One-and-half-years ago, singer-songwriter Amy Black left a successful marketing career to pursue music and is now embarking on a 30-city U.S. tour

What is it that calls to us? What is it that calls us out of the confines of comfort and certainty to pursue something once quieted? The quieted – gifts and passions, paths untrodden – lives inside many of us.

This call stirred inside Amy Black and arose, one night, as she sat at her kitchen table inside her suburban home. The voice evoked a sense of, What if?, and the notion of time lost and age spent. It spurred and even worse fear, beyond uncertainty and un-comfort. The fear of gifts un-pursued called to her, and she answered it with, “Now would be the time to go out and do something.”

The singer-songwriter always had a knack for singing, starting at an early age and taking lessons for a few months as a teenager. She sang at church and weddings and had a few bands in college, but went on to a successful career in marketing.

After her stint in the kitchen, gathering the gumption to sing at local open-mic nights, she put her gift and love of singing to follow the call.

Black further explains, “Then I started doing it more often, and I built a band and I started doing more shows and people started coming out…It kind of all started taking off and moving pretty fast. I just realized that this is something that I wanted to do.”

The call lured her on a musical journey, fueled by heart and financed by a corporate salary. A Boston-native, she toured on the weekend, formed Amy Black and the Red Clay Rascals and recorded her first album. But the juggling act of being a nine-to-fiver and moonlighter left her dispersal of energies out of wack. She knew it was time to ditch the suit and strap on the guitar and fully commit to her musical odyssey. She was ready.

“It was necessary. I was getting so distracted, ’cause there was so much going on in my music world. I had a true career in music. It was time to give my full attention to my music and my music career. I didn’t want to waste my energy into anything else. I just wanted to put it all into this.”

The soul singer, now performing as just Amy Black, embarked on an odyssey that ventured an EP, two albums and a live record, to led her home – Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Home to her grandparents and renowned FAME Studios, Black returned to the town that was a place of many cherished childhood memories. As an homage to her passed grandfather, she booked a day at the famous studio to record one track. But a bought with illness and exhaustion forced her to reschedule. As fate would have it, her new appointment at the studio led her beyond her familial home, but her musical home as well.

She had the honor of working with Rock Hall inductee and FAME session musician, Spooner Oldham – the organist on classic-soul songs “When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge, Wilson Pickett’s “Mustang Sally” and “I Never Loved a Man” by Aretha Franklin.

Returning to her family roots, Black was stirred to embrace and discover the entire gamut of influential songs that were recorded in the Muscle Shoals studio. She fell in love with the music and released The Muscle Shoals Session EP. After touring the album, she realized it was more than a love affair, but a reflection of who she is.

“I just got more and more into that music and just felt, “Oh man – this is working for me. I really like singing this. And I love the whole soul thing.”

She returned to the studios to flesh out the FAME-recorded hits she covered on tour, wrote two tracks inspired by the place and added another original – a song about Elvis – to complete her most recent effort, The Muscle Shoals Sessions.

It was important to her, if not essential that the album paid as a tribute. It was, after all, a place she frequented many times on trips to visit her grandparents, where her parents were born, and became an answer to her voice and musical influence.

“Now I’m kind of hooked,” Black proclaims. “Once you record this music and you realize it actually works for you vocally and the physical energy on stage – I love performing it – and you play with horns, it’s really hard to want to do anything else. It certainly influenced me in a big way.”

On the Muscle Shoals Sessions album, she stays true to the covers and stays true to herself. With three originals – “Please Don’t Give Up on Me,” “Get to Me” and “Woman on Fire,” the LP challenged her as a songwriter and gave her the opportunity to pay homage to the songs that influenced her.

“I think there was a lot of respect going into this project for everyone who had come before. We’re just – in our own little way – saying, ‘Wow. You guys were awesome. We want to pay tribute to what you did and kind of help keep that music alive and keep the story of Muscle Shoals alive. And I think that’s what we were able to do.”

The serendipitous homecoming, her next odyssey embarks this summer, with a full-band 30-city tour, along with hopes of getting to Europe and plottings for another album.

She’s followed her dreams, tapped into the spirits of her family’s homeland and musical influence, but that call is still hollering.

“It’s so powerful. It’s a form of expression and you feel like you have the ability – if you’re doing it right – to capture people’s attention and get them to follow along with you. Whether you’re singing a ballad and pulling people in emotionally that way, or you’re doing something big and bold – I just think it’s cool. Just being able to get up and do it, and do what you do well.”

Amy Black performs at The Beachland Ballroom & Tavern, July 8