Tour reflects Willow & The Embers lead singer's childhood

Musician Willow Scrivner is retracing some hard times in a path that will lead her through Amarillo.

The Seattle-based singer's band, Willow & The Embers, will perform Saturday at The 806, 2812 S.W. Sixth Ave., as part of her journey from Washington to Lawton, Okla., for a tour and documentary about her childhood.

Scrivner's father was a preacher in Lawton for two years in the 1970s, one of his last jobs with the Church of God.

It was one of several moves for Scrivner's family.

"As a kid, I felt like I was in the circus," she said.

"Every day, you put up your tent and hope someone comes along."

But while he was there, Scrivner's father went through a major crisis of faith.

"By the time we left Lawton, he had gone through so many churches and so much politics in the denomination we belonged to ... that he felt like he had lost his salvation," Scrivner said.

That led to a move back to Reno, Nev., and even more critical times for the family.

"My parents almost split up a couple of times there, my sister was sexually attacked there, we were poor as church mice without a church there," Scrivner said.

Now, she's re-exploring that pivotal time in her family's life on "Radio Sky," a folksy album that combines gospel and country influences, and with her "Daughter of a Preacher Man" tour and Kickstarter-funded documentary.

The tour will take her to towns she hasn't visited since she was a child, including Amarillo, where the family stopped for lunch both on their way to and from Lawton.

"It'll be interesting just to visually see (these locations) as an adult versus as a child," Scrivner said. "When you marry and bury people like a preacher does and become part of a church family and then move as much as we did, it's like leaving part of your family behind."

The trauma - not just from the constant moving, but from the later catastrophes in Reno - left Scrivner's own family fractured.

"I feel like my family was like a watermelon that was dropped from a high, high, high bridge - fragments everywhere," she said.

The family healed, though, after moving to Washington. Her father eventually started his own nondenominational church - "It's very different from the pounding of the pulpit when we lived down in Oklahoma" - and, despite the personal nature of this project, he's behind his daughter fully.

"Him and I have been kind of like oil and water in some cases, but we're coming back to each other, and he's very proud of my desire to do this, even if it reveals some of our flaws as a family," she said.