The Hard-Won Wisdom Of Madi Diaz

It’s February 2024 and Madi Diaz, who’s towards the beginning of her recent American tour, is sitting “in a sprinter van in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot somewhere between somewhere in North Carolina and somewhere else in North Carolina.” It’s a description that not just accurately describes the vast swathes of the USA – whose landscape is now littered by the famous coffee and donut chain as well as outposts of Wendy’s, 7/11, Taco Bell and other false prophets of the American Dream – but also the glamorous life of an independent artist touring the country. The Nashville-based songwriter is on the road in support of her stunning new album, ‘Weird Faith’, which was released on ANTI- that same month. It’s her sixth full-length, so the 37-year-old is well-versed in the ways and reality of the road that most bands encounter and suffer through, but she’s also experienced life at the opposite end, both as a support act and, later, backing singer for Harry Styles. 

It’s a huge testament to the popstar that he’d invite out someone whose songs – gorgeous but ragged folk-pop, at a very basic description – are so radically different from his own, but also to the muted power of her songs. Having dropped out of Boston’s prestigious Berklee College Of Music in 2007, she soon began her music career, writing songs and playing live with the help of early collaborator Kyle Ryan. That eventually took her from Nashville to Los Angeles, where she spent a few years before moving back to Nashville. After four albums, she signed to ANTI-, putting out the emotionally raw ‘History Of A Feeling’ in 2021, almost seven years after her previous record.

For someone who writes such sad – and, occasionally, bitterly angry songs – Diaz is an absolute delight to talk to, humorous, interested and incredibly honest. Indeed, in the same way she doesn’t shy away from revealing the raw truth in her songs, so she doesn’t shy away or try to hide anything when she’s talking about them, the heartaches and pain that inspired them or her experiences in the music industry.

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‘History Of A Feeling’ was a record drenched in the anguish of a recent heartbreak, but ‘Weird Faith’ finds you exploring the beginnings of a new relationship and the excitement and uncertainty that come with that. It must have been a very different record to write.

Madi Diaz: It was different. It’s definitely different from anything else I have ever written. But it’s funny – while I was writing it, I thought I was writing a bunch of love songs, which is really funny reflecting in the aftermath of a break-up about six or nine months ago, from this relationship. So it’s funny to listen to it, or to even just talk about it, or think about playing these songs live and going through the lyrics. They just feel they feel different in my mouth altogether, but it definitely fell naturally into the progression of things I was going through. I’ve never really written about falling in love, and I think that this was the best that I could do attempting it! (laughs)

The old cliché is that writing songs is cathartic. With a break-up, it helps you get it out of your system and get over the trauma of that situation. But when you’re falling in love, don’t you just want to be swept away by that excitement? Did writing this album not make you step back from what was happening and make you second guess yourself about your feelings?

I think I was just bracing myself. I think there wasn’t really much that I could do as far as allowing myself to let it happen or not. I was just kind of falling in love with this person and trying my very best to stay as present in my body as I possibly could, because I’d been through so much in my last serious relationship.

There was a lot of trauma there, there was a lot of hurt there, there was a lot of stuff that I was really trying to figure out how to maybe not relive or repeat in my next relationship. And for better or for worse, my last relationship kind of bore the brunt of the not-so-great parts of the relationship even before that. And the shots that had been fired kind of ricocheted off of the walls of my insides as I was trying to walk this new path of this person. And he was really wonderful and really patient and understanding, and I was trying to be really patient and understanding with myself, too, as I was trying to figure out how to do it different and communicate differently and express my needs fears differently. 

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So was writing this record as much about getting to know yourself as it was someone else? 

Yeah. It was getting to know myself and acknowledging parts of myself that I didn’t really want to. Even now, dating people, you’re your best self off the bat – the most fun and hilarious, and all of your jokes are new and the way that you smile is this exciting thing, and the way they smile is this exciting thing. And then at some point somebody gets impatient or sad, or somebody’s having a pretty weird, intense, raw day, and the more I’ve been able to be self-aware of that stuff coming up, the easier those moments have been for me in new relationships. 

So as a musician, would you rather have the relationship, or would you rather have the song? 

Oh man, I grapple with that like very consistently. I will say that I started and finished this entire last record within this relationship, and nothing had really changed for me about how I felt about this person all the way through that whole process. And I can say that so positively and with so much certainty. I really don’t think you need to be depressed or sad to write good songs. I think I’ve experienced enough on some level to be able to conjure those feelings.

