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Wide Eyed & Open

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Don't miss Amy on Three Wishes, a life-changing reality series on Gospel Music Channel, Saturdays at 8 pm et.

By Deborah Evans Price, senior music editor, GospelMusicChannel.com

After more than 30 years in the spotlight, Amy Grant is at an interesting juncture in her illustrious career. She’s currently a free agent, not signed to a record deal, and reveling in the open road before her. She’s been co-writing with other artists like Sheryl Crow, Cindy Morgan and Jon Foreman, and she’s exploring options that might provide fans with new music more frequently.

“I’ve got more than an album’s worth of material,” Grant told GMC.com. “I was talking to [manager] Jennifer Cooke this morning and I think we’re going to try to maybe release two songs every four weeks and kind of get a feel for what songs are popular.”

After releasing 10 songs digitally via iTunes, her website and other portals, Grant says she’d like to gauge which songs are her fans favorites, add a few they haven’t heard yet and release the collection on a CD. “If I do that over the next 10 months, we might take the songs that get the strongest response, add a couple of unheard songs and do a hard copy,” she says, “but we don’t have a game plan yet.”

It’s an interesting time in the music business and like many artists, Grant is exploring new ways of taking her music to consumers. She’s excited about this new chapter in her career. As most everyone knows, Grant’s musical journey began when she was just a fresh-faced teen with a guitar. She spent the next 30 years recording for a label under the Word Entertainment umbrella. Then in 2007, she left Word and signed a deal with EMI Christian Music Group thus moving her extensive catalog of hits to EMI CMG where she released “Greatest Hits” in 2007 and “The Christmas Collection” in 2008.

Fans got a taste of new music last month when Grant partnered with philosophy skin care to issue “She Colors My Day,” an EP released exclusively through iTunes, benefiting the Entertainment Industry Foundation’s Women’s’ Cancer Research Fund. The four-song set included Grant’s pop gem “Baby Baby” and “Oh How the Years Go By,” as well as two new tunes that herald the first new non-Christmas music Grant has released in five years. “She Colors My Day” was written by philosophy founder Cristina Carlino and Stuart Mathis.

“Long before I met Christina Carlino, I sat in a bathtub with philosophy bubble bath and I remember reading the bottle and thinking I love the mind that wrote this on the bottle,” says Grant. “I told her that when I met her.”

The other new tune, “Unafraid,” is a poignant ballad. “It’s one of the first new songs I’ve cut. I had a good hard cry writing that one, tears of gratitude,” says Grant, a Nashville-based mother of four. “To me, the song covers every aspect of motherhood—partner, mother and caregiver of an aging mother. It’s a very specific song. It’s quiet and very emotional. When I’ve played it live, people came up and said ‘I need this song right now.’ It felt like Mother’s Day was a good time to get it out.”

Grant says it feels good to have new music getting out to her fans, and though she hasn’t nailed down a definite game plan for the future, she likes the immediacy the digital realm affords. “When I’m working on a record, my close circle of friends will say ‘Do you have any rough mixes?’” she says. “To release digital singles as you approach the release of a record, it’s not like you’re pushing them to radio... it’s like you’d treat a friend. It seems like a better idea to me than waiting till everything is finished. My job right now is just to make the music.”