Get To Know – Madi Diaz – For The Rabbits

We Say…

The latest songwriter to emerge from the fertile Nashville music scene, Madi Diaz has just announced details of her debut album History Of A Feeling, due in August via ANTI-. Ahead of the release, this week Madi has shared her new single, Woman In My Heart. Madi recalls how the track came out as a stream of consciousness, as she was, “actively learning how to part with someone“. For all the pain the break-up brought Madi, it is clear this is a song about moving on, or at least trying to, as she sings, “now the man I love is gone and there’s a woman in my heart”. Musically, the track is a bit of a departure for Madi; a fizzing slice of folk-rock where her vocal howl is paired initially with atmospheric acoustics, before a country-rock riff and pounding drums take this into a similar terrain to Neil Young or Big Thief.

Woman In My Heart follows on from Madi’s previous single, the excellently straight-talking Nervous, a song Madi described as being about, “when you’re in a loop of looking at yourself from every vantage point until you’re caught up in your own tangled web of bullshit“. Alongside the evidence of her earlier singles, the windswept Americana of New Person, Old Place and the beautifully intimate Man In Me, Madi Diaz’s debut is shaping up nicely to be one of 2021’s most intriguing new discoveries.

They Say…

*^{Photo by Alexa King // Header Photo by Lili Pepper}*

FTR: For those who don’t know who is Madi Diaz?

Hi it’s me I’m Madi Diaz. I’m a human person and I write about feelings that I have about things that may or may not have happened. I’ve mostly lived in Nashville TN and will probably continue to do so in some capacity for forever because I love how the ground beneath my feet feels here. I prefer showers to baths, I like savory AND I like sweet so don’t make me choose, I like sitting in my car in front of my house late at night until I’m good and ready to go inside, and I want to adopt retired police horses one day.

FTR: What can you remember about your first show?

When my brother and I were younger my parents used to pack us up in our VW camper van and we would drive 95 south all the way from Lancaster PA to Key West FL where we would spend a week or two camping every year. I was about 12 and sporting turquoise braces. my mom and I were at some restaurant situation where there was a guy serenading about 50 elderly folk with an ovation guitar on a microphone. I had god awful stage fright and so my mom cutely bet me 20 bucks I wouldn’t get on stage and play a Sheryl Crow song. I played TWO Sheryl Crow songs and all of those sweet older folks came up to me and told me how wonderful I would be to have as a granddaughter… AND I won 20 bucks from my mom. It was a pretty solid day (ps thank you mom I love you).

FTR: Why do you make music? Why not another art form?

I think music is just what comes out. It’s just the shape that my expression takes that’s the easiest form of communication for me. It feels like it’s the closest I can get to really being inside my heart and working out my feelings. It’s all I want to do when I’m really happy or really sad. It’s what I turn to and it’s always been there. Music itself has always ALWAYS been my best trust fall. It always catches me. It’s always in my head my dreams first thing when I wake up and last thing before I go to sleep.

FTR: What can people expect from the Madi Diaz live show?

Emo with some humor…if we can’t laugh about how we’re crying then what the hell are we gonna do, am I right? But really, I hope people come and feel like we’re all having an “aha” moment together….like “OH that’s what that feeling is and where it came from and why I am where I am” kind of moment. Finding a bit of peace in self-awareness, or maybe peace in the lack thereof, but at least trying to see things for what they are.

FTR: What’s next for Madi Diaz?

Writing songs for forever. Singing for forever.

They Listen To…

Muna – Taken