Singing with Maddie Diaz, Kacey Musgraves on tour with Harry Styles

Photographs by Cheryl Sanchez

At this point in her career, Maddy Diaz is realistic about life on the road. “I’m 37 years old, and this shit is heavy,” the Nashville songstress laughs. “I’m going through the airport, and I have a lot of pedals and cables. “I’m shaking my guitar in the bathroom stall.” When she reaches the check-in counter, she is afraid to talk the airline employee into letting her bring her gear on board. “I’m just not a good fighter,” he adds. “I’m stubborn, but I don’t have it oomph Now in me.”

Maybe that’s true when it comes to stuff, but it certainly doesn’t apply to Diaz’s music. Just ask Harry Styles, who brought her out as the opening act for his Love on Tour show in 2022 — and liked her so much he asked her to join his backing band in 2023. Other fans of her incredibly relatable folk pop include Angel Olsen, Muna, and Waxahatchee (all of whom collaborated with Diaz on a re-recording of her excellent 2021 LP, A history of emotion), and Kesha, who recorded a song in 2019 that she worked on. oomph As for Diaz.

It’s an unseasonably toasty afternoon in October, and Diaz is sitting in the lobby of Manhattan’s Ace Hotel, wearing a tank top under a button-down blouse. She says she’s completely sleep deprived (she looks alert) and her bangs look like Edward Scissorhands (they look cute). “You can tell how well I’m doing in my current life by how many raunchy horoscope podcasts and apps I have on my phone,” she jokes. “If I have more than two, it’s not good.”

The following night, Diaz played the Beacon Theater for My Morning Jacket. Performing at the ornate, 94-year-old venue was a bit overwhelming. “It’s so romantic, I’m lost,” she says. “I started trying to talk between songs, and one word literally came out backwards. I was staring at this golden-female statue. We’re playing the crap beacon with these crazy horns. “I just couldn’t believe my ears.”

When she says “mad horns,” she’s referring to Styles’ touring horn section: saxophonist Lauren Chiodo, trombonist Kalia Vandever and trumpeter Laura Bibbs. “They are the sweetest, best ladies,” Diaz says. “It was like a summer-camp reunion.”

One of the songs Diaz performs with a horn section is “Same Risk,” a brutally honest acoustic scorer from her new album, strange faith: “Do you think this could ruin your life?/’Cause I can see it ruining mine.”

“I had just started dating my ex-partner, and I was terrified,” explains Diaz. “You can’t control anything. All I can do is keep walking forward. “That’s become my own mantra.”

She extends this concept to “Everything Almost,” another feature, about giving almost all of yourself in a relationship — while keeping only a small part for yourself. Listening to it, you can tell why Diaz calls the track a “straight-up journal entry.” With dense detail packed into sharp lines, it’s a future fan favorite they’ll eventually know every word to: “I had a dream that there was a baby inside me/One hand on my stomach and another beckoning/Ordering you. “A bitchy house/And you’re just taking it with a smile.”

“Madi has a really fun way of keeping everything in conversation,” says her friend Kacey Musgraves. A tumbling stone or a spinning stone. “My favorite kind of songwriting.” The Nashville musicians have known each other for a long time, but became close over the pandemic — cooking, shopping for antiques and joking about sharing a house together. “Maddy and I will occasionally have an estate sale or go for a long walk and chat,” Musgraves says. “There is also wine. and horses. “Both of us girls ride and pass.”

Musgraves appears on strange faith “Don’t Do Me Good” duet, sending a lover sizzling with a powerful chorus about finally throwing in the towel. “There’s something about her voice that just elevates the whole thing,” Diaz says. “I know Casey’s speaking voice very specifically, so it was fun to be in the studio and put on headphones and then hear that voice come out of his mouth: ‘Oh, right! That’s my friend!’ ”

Co-written with Ed Sheeran collaborator Amy Wedge, “Don’t Do Me Good” is one of the strongest songs in Diaz’s catalog. But she was hesitant to ask Musgraves to sing on it. “I was absolutely terrified to ask her, because that bridge feels comfortable to me and to my friendships like Courtney Marie Andrews,” says Diaz, naming an American peer. “But Casey is in a completely different stratosphere. “She’s a pop star.” (On hearing the quote, Musgraves laughed: “It’s ridiculous. We’re friends. I’m like, ‘Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.'”)

Many of Diaz’s friends these days are female musicians—something that wasn’t always the case for her. “With our generation, alpha females were taught to avoid each other in their twenties,” says Diaz. “Which is such a shame. “It’s funny how that completely changed in my thirties.”

Diaz grew up in a musical family in Norwalk, Connecticut (her father played in a Zappa cover band), and moved to Pennsylvania when she was seven; Later, she studied at Berklee College of Music before dropping out to play gigs at the Bitter End in New York. She moved to Nashville in 2008, grinding it out as a songwriter, then moved to Los Angeles to play in a band, finally returning to Nashville in 2017.

“I literally didn’t think for two seconds about being a woman in the industry and how, ultimately, it was going to be difficult,” she says, thinking back on her early career. “It’s different for women, and hopefully people will respect that at some point. “I honestly don’t think men do.”

Diaz has named several musicians who tour with her children, from Maren Morris to Elle King to Margo Price (“a lousy badass”). “Or my friend Michaela Anne, who’s two — like, there are women who tour with kids,” she adds. “Michaela Anne’s situation is very different from Maren Morris’s situation on the road. And they are doing both.”

But despite that line about parenthood in “Everything Almost,” she knows it’s not her time yet. She is learning to live in the present, citing Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s 1946 memoir. Man’s search for meaning, As a recent inspiration.

“It’s about listening to what life is asking you and answering those questions,” she says. “And, like, life doesn’t ask me to be a mother. Right now, he’s asking me to carry my guitar two miles from LaGuardia Airport, and my carry-on bag is a rat’s nest of cables that weighs 50 pounds. So I’m trying to be there.”