[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. In the last segment, we heard from Willie Nelson, a country mainstay and nominee at this weekend's Grammy Awards. We wanted to follow that interview with another Grammy nominee, somebody who's picked up part of the country mantle, and like Willie is nominated for Best Country Album. Here's the song, Humble Quest from Maren Morris.

[music]

Haven't looked up in a while

Been bitin' my tongue behind a smile

Fallin' on swords that I can't see

Poison my well on the daily

Got easier not to ask

Just kept hittin' my head on the glass

I was so nice 'til I woke up

I was polite 'til I spoke up

Alison Stewart: That is Humble Quest, the title track from Maren Morris's Grammy-nominated album. Morris is up this year for three, including Best Country Album, and Best Country Song, and Best Country Solo Performance for the track Circles Around This Town, which you'll hear in our interview. I started by asking Maren Morris about the album's production and when she decided on a more stripped-back sound.

Maren Morris: With my previous two records, I would say just working in the room as a writer, I would be working with a lot of track guys, just doing a lot of programming and 808s and beats and that you're writing to. When the pandemic hit, no one was able to write in person. I think just from a natural place, the closest instrument to actually write on was an acoustic guitar or the piano I have in the house. I think honestly, because of COVID, I couldn't be in rooms with the track people anymore. I was writing on real instruments again, and that was really refreshing.

I think that my job as a writer is just to follow the song and when I got into the studio with my producer Greg Kurstin, I wanted to stay true to the original demos and work tapes of what we were writing. We didn't feel the need to put all the bells and whistles on this record. I don't think the songs needed that. It's probably one of my most stripped-back organic production records. It's not an acoustic record, but it's just all airy live instruments. It just feels really raw and organic and I think that's why I love it.

Alison Stewart: You said also in that Q&A that you learned that sometimes the best music comes when you just relax.

Maren Morris: Yes.

Alison Stewart: When did you realize that?

Maren Morris: Again, just being stuck at home for two years, not being able to tour, and maybe some of it was just, I had already proven myself with my first two records. I think in album three, that headspace, I just didn't really feel like I had anything to prove this time around. maybe some of that was the pandemic taking away this gloss of attention and crowd applause every night. I also had my son at the very beginning of COVID back in March of 2020. I think that really humbled me and then-- I don't know. I just felt like I didn't need to try too hard on this one. It was going to be all right no matter what.

I think that allowed me to just relax and enjoy myself in the studio and also not feel rushed to make this project. I had all the time in the world with 2020. It actually allowed for a really relaxed heart and headspace to come out of.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Maren Morris. The name of the new album is Humble Quest. It's a listening party. Let's listen to some more music. Circles Around This Town is the song we're going to listen to next. What were you tapping into? What feelings were you tapping into on this track?

Maren Morris: The day I wrote this song, I was just reminiscing about when I moved to Nashville nine years ago from Texas and I had this crappy Montero sport that was like a hand-me-down car. It had no air conditioning and I just had six or seven demos that I had recorded in a little studio in Texas to bring with me to Nashville to play for publishers to try to get a publishing deal. I just had no clue what I was doing. I think when I got to Nashville, I realized very quickly that everyone here is talented and I needed to get in line and just be patient because it was such a learning moment for me those first few years of learning how to write songs that way.

I think just with writing circles around this town, even though I've reached a lot of achievements and what have you like winning a Grammy, being able to sell out Radio City and all these mountaintop moments, I'm still that like 20-year-old that moved here and is just trying to win over and impress my fellow songwriters in this community. I'm always going to be chasing that moving target of just trying to get the best song and that's where this song was born out of, the Circles Around This Town.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen. This is Maren Morris.

[music]

I swear I don't know how I trusted

A Montero with the AC busted

A couple bad demos on a burned CD

Would take me all the way to Tennessee

I showed up to the new apartment

First month's, last month's, two deposits

Hadn't heard the sound of a door slam yet

Thank God I was an optimist

I drove circles around this town

Tryin' to write circles around this town

Tryin' to say somethin' with meanin'

Somethin' worth singin' about

I've been kind and I've been ruthless

Yeah, got here but the truth is

Thought when I hit it, it'd all look different

But I still got the pedal down

Drivin' circles around this town

So many times, I thought about lеavin'

Alison Stewart: My guest, Maren Morris. The new album is called Humble Quest. We'll be speaking to Marissa Moss who's forthcoming book is Her Country, when you're featured prominently in this book. She writes about you performing at the-- Is it the Texana Grill in Arlington, Texas at age 11?

Maren Morris: I think it was either that or a trail dust smokehouse or one of those.

Alison Stewart: Some with the grills, some with the smokehouse.

Maren Morris: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What was it like, what was that part of the country like for a budding musician? You're a kid, you realize you have this fire, you want to perform, you're in Arlington, Texas. What do you do?

