*So I get this call at home last weekend, and it’s my friend Ben, who says he can get me in touch with AMY LOFTUS. She’s going to be opening for Dan Hicks next week at Fairfield Theatre Company, and then a few nights later at The Iron Horse up in Massachusetts. Am I interested in talking to her before these shows?

I look around, doing a little bit of research, and see that on her MySpace page Amy lists her “grandfather at the piano singing ‘Five Foot Two Eyes of Blue’ with a Manhattan in his hand [and] my mom and her musicals” as two of her lead influences. Already she has my attention because she has listed family members and has painted a picture of them with just a few words. Then I see that her influences – like my musical interests – run the gamut: from Annie Lennox, Sinead O’Connor and Joni Mitchell to Michael Jackson.

She has been a painter, a member of a dance company, a professional actress, and has been singing and writing since she found her musical voice while studying improv at her hometown’s nationally heralded Second City in 1994. In 1997 she moved out to L.A. and ended up with work on “Days of Our Lives,” HBO’s “The Tracey Ullman Show,” and the play Bible Stories, among other jobs.

By 2000, however, music was calling and she had to answer. To pay the bills and work on her voice she picked up work as the singer for a wedding cover band. She hasn’t stopped singing and performing since.

Her first album, Straight To Amy, came out in 2005 and included 12 originals and one cover song, a folk version of The Clash’s “Straight To Hell.”

Amy’s music is as American as the melting pot we live in. I loved the lyrics I was reading, and that was before I found out that “Cavalier” was a finalist in the 7th Annual CMT/NSAI Song Contest, that “Work To Do” (co-written with producer Will Kimbrough) placed third in the International Songwriting Competition, or even that  she was named 2005 Best New Singer/Songwriter by The Nashville Scene.

“By Nashville standards ... a lot of country producers would be quick to say ‘She’s not country’ after spinning my record. But I love country music; Loretta Lynn is in my soul, Dolly is one of my absolute heroes, and so it’s a part of me,” she said. She doesn’t necessarily consider herself country either. “I just consider myself a singer,” she said.

Nevertheless, I hear a lot of Emmylou Harris in her voice, especially in the title track of her second album, Better. That album was written and recorded in 2006, and released earlier this year. Four of her songs can be heard in full on her MySpace page (MySpace.com/AmyLoftus) and there are snippets from both albums at CDBaby.

“I allow my influences to flow through me, of course. I can’t help that,” Amy said this week. She was in the studio on Tuesday, working with John Deaderick (who played keyboards on her first two albums and is, ironically, keyboardist for Emmylou Harris) in his West Nashville studio. “I don’t do anything on purpose really. I’m much more interested in finding out what the song is like after it comes out.

“I adore Joni Mitchell and Michelle Shocked and Kris Kristofferson,” she continued. “That’s in there. But I never sit down to write and go ‘Hmmm, I want to capture the spirit of the Beach Boys.’ I’ve never understood that. In art school we’d have assignments to paint in the technique of a master. I never liked that.”

She is as careful about what she listens to, she says, the way some people are about what they eat.

“There is some music I simply don’t want in my consciousness. I’m also careful to not listen to my influences too much. Discovering my own voice over and over again is the priority.”

Staying busy is another.

“Writing, touring and recording all inform each other,” she said. “It’s never one or the other. …I’ve never gone into a studio to write a record. I’m already backlogged with things I want to record because I’m just sort of always writing.”

This week she is recording, writing and setting up performance dates for the rest of the year. Fortunately there are already those two Connecticut dates and a third show in Massachusetts before the end of the month.

Amy will be opening for Dan Hicks on Thursday, July 26, at Fairfield Theatre Company (70 Sanford Street in Fairfield; tickets $32), and Saturday, July 29, at The Iron Horse (20 Center Street in Northampton, Mass.; tickets $24/advance or $27/door; telephone 413-584-0610).

Between those two shows Amy will have her own headlining show when she participates in the Songs from the Sofa series on Friday, July 27, at Books and Company (1235 Whitney Avenue in Hamden; 203-248-9449).