Groove Garden was signed by Tommy Boy, and the pair went on to open for Digable Planets on their first national tour.
After the dissolution of Groove Garden, Ambersunshower left her label and temporarily retired from music to take care of her ailing grandfather, after whom her debut album, Walter T. Smith, was named.
[2] Gee Street Records released Ambersunshower's debut solo album, Walter T. Smith, in 1996.
[2] Mia Dinelly of the popular 1990s Los Angeles zine Female FYI described the album as "stripped down funk with a gritty edge, the lyrics raw testaments of love, delivered in her versatile, sometimes dissonant voice.
Ambersunshower is the daughter[citation needed] of actress, writer, and experimental theater director Laurie Carlos (née Smith), one of the original cast members of the Broadway production of Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.