Maren Morris: One of my idols around that time was LeAnn Rimes, and she was also from Mesquite, Texas, which was not far from where I grew up. She just had it big, but she was so young. I think she was 13 when her first song came out. It just felt like such a possibility for me as an 11-year-old to get a record deal and start playing shows and what have you, but I was just obsessed with this idea of performing. I would play anywhere they would allow me to. I would play at chili cook-offs, I would play at carwash openings, I would play at like we said, the smokehouses or the restaurants, just anywhere they had a microphone basically, but that's how I got my start.

It ended up snowballing into a real job that I would get paid for. All through my high school years, on the weekends, I wasn't going to slumber parties. I was going to play a gig. I actually paid for that Montero with cash of all my own gig money. I definitely got my start in a very weird way, but there were a lot of Texans in country music like Miranda Lambert and Kacey Musgraves. We all have the same backstory of coming up through those venues in Texas.

Alison Stewart: What is something from that time that has proven to be really useful in navigating the music business?

Maren Morris: I think just knowing that you're always going to have the lower hand as a woman. I learned that very quickly as even a teenager trying to get gigs in Texas. There were venues that straight up would tell my mom and dad, who were my managers at the time, that they don't look like women because they don't bring in beer sales to the crowd. It's just funny how engrained that becomes, even going into the mainstream country music business that I'm in now. It's a little better than when I first moved to town nine years ago, but it's still pretty unbalanced, just when it comes to representation on the radio or even touring or festival lineups. It's very heavily skewed to men.

I think I just learned how to not take it personally, because I can't fight the entire machine myself, I have to create a little ripple that will hopefully become a wave, but it's going to take time. It's just not going to happen overnight, and I've learned that since I was 13 years old, and I'm 32 this week. It's just something that I've had to realize I can't take personally because it's just a bigger conversation than me, and I can only have power or control over my one little ripple and how much goodness can I put out in that ripple while I'm here.

Alison Stewart: There's a song called Background Music, and it uses songs as a metaphor for relationships. You saying maybe all will ever be to them in a hundred years is three minutes in a car in a bar that says, "We are here." How does the song capture your own relationship with music, with how your music will stand the test of time?

Maren Morris: My husband, Ryan, is also an artist and songwriter here in town.

Alison Stewart: Proud of him.

Maren Morris: That's how we met, was just we were paired up by our publishers to write a song, and now we're married and have a kid. I was writing that song about him because we like to joke sometimes with each other, especially not being able to tour the last few years. That someday when we're both husbands and no one cares about us, we'll still have these golden age memories of our songs when they were cool and maybe got a few number ones under our belt. It was almost like a weird way to say, "I love you so much that even when we're nobodies someday or even past that when we're no longer on this earth anymore."

How cool is it that we're immortalized in our songs and maybe someday, in a hundred years in someone's flying car or in a bar, one of our songs gets played on the radio station or the jukebox or whatever they have in the future, and I just think that's, in a way, romantic because it's like we got such a finite amount of time here, but we got to do something so bizarre with it and something that we love. I think that it was my morbid way of saying, "I'll love you forever through these songs, even after we're dead."

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen to Background Music from Maren Morris.

[music]

Maybe we got our ways to go, a lot of road ahead of us

And who really knows how many songs we got left in us

And so it goes, curtains will close

Whatever's next after the show

Just for now play it loud, let the sound deafen us

We got time, but we're only human

We call it forever, but we know that there's an end to it

You and I can dance our way through it

And I'll love you until all that we are is background music

Maybe all we'll-

Alison Stewart: As you mentioned, your husband's Ryan, Ryan Hurd. Aside from him being your sweetheart and that you love him, what do you like about his songwriting?

Maren Morris: Oh, man, no one has ever asked me this, actually, I just realized. I love that he's such a wordsmith. That's one of the first things I recognized in him when we first wrote years ago. I just love the way his brain works. He's so smart. He's so weird because he ended up in music, but he has a double major sociology, econ degree. I don't know, he's such an empath. I think that's what I fell in love with him as a person and as a writer, but I also just think he has one of the most beautiful voices. I'm very biased because [unintelligible 00:15:36] I think he's an incredible songwriter. He's had more success just to date as a writer than an artist.

I think that some of my favorite songs on his artist projects, like Michigan for the Winner is one of my favorites of his, just about him growing up in Michigan. He's just such a storyteller, I don't know. I can't say enough good things about him.

Alison Stewart: That was both objective and subjective.

Maren Morris: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Welcome.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: That was my conversation with Maren Morris about her album, Humble Quest, which is up for several Grammys at this weekend's ceremony. By the way, her husband Ryan Hurd is up for a Grammy too for co-writing Morris' song, Circles Around This Town. We wish them both good luck this weekend.

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