“ This is the dichotomy,” she said.“ I love classical music. It’ s rich. It’ s deep. It’ s intense. There’ s a depth of creativity in the composer’ s work that can’ t be matched with pop music. And yet at the same time, I always have felt constrained by classical music. There are so many rules. It must be done exactly right.”
Re-evaluating her goals, she took a bank job in Bloomington but says it wasn’ t a good fit. And she met Brian Webb, a Brown County native who was her neighbor. They became best friends, married in 2000, and moved to the Bean Blossom area where they bought a house and began raising a family.
The Webbs have five boys: Billy 13; Henry, 12; Charles, 10; Robert, 6, and George, 4. She says three of the boys have learning issues, and were not thriving in public schools, so she began teaching them at home.
“ Home schooling allows me to focus on their weak points, but also to focus on their strong points to give them more room to excel in the areas that they’ re good at,” she said.
To help with the family income, Amanda offered voice and piano lessons to area children and it was once a fulltime job. But she has ended that part of her career, and is ready for the next phase.
“ I would just like to be a working musician again,” she said, and she is willing to do a variety of genres.
“ Music is the way my subconscious talks to me.“ I love to sing. Even now, I will sing anything. I think the physical act of singing makes me very happy,” she said.“ It’ s not only singing— there’ s an individuality that comes across in performing. I like emoting. I like eliciting a response from an audience. My greatest high in performing is when I have an audience that starts interacting with me.”
She hopes to blend her classical training with the joy of popular music.
“ Technique is a tool that you use to get where you’ re going and make sure you stay on track. But technique can only take you so far. In performance, it’ s more about moving your audience.”
Brown County musician Tamara Lane has performed with Amanda in various settings, and is using her as a voice instructor for a church choir workshop. She notes Amanda is technically excellent, but says it is her vibrant personality and engaging voice which define her.
Amanda and Brian have set their priorities. They want to stay married and raise a family, and the best way to do that, she said, is to be in the same band. Together, they’ re writing songs and putting together a recording.
Like Amanda, Brian has been in music most of his life, including choir and band at Brown County High School. At IU, he was involved in opera and madrigals and small chorales. After college, he worked for Harley-Davidson and for a bank before joining the family business, Webb & Sons Auto Restoration in Gnaw Bone. And he says he became enamored with the blues after seeing an Austin City Limits concert by Stevie Ray Vaughan.
“ At that moment, I knew I wanted to do that,” he said.
You can hear a sample of Amanda and Brian’ s music at < www. reverbnation. com / AmandaWebbBand >. Look for their Facebook page“ Amanda Webb Band” to learn of upcoming performances. •
March / April 2016 • Our Brown County 17