Pollstar
A little bit country; a whole lot of ‘badass’
Singer-songwriter Morgan Wade was performing a surprise pop-up show at Floyd’s Country Store, a 175-capacity music space near her Virginia hometown, just before Christmas when she had a revelation.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, or maybe it’s what’s right with me, but I’m here at the Floyd Country Store after I’ve had surgery just because I can’t stop playing. Apparently, I can’t help myself!” Wade told the crowd.
A month earlier, Wade had a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction surgery after it was discovered she carried a mutation of the RAD51D gene, which suppresses the formation of cancerous breast and ovarian tumors. She has a family history of breast cancer and didn’t hesitate to choose the potentially life-saving surgery.
“[Nonprofit Mission Plasticos] helped me to find a great surgeon and directed me to people that understand what you’re going through. They were able to help me find surgeons that would do [both] at the same time, so I didn’t have to be put under twice,” Wade tells Pollstar. And true to form, manager Mary Sparr says, Wade was back up and performing within a month.
Wade has been a road warrior virtually all of her career. And her career appears on the cusp of a transformation following her spring headlining tour and a 31-city “The Triple Moon Tour” with Alanis Morissette and Joan Jett.
“The connection between all three of them is that they’re all badasses. They’ve all made a lane for themselves in their respective genre or style of music,” agent Jonathan Insogna of Wasserman Music says.
Wade recorded her third studio album, Obsessed, utilizing recording studios along her spring tour itinerary and without the aid of co-writers. Bandleader Clint Wills produced it — a switch from her previous albums. A 20-city “Obsessed” tour kicks off Sept. 26 at the Academy Of Music Theater in Northampton, Massachusetts, and runs through Nov. 22 at The Sylvee in Madison, Wisconsin. Another fall headlining tour is in the works, as is a potential international trek next year.
“Her personality shone through the way she handled this gene,” Sparr says. “Go and do it. Get it done. And that’s the attitude she had with the surgery. And I think it did give her some perspective about what she values and what she’s putting out. She’s always had the self-awareness, but I think it just took it to another level.”
Being on tour with two powerhouse women also helped bring her perspective into focus, Sparr says. “Maybe it’s meant to be that she went through this very female experience with having a double mastectomy, and then she walked into a tour with arguably two of the most influential female artists there are,” Sparr say
Wade says she is particularly inspired by Morissette.
“I am looking at [Morissette] as a badass female artist who changed things and did her own thing even when it was hard,” Wade says admiringly. “… She was labeled as angry, but I think she was just being honest. She has so much honesty in her music and that’s definitely a huge thing for me.”
The decision to return to solo songwriting and the authenticity of telling one’s own story is reflected in her work. Obsessed is already being hailed as Wade’s best album yet, and she’s had plenty of acclaim for its predecessors, Reckless and Psychopath.
It all began humbly enough. At a fortuitous July 2018 appearance at FloydFest in her hometown, a sound engineer for Jason Isbell gave a copy of her first, self-released record to Isbell’s guitarist, Sadler Vaden, who also writes and produces. Sadler soon began working with Wade and eventually introduced her to another good friend — agent Jonathan Insogna, who signed her as a client and continues to represent her for Wasserman Music.
“I just fell in love with the music. I thought the writing was incredibly honest and incredibly fresh,” Insogna says. “And I felt like there was a market for it in a way that we’re seeing now where this honesty and authenticity is starting to take root and really blossom. I really saw that in her and we didn’t have a female voice like that.”
Wade, Insogna and Sparr went right to work. Producers Vadler and Paul Ebersold then helped Wade assemble her first studio album, Reckless, released in 2021 by Thirty Tigers/Arista Nashville.
Reaching No. 14 on Billboard’s Heatseeker chart, Reckless garnered glowing accolades from such tastemakers as NPR, Time, The New York Times and Rolling Stone Country, which wrote that Wade has “the ragged edge of a singer-songwriter who’s been putting her nose to the grindstone for some time. In a voice like worn leather, Wade describes desperate, spontaneous relationships that feel the strongest when they’re at their breaking point.”
In the meantime, Wade had returned to the road, her first post-pandemic show opening for The Steel Woods in April 2021 at the Caverns in Pelham, Tennessee. She followed that with dates with Ashley McBryde, including an Aug. 5, 2021 show at historic Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the pairing of two take-no-prisoners country women sold out 1,626 tickets for a gross of $46,716.
Wade continued honing her performance chops in support of other artists, often in stadiums, in 2022 including Chris Stapleton, Lucero, Brooks & Dunn with Jordan Davis, and Luke Combs’ stadium dates with Zach Bryan and Cody Johnson. The May 21 Combs date at Empower Field at Mile High Stadium in Denver sold 53,928 tickets and grossed $4,046,925, while a June 4 stop at Lumen Field in Seattle played in front of 52,159 ticket buyers and grossed $3,726,985.
Wade went to Europe, lighting up the Country Music Association’s C2C Festival in the UK and Ireland; returning for a headlining European tour that included dates at the Academy in Manchester, a second show added at the Garage in London, as well as Hyde Park’s British Summer Time with Eagles.
Wade released a second album, Psychopath, in 2022 and her hard work was rewarded with nominations from the American Music Awards & Honors for Emerging Artist of the Year, and from the Academy of Country Music for New Female Artist of the Year.
And, of course, she continued touring, recording and making new fans despite losing two months last fall for the mastectomy and reconstruction surgery through the help of Mission Plasticos, a nonprofit Wade supports that assists lower-income women in paying for the procedure, which can cost in excess of $100,000. Sparr says that Wade has already inspired many at-risk young women to have genetic testing for RAD51D done.
“Our strategy for Morgan has always been to try to find the fans who might like country music, Americana, singer-songwriter and rock ’n’ roll styles of music. She’s a mixture of all of that,” Insogna explains. “Headline-wise, her tour in 2023 blew out on the onsale. It was incredible. The idea is to put her in great rooms where we can sell tickets.”