Thanks for the responses everyone. 

Turns out the problem was very simple. On the server amanda wanted 
/var/lib/.amandahosts but on the client it needed /home/amanda/.amandahosts 

Both client and server were configured using the same options (except for 
--without-server) so I didn't realize the .amandahosts files would need to be 
in different places. I used --with-amandahosts on both configures. 

Cheers
Jeremy