Lyric Magazine
Morgan Wade explodes onto the Americana/Country scene in a ‘Reckless’ blaze of glory
The buzz around new artist Morgan Wade is palpable right now. She releases her debut album, ‘Reckless’ on Friday 19th March and it’s going to surprise and delight people with its mix of cool-edged Americana and pop-punk melody. We were thrilled to grab twenty minutes of Morgan’s time to talk all about it.
Morgan, it’s so lovely to speak to you - ‘Reckless’ has absolutely blown us away!!
Thank you, I appreciate that!
We know you grew up listening to Bluegrass music but we can hear all sorts in there - from Country to Americana to Fleetwood Mac to Blondie and The Pretenders. How do you see yourself and what your sound is?
Figuring out what genre I am is tricky, man. I have no idea! (laughing) At first I was like, “I guess I have to pick something,” you know, but I’m more in the mindset now of thinking that, actually, I really don’t have to! I’ll just let everybody else decide what they think I am.
If I’m pushed I swing between my music between Americana and Rock with a Country influence on the side. I grew up listening to a lot of Elvis and now I listen to all sorts. Miley Cyrus one minute, Americana the next. I’m happy that I don’t fit into any one category right now.
How did you come to work with Sadler Vaden? (Sadler, as well as being an artist in his own right, works as guitarist in Jason Isbell’s band - he helped co-write and produce ‘Reckless’)
Sadler is an awesome guy. We actually met when his guitar tech saw me at a festival. Two days later Sadler sent me an email and said, ‘Hey, let’s jump on a call!’ That was two years ago now. We just started chatting and then I went up to Nashville to write with him and he was getting into producing records then: I needed a producer and he needed a client, and so here we are! (laughing)
How are the excitement levels for the March 19th release?
Oh, high, man, they are running high. I’ve been waiting so long for this that now the time is nearly here, it’s so hard for me to remain calm!
We read a quote of yours from a previous interview where you said that you had been writing about heartbreak since the age of 7!! Guess you weren’t a big Disney princess type of girl then?
(laughing) I was NOT!! (laughing) I’ve always been, I don’t wanna say morbid, a more, let’s say, realistic person, you know? I’ve always gravitated towards sad music, sad movies, that sort of thing.
I write my best stuff when I am going through something. Being happy is not necessarily the best state of mind for creativity! I can be in a great mood but I would still want to listen to sad music. That’s my go to.
When we first heard ‘Reckless’ we wondered whether you’d made a concept album. The songs are all bound together by the similar narrative of longing, loss and self-doubt.
You know, it just worked out like that, I didn’t plan it that way. We never sat down and intentionally set out to tell a story or anything, that’s just how the songs played out over the period that I was writing them.
A lot of the songs are very cinematic - telling a sort of anti Rom-Com story about a doomed relationship.
Some of the subject matter in the songs is real as it pertains to me, some of it has happened to people that I’ve witnessed and some of it is fictionalised so it’s a real mix of experiences that I’ve mashed together. I like to create these characters in my songs, some of them are very wounded and hurt, and I’d like to keep them there and let them feel all the pain! (laughing)
‘Wilder Days’ starts the album in some fine style. Is that a fictional story?
Yeah, pretty much. That one is one of those songs we’ve all lived, you know, right person but wrong time. That ‘I wish I had met you so many years ago,’ sort of vibe. There’s little bits of this and that in the song but I think it’s pretty relatable to most people’s experiences.
We love the line in ‘Matches and Metaphors’ when you sing ‘I love you so bad I think I might die’ but that’s not very healthy either, is it?
(laughing) I know! Definitely not healthy. That one has a sort of 90s Rock playlist vibe if you listen to it carefully. I’m actually listening to one of those playlists today! I think that music is definitely coming back around. One of my producers on ‘Reckless’ worked with Sister Hazel and Three Doors Down and bands like that back in the day and he added a lot of that sound into the album that I really like.
‘Don’t Cry’ is a very dark song. Give us an indication of where your headspace was at when you wrote that one.
Yeah. I wrote that one in December 2019. That time of year is dark, man. I was travelling but not really ‘getting out’ a lot and I was having a really tough time mentally, coping with things. I wrote that in one take and it was done. It is very authentic for me, it just came out of my system almost ready made.
The cinematic story of this anti-Rom Com we hear in your album comes to a beautiful, melodic crescendo on the title track, ‘Reckless’. We love the line ‘You told me I should be more free, is that how you try and control me?’
That line came from real life. Being in any kind of toxic relationship, whether it’s a friendship or something more romantic, you know, is harmful. That idea that some people try and push people away just to try and bring them back again even closer and even more tied in than before is a common experience to a lot of people, that’s where that idea came from.
You are blessed for choice as to which songs to release as singles or send to radio. ‘Wilder Days’ or ‘Reckless’ seem obvious choices but even something like ‘Met You’ would work in a different way. We also think this is going to be one of those albums where everybody has a favourite song too.
That’s a nice problem to have, right there, with the singles and radio choices! (laughing)
I actually haven’t listened to the record in a while, which was good because once it’s done and you’ve been immersed in the studio with it for months, you need a break. I listened to it for the first time in a while the other day and it was ‘Last Cigarette’ that really stood out for me. That one was a lot of fun to record and a very different song for me. Things weren’t happening so much when we first wrote it but I went and put another song that I had written over the top of the melody and it worked out so well. I can’t wait to play that one live.
What is the live situation for you at the moment?
I just literally put out tickets for a release show in Nashville about an hour ago and that sold out! That’s the day before the record comes out, socially distanced with all the precautions, and that will be the first show I will have played in a year. I’ve been writing and able to work on the record - thank god for Zoom, you know? (laughing)
Have you adjusted to writing over Zoom ok?
Yeah. I didn’t do a lot of co-writing for the record. I mainly kept to just writing with Sadler and my producer, Paul, so this has been very different for me but it was cool. It sometimes feels a little bit like speed-dating, you know, just jump right on there and take your clothes off! (laughing) Now, writing on Zoom is just the new normal so I’ve gotten used to it, it’s just the new normal. I can see how for someone like me, writing over Zom could be better and more efficient because I can turn a ten minute conversation into three hours! (laughing) I do miss the one-on-one and getting out and actually going to meet people though.
Are all your tattoos telling the story of your life, like Ashley McBryde’s are, or are they just a product of a misspent youth?
(Laughing) My first tattoo I got when I was 19 and up to that point I had been anti-tattoo. I remember being annoyed with my Dad when he got one when I was about 13 or something, you know? Now I’m covered in them!
Once I got the first one I was like, oh, I like this and I went and got three more! A lot of them have meaning but some of them, like the taco I have tattooed on my arm, have no meaning whatsoever! (laughing) I think I’ve got Ashley beat on the tattoos right now in terms of numbers, we compared them the last time I played a show with her. That was my last full-band show that I played last year, playing with Ashley McBryde.
Ashley struggles to get played on the radio right now, as have many women in Country music. What’s your experience been of your treatment by the industry thus far?
It’s very interesting reading the comments on social media and the things people think is okay to say to a woman that they wouldn’t ever say to a man. I try to ignore stuff like that and not let it get to me. I believe it will and is getting better because at least we are all talking about it more these days. I just watched the Britney Spears documentary the other day and I was amazed by the things that these men were saying to her. I was like, “What the hell, man?’ They wouldn’t be able to do that now or ask questions like that of her on TV so I feel like we are getting better. We’re learning, slowly, but the more we talk and speak our minds the better it is going to get.