I think heartbreak, at this point, I’m almost bored of. I’m waiting for whatever the next thing is. I’m 37, I’m getting older, all my friends are getting older and I’m watching my friends become mothers, I’m being auntie to their kids and I’m watching these kids go through things that I went through when I was like a teenager or a five year old. Life is full of pain, man. It doesn’t really have to come from just the one heartbreak! (laughs).

Do you think your choice of career is partly responsible for that being your position in life, and being slightly out of step with your friends? 

I’m sure I could have picked something safer, but I don’t think that it’s really in my soul to do that. There have definitely been times, even a couple years ago, where I absolutely saw myself homesteading, barefoot and pregnant and in some sort of horse field somewhere, and just so far away from everything that I’m doing right now. Music is absolutely my worst gambling habit – songwriting is this thing that I’m going to do whether it’s my job or whether it’s like the other night, when I woke up at three in the morning and this song is just there and it’s going to keep me up all night until I write it down. It’s the worst. Sometimes I wish I had it in me to choose the safe relationship or the safe job or the safe quality of life, but that just hasn’t been the path underneath my feet. I’m not even trying to Evel Knievel my way through the fucking universe, you know? I don’t want something dangerous, I want something real.

I was reading Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl, and it honestly kind of ruined and changed my life, in the best way. I’m totally paraphrasing, but he talks about how the meaning of life is to be still and present enough in oneself so that rather than ask life ‘Why is this happening to me?’ or ‘When do I get this?’ or ‘What is my purpose and how do I get there?’ – rather than asking all those questions, just be present enough to be able to actually respond to what life is handing you.

I read it last year as I was leaving Nashville to play in Harry Styles’ band and I finished that book right before my 37th birthday and was like, ‘My life isn’t asking me to be a mother right now or asking me to work a bar shift or a desk job.’ And my life has totally asked me to do that before, but not in this current phase of things, and I feel like that shift in mentality has totally saved me.

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Obviously that experience was great for your profile, but how does it affect your ego? What does opening for and then playing in the band of someone that big – that maybe 1% of people at the very most ever experience in their lives – do to you as an artist in your own right? Is it disconcerting? Is it encouraging? How did it make you feel?

Oh God, that tour gave me nothing but gifts. It was really hard, I’m not going to lie – it was totally terrifying and nerve-wracking. It was something that I’d never done before, being on a tour that size or with such high stakes. It’s like a crew of 120 people, I didn’t know a single person, and there are so many big new things and I probably slept three to five hours a night. It pushed my adrenaline and serotonin to levels that I did not expect to experience in my life.

So there definitely came an array of challenges with that shit. But for whatever reason it was that he decided to shine his light on me, it’s been a really beautiful experience. It’s been really validating, fulfilling, assuring and comforting. And it’s given me a bit more fuel to the fire for this thing. I’ve been doing this forever – like 15 years or something – and there are so many peaks and valleys to a music career. I didn’t come from money, and nobody else in my family has a career in the arts. There was no road map, and it’s been confusing and terrifying, but most recently it’s been fulfilling on a level that I didn’t ever really expect to get at the end of the day.

Were you ever close to actually giving it all up? 

Oh my God, are you kidding me? Yeah. When I moved back to Nashville at the end of 2017, I had my tail tucked between my legs. I’d just gotten out of a jail lock deal with a publishing company, I didn’t have a manager, didn’t have a label and nobody would touch me with a ten-foot pole. It was very bleak.

I moved back to Nashville because so many of my friends are here and it just feels the most like home. I really just wanted to rest and figure out what the hell was next, and my heart was also like spatchcocked, fucking splayed out operating table-style. It was just a really tough time. I for real thought I was going to – I don’t know – bartend. I was looking into equine massage therapy and just trying to figure out how to pay rent and be happy. But the songs are always just there and they just kept coming.

I was really trying to process my grief and my pain, and I just have to sing it, which is so annoying, I’m sure. I feel bad for my friend Jess, who lived with me at that point, because it was a very highly emotional time, but songwriting is definitely like an addiction on some level to like masochism. (laughs) It continues to surprise me how many different ways I can have my ass handed to me! It never stops and the surprises keep coming, and I just don’t know if I’ll ever be done with it because songwriting is just so fulfilling. I don’t know if I’ll be able to physically endure being an artist for forever, but I do know that I’m going to be a songwriter for forever.

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‘Weird Faith’ is out now on ANTI-.

Words: Mischa Pearlman

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