffee is brewed, and her pajamas are still on at 10 a.m.

That means Amy Grant is content.

On New Year’s Eve day, before preparing for a massive family gathering to celebrate the incoming year with a backyard fire at sunset, Grant is eager to share the story behind her new song, “The 6^th of January (Yasgur’s Farm).”

The windswept folk-pop nugget arrives on the day it is named for, a cosmic intertwining Grant, 65, embraces, and is a precursor to her first new album of original material in more than a decade due later this year.

The song, produced Mac McAnally, a 10-time CMA winner and Nashville Songwriters Hall of Famer, harks back to the idealism of the Woodstock era with its title reference to the famed site of the 1969 culture-shifting music festival.

Lyrics name-drop John Lennon and Marvin Gaye, along with questioning whether humanity has learned anything in the 50-plus years since Woodstock (“All that wide-eyed hope/were we so naïve?”).

Grant, a trailblazer in contemporary Christian music who has sold more than 30 million albums and earned six Grammy Awards, induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and a 2022 Kennedy Center Honor, didn’t write “The 6^th of January (Yasgur’s Farm).” Rather, it came quite literally to her doorstep in the form of a friend and Nashville songwriter, Sandy Lawrence.

Lawrence, mother-in-law of Jenny Gill ‒ part of Grant’s “blended family” with husband Vince Gill – arrived at the Grant/Gill farm in Franklin, Tennessee, just as Grant was ready to leave for a month of West Coast tour dates.

“My suitcase is in the front hall, and I opened the door, and there was Sandy holding a strumstick,” Grant recalls. “She wanted to play a song for me and I said, ‘I’m leaving for the airport, but let’s go to the bedroom, and I can film it on my phone.’ I was so intrigued by the strumstick and the song that when I came back (from the tour), I asked her if I could record it.”

The strumstick – a three-stringed instrument that produces a sound somewhere between a dulcimer and acoustic guitar – was created by luthier Bob McNally as a less intimidating introduction to the guitar.

Grant, an accomplished guitarist since her teen years, wasn’t drawn to the instrument for its simplicity, but rather for its unconventional sound, which gives her new song a definitive Joni Mitchell vibe (yes, Grant has been a fan “from before I was 10”).

One of the primary themes of “The 6^th of January (Yasgur’s Farm)” embedded in its chorus is unrest (“Hey mister, where’s the road to Yasgur’s Farm?/he stares at me with pity and alarm/says that crowd left here long ago”). More specifically, why it’s necessary to contemplate the unrest.

“I think sitting with unrest is where we ask important questions. What can I do differently? It can be unrest about anything,” Grant says. “I can’t help but see life through the lens of someone born in 1960, and when I see my children and their children, everything is vying for everyone’s attention. Unrest is the invitation to say, ‘What do I have control over, and what choices can I make in the world we live in?’ We have so much power and influence in our own lives.”

Grant says that five years removed from heart surgery to repair a congenital heart condition and 3 ½ years since a serious biking accident knocked her unconscious and required months of rehabilitation, she is “feeling great” and energized to support her new projects.

“I’ve been excited about the things I have my hands on,” Grant says. “To be creative again is a wonderful feeling